A right that tenants have in England and Scotland, but NOT in Wales

Today is International Tenants Day, and it felt appropriate to highlight that tenants in Wales are without a particular right that tenants in Scotland and England have.

That is: The legal right to ask their landlord about information on how their homes and services are managed.

Since last week (1 October), English Housing Associations are subject to a phased version of Freedom of Information requests (FOIs) called STAIRs (The Social Tenant Access to Information Requirements)

• All Councils in UK have been under FOI since 2005
• Scottish Social Landlords have been covered by FOISA since 2019
• English Housing Association started a 2-phase implementation last week

But Welsh tenants want that right!    TPAS Cymru spent 18 months holding events, polls, workshops across Wales on what they wanted from the next Welsh Government. We put a lot of effort into listening to tenants’ voices, and this has consistently ranked highly as part of improvements to regulation and transparency.   See the ‘5 Tenant Asks’ of next Welsh Government here: https://www.tpas.cymru/tenant-asks

FOI/STAIRs make it easier for tenants to access key information about their home, the landlord, and the services they receive for their rent.

If a resident in Wales wants to know why their repair request was closed with no action, they have only two options: The formal complaints process or a solicitor. Now, if they lived in Scotland or England, they could formally ask for the contractor's report and all other information held about the condition of their home. That is powerful.   

As Nick Davies of  Kerv Digital said last week on LinkedIn:  

"Send me everything you hold about the condition of my home" is a simple sentence.
 Answering it inside 30 days means pulling repair history, surveys, inspection notes, contractor job sheets, contact centre records and the emails in between - from systems that were never designed to be read together, let alone read by the tenant. And unlike a complaint, you don't get to frame the narrative. You hand over the record, and the record speaks for itself.

Not really. England carefully considered Scotland’s experience before introducing this approach. There may be an initial increase in requests from ‘persistent’ tenants exercising their rights, but this usually settles down. TPAS Cymru has held several sessions with Scottish tenants and landlords, and the right is mainly used when a tenant has felt stonewalled.

In summary:  On International Tenants Day, we see reflections on what is good, bad and scary about tenant rights and voice across the world.  Wales has a lot to be proud of, but regarding this tenant right, we are behind our fellow UK nation cousins. That needs fixing.

 

Note:  FOI/STAIRs are very different to SARs (Subject Access Requests) which allow a tenant to ask what data they have on them as a person.  FOI/STAIRs are about properties and services.

An example of SARs is here.