The housing regulator has taken action aganst the home standards for “serious harm” to tenants due to ongoing repairs failings, despite assurances it had improved.
The Homes and Communities Agency (HCA)issued a regulatory notice saying Circle had breached its Home Standard, after finding a “large number of outstanding complaints” with vulnerable tenants affected.
It follows Circle’s merger with Affinity Sutton earlier this month to form Clarion Group.
The new organisation issued a statement apologising “unreservedly” for the “unacceptable” failures, and said it is “already putting a programme in place” to start addressing them.
Circle had previously been found in breach of the Home Standard for repairs failings in April 2015, but this was removed a year later after it assured the regulator it had made significant improvements.
The HCA said in december, after that point it had continued to receive reports of poor service covering issues including:
Difficulties contacting Circle, leading to “a very large number of complaints” being left outstanding for long periods. This followed Circle merging its customer contact operation into a single call centre and in parallel implementing a new customer relationship management IT system in June; General repairs issues affecting vulnerable and potentially vulnerable tenants and Performance of heating and hot water repairs systms