The Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) has appointed four board members to a tenants’ co-operative after ‘repeated disagreements and conflict’ saw it fail regulatory standards.
According to Inside Housing:
In a notice issued today, the HCA said it has ‘significant concerns’ about the board at Quadrant Brownswood Tenant Co-operative (QBTC), which owns 141 homes in north London, following internal disputes and unnecessary legal battles.
The regulator has appointed four ‘senior housing professionals’ to sit on the board for at least six months, marking the first use of its statutory power to appoint board members.
The notice said: ‘The regulator remains concerned that the management committee is not exercising strategic oversight… largely due to repeated disagreements and conflict.’
Inside Housing understands the co-operative at one stage had three different management committees, all claiming to be running the organisation before the regulator stepped in.
The regulator first issued a notice saying QBTC was not meeting its standards in May, but has decided to intervene directly after ‘slippages’ in an agreed action plan.
It added: ‘The management committee has not yet properly addressed financial and other risk factors, in particular in asset management and in the use of litigation where other less costly actions may be viable.’
It is understood the regulator was particularly annoyed by the use of the association’s resources to pay expensive legal firms to carry out litigation.
There is no suggestion that the claims related to disputes over who ran QBTC.
QBTC declined to comment.
The HCA does not publish full regulatory judgement for landlords which have fewer than 1,000 homes, but now publishes notices where small associations fail to meet regulatory standards.