anyway, I must get back to the long email my council landlord sent me about how most damp and mould is down to lifestyle, actually.

And well worth remembering, as Neil has, that a great deal of the 'regulation' isn't just about building safety, it's specifically about how people are treated, their health and indeed their safety from their landlords. A landscape that is not resolved yet and blatantly cannot rely on good actors.

It is bold of the Tories, which oversaw one of the darkest periods in social housing policy to come out swinging on, of all things, regulation of the sector. Disrespectful attitude towards private renters & RRA not surprising given the Tories torpedoed their own manifesto pledge to improve things.

Initially started to get annoyed at how wrong he is about all the detail of... everything, but what's the point? The long and short of it is he's prepared to see more people die for housebuilder profits.

Unless it actually happens.

**** christmas

@simplicitly.bsky.social's Social Housing Alphabetical Advent Calendar 2025 is now up to 'R' – which could stand for 'Read it now'. Here it is hqnetwork.co.uk/news/robs-so... #ukhousing Warning: the man's sheer enthusiasm for Christmas may overwhelm you

For some reason I have decided to make a Social Housing Advent Calendar on LinkedIn for the main tidbits from the year, and even more foolishly I've decided to do it in alphabetical order. Thankfully @hqnmedia.bsky.social are making a compendium of the daily entries, so i don't have to.

I don't generally watch daytime TV but channel-hopped between the phone-in shows yesterday. The Cameron-era avarice was in full swing from most callers, incandescent with rage that some children's families might be able to afford to feed them now.

The UK, where the day after a decision to take half a million children out of poverty, the media & political world has been full of sneering at those same children & their families, labelling them as ‘Benefits Street’, while the same people are moaning about a tax on £2m mansions. Shameful stuff.

All this means is that carers who used to qualify for carer's allowance - wrongly in the view of the government - won't get it any more. There won't be any overpayments, which is great, but all these carers now won't get any financial support at all.

More work needed on how many families won't get any more money because they'll still hit the overall household benefit cap.

Surprise (surprise).

I am technically on holiday but at first glance this report is so, so weird.

Inspired by Donald Trump, backed by Tommy Robinson, channelling the Nazis – here's Labour's new policy on migration https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/nov/17/refugees-jewellery-asylum-home-office

Let's just get the Tories out, and then we can worry about actual policy down the line.

If you didn't know which party this guy was from, you would have to google it, because it's a pretty consistent policy across all parties to wrongfully blame sick and disabled people for their poverty.

Often wondered if it's just as frustrating a task as an employer as it is as a claimant to engage with an organisation that has predominantly been turned into a harsh gatekeeper for social security entitlements.

New today from DWP: Claims that just one in five employers have engaged with Jobcentre Plus. Actually, it's worse than that - the DWP employer survey says most of the contacts are about workplace pensions, apprenticeships (then not DWP), child support and disability issues, not JCP services.

Never mind shrugging aside nurse's advice, I have come across a totally unqualified "medical adviser" to a social landlord asserting they knew better than a *professor consultant* at a London teaching hospital specialising in tenant's rare illness.

Are the TSMs out yet?

Urgh, Sovereign. This is clearly Not Fixed. Tried to help a tenant last/this year with something almost exactly the same, they eventually just homeswapped because Sovereign thought they had fixed it, but they had not. An internal comms and systems problem that leaves tenants unhelped.

So important to tie all these issues together, and very neatly and carefully done by @hannahfearn.bsky.social. Some of these things have felt inevitable since the coalition's swingeing welfare cuts after 2010, and the solutions now require a real policy shift.

Isabel Oakeshott on behalf of Reform calling for Sharia law in Britain. No, I'm not even joking. That's literally what she's saying here.

There is still time to book for tomorrow's @hqnmedia.bsky.social Resident's Network annual conference. Book one or more staff places and get 5, yes FIVE, free places for tenants. Hear from MHCLG, Ombudsman & tenants setting up national bodies in England and Wales: hqnetwork.co.uk/events/the-r...

Our Residents' Network conference is only 2 weeks away, & one of our hosts will be @simplicitly.bsky.social,HQN associate. Find out more & book your place below hqnetwork.co.uk/events/the-r... #ukhousing

Perfect timing from the Housing Ombudsman. A day after Awaab's Law was technically passed onto the statute books, a report naming some landlords still failing to address Damp & Mould. Despite years of terrible publicity, landlords still forcing squalor. www.housing-ombudsman.org.uk/2025/10/28/l...

Why attempt to make this party political? Terrible behaviour. The rules weren't created under Labour and it really shouldn't matter either way. Outcomes of the actual policy are still very much unknown, as the unfulfilled intentions of the rest of the regulation of social housing act have shown us.

If Reform do get into government, the media organisation whose response will most closely resemble the cravenness seen in the US will be the BBC - probably even more than the right wing press

This is just so satisfying for people like me who are very miffed at the entire policy direction. Clearly there will be different factors at play in future elections but the idea their vote can be eroded like this feels possible anywhere.

Clarion Housing has featured in 14 out of the entire 18 months' worth of Severe Maladministration failure reports from the Housing Ombudsman, so it's no surprise it has structural problems it is still pretending don't exist.

And so, in light of Clarion's ongoing highlighting of Things Not Yet Fixed: hqnetwork.co.uk/news/opinion...

Our Residents' Network conference is only 2 weeks away, & one of our guest speakers, Tenant Voice Advocate Emma Nichols, will be expanding on creating a national tenant voice for Wales. Find out more & book your place below hqnetwork.co.uk/events/the-r... #ukhousing

Our Residents' Network conference is only 2 weeks away, & one of our guest speakers, Joseph De-Ville, will be focusing on the creation of a new national tenant voice. Find out more & book your place below hqnetwork.co.uk/events/the-r... #ukhousing

From yesterday - Clarion Housing (again) manager tells a worker to fake fire safety work in 2022. Worker reports it a year later, manager eventually sacked summer 2025. There is a deep culture problem at Clarion, and elsewhere, and govt/sector response not good enough: news.sky.com/video/clario...

There is no need for a moral panic about the UK's welfare system. Far from perfect but recent discourse is nuts Spending is controlled, not spiralling Worklessness is near record lows My column www.ft.com/content/ee67...

Zero surprises. 'Rolling over to developers' is the only option governments have when they won't specifically invest in social housing. The hats are off-putting but the policy is going to dig the affordability crisis even deeper.

The idea that there is a cohort of people who want to claim some of the worst benefits there are just so they can be harangued by clueless politicians and subjected to interacting with the dregs of the British workforce at the DWP and Jobcentre is for the birds.

What have LiveWest tenants done to deserve this?

There have been 17 monthly reports from the Housing Ombudsman designed to help the housing sector learn lessons from severe maladministration, but the lessons are similar every month. Why aren't social landlords learning them? It can't all be time lag and it's years since spotlight reports began.

😬

How did the Prime Minister do? He spoke about reducing child poverty and giving children the best start in life. But warm words don’t pay the bills or put food on the table. The government must lift the two child limit, or see child poverty rise even further on their watch.

Good living standards aren’t a reward for growth. A thriving economy is built on government investment in strong public services, financial support for those who need it, and a swift journey towards a low-carbon economy.

Worse still, the current strategy is not delivering meaningful growth. Focusing on deregulation for financial services, while refusing to invest more in public services won't lead to growth we all benefit from.

Keir Starmer is wrong to say economic growth will heal the division sown by the far-right in this country. The benefits of major GDP growth are likely to flow to the big business and the wealthiest people, living in the most well-off parts of the country. #LabourConference2025

Genuine reflection from Labour conference. The leadership is massively out of step with its own members and civil society. It’s giving pigheaded. The mood was low,few people impressed or confident in the current vision. The May elections will punish Starmerism and we’ll all be worse off for it.

Leaving labour conference and felt like I’d lost something. Realised it’s my will to live.

2-child argument moves to Budget Arguably that’s more logical But v odd not to have made much clearer in the run-up to today that there was no announcement on this today

There’s about 20 clips from Trump’s speech to the generals and any one of them is reasonable grounds for 25th Amendment removal/impeachment.

Basically continuity Iain Duncan Smith.