The 18th September marked the three-month anniversary since Clarion Housing Association was hit by a cyber-attack resulting in a significant loss of service to tenants particularly around contacting staff directly by phone and paying rent, which has still not been remedied. It is a concern that this has had such a significant effect on the Housing Association and has created significant uncertainty for tenants concerned about the safety of their personal data and unable to speak to customer services about routine tenancy issues.

Clarion is a large well funding Housing Association that makes a significant surplus from its housing stock, so it is even more worrying as they do not suffer from lack of funds to address the issue. However, it is perhaps linked to Clarion Housing Association’s problems in maintaining its properties, where my experience of reviewing casework issues is that adequate routine planned maintenance has not taken place or is woefully inadequate, resulting in numerous complaints from tenants requiring reactive maintenance.

As a case in point, the tenants of Church Flats in Cuckfield Lane, Warninglid had raised issues multiple times with disrepair of the roof area leaving holes as pictured in the fascia and window frames allowing squirrels and rats to access the roof space, but no action had taken place. When I raised the issue scaffolding was put up to allow repairs to the fascia although three weeks later no actual repairs have taken place, my impression in this and other cases is that planned maintenance has not been undertaken in a timely fashion leaving issues to be taken up as reactive maintenance.

Clarion appears to be underfunding its tenant services, clearly it has under invested in IT infrastructure and all the evidence from tenants is that its repair service is not fit for purpose.  My suspicion is senior staff are incentivised to build more houses but not to provide a quality service to its tenants or ensuring its existing housing stock is properly maintained.