Hyde Housing has been heavily criticised by the Housing Ombudsman who published a special report at the start of December 2024. The report is particularly relevant for residents of the Progress Estate as Hyde Housing is not only a major landlord on the estate but also responsible for looking after communal spaces around the area giving it the right to levy service charges on many local residents.
What did the Special Report on Hyde Housing say?
The Special Report into Hyde Housing by the Housing Ombudsman can be found here:
To many Progress Estate tenants of Hyde Housing, the contents of the report can have come as little surprise, as it highlighted repeated failings in repairs, complaint handling and how the Housing Assoication responded to residents’ enquiries about service charges. The report stated that this has caused distress and inconvenience to residents with unreasonable delays to repairs, barriers to complaints and poor communication.
The three key areas which the report identified Hyde as having failed in were:
- How it handled complaints: The Ombudsman found that there were a long-term under resourcing of the complaints team, with complaints often being ignored while repairs were being undertaken. Where there was an admission that complaints had been handled poorly, Hyde often did not provide enough compensation, including some poorly handled apologies.
- Repairs simply took too long to complete: It was found that a significant amount of repairs were unreasonably delayed, appointments were missed or did not results in repairs being completed and contractors’ work was not properly checked.
- Failure to answer service charge enquiries quickly or accurately enough: There was a rush of service charge enquiries when bills were sent out (twice per year) but Hyde sometimes took too long to respond to these (often 5 or 6 months but occasionally up to a year) or did not answer the questions asked by residents.
Hyde Housing has apologised for their failings and doubled the number of people handling complaints. In my opinion Hyde’s response to the report somewhat downplayed the seriousness of the situation with the suggestion that the Ombudsman had “made some recommendations for us to enhance our service for customers”. Indeed in its 2023-24 Annual Review Hyde stated it put “customers first in everything we do” while its internal measure of satisfaction with customer services dropped to 77.6%.
Hyde Housing and the Progress Estate
Eltham Conservatives are aware that the problems detailed in the report from the Housing Ombudsman reflect the experience of many Progress Estate residents. As an example (and there are many) in Autumn 2024 some Hyde tenants received letters detailing how the combined incompetence of Greenwich Council’s Housing Department and Hyde Housing meant that the replacement of PVCu windows and doors would be even further delayed. Similarly, following the publication of the report, one Conservative resident of the Progress Estate has detailed how they have been waiting for a roof repair since 2021 meaning that there is now water running down the back wall causing a substantial problem with damp in their front room. There are also issues with getting plumbers to repair toilets which were installed in 1976.
It is also the case that the confusion over Service Charges is a long-running issue on the Progress Estate, previously raised by Conservative Councillors prior to the 2022 local elections. The inconsistent amount charged and who is liable (do some freeholders have a responsibility to pay in addition to tenants and leaseholder?) are still unclear as a result of Hyde’s failure to communicate properly with local residents.
These problems are so well established on the Progress Estate that they were the focus on the Progress Residents Association (PRA) blog in 2021, which stated:
“Meanwhile, some leaseholders have, for the last three years, received random and confusing demands for service charges which raised eyebrows as Hyde appears not to have provided any estate services since its takeover from the Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society (RACS) in the 1970s. We delivered flyers to every property on the estate and residents have been in contact.
Rental tenants complained that Hyde was hard to contact, sometimes sent surveyors to look at problems but didn’t fix the – sometimes serious – issues. Homeowners said that Hyde did not respond even when issues such as water leaks from neighbouring Hyde flats affected them. The routine upkeep of properties had deteriorated particularly over the last seven years. Many said that Hyde expected, in some cases, renters to pay for repairs; for instance, to fences on Hyde properties.
Some flat owners wanted to know what services Hyde provides on the estate to justify the service charges, ranging from £35 to a bizarre 8 or 15 pence a month.”
What to do now?
The special report by the Housing Ombudsman was so concerning that (as we local Conservatives have no Councillors for the Progress Estate any more) Deputy Chair of Greenwich, Eltham and Chislehurst Conservatives Elizabeth Drury has written to Greenwich Council to request details about how they have responded to it. We will continue to post updates here on the Eltham Matters blog and please do follow Eltham Matters on X (@ElthamMatters) or Bluesky (@elthammatters.bsky.social).
Interestingly, Greenwich Council seems to have a strong relationship to Hyde Housing after backing a scheme for 1,200 new homes at Charlton Riverside in 2022 and boasting about how it is “working closely” with the organisation in 2023. Similarly, Hyde’s failure to address the cladding problems at New Capital Quay in Greenwich where it has interests in six of the blocks as well as being head leaseholder in two seem to have been ignored. Progress Estate Conservatives would like to see Greenwich Council using its links with Hyde Housing to ensure the area is better looked after in the future but we have seen no evidence of this happening based on the standard of service local residents are still receiving despite the Housing Ombudsman’s intervention.
The Progress Estate is currently represented by two Labour Councillors and we can find no evidence that either of them have raised in public or elsewhere any concerns about the way in which Hyde Housing is dealing with tenants, leaseholders or freeholders on the Progress Estate. Representation by Councillors is essential as Hyde seem to be switching to building rather maintaining housing so they need to be held accountable where they are not doing their job properly.
To help ensure you have strong local representation in Eltham and on the Progress Estate, it would be great if you wanted to get more involved: https://www.greenwichconservatives.com/join-0.
Update 31/12/24
Following some enquiries I was directed to this useful blog on the Progress Residents Association site from 10 years ago which still seems to be relevant when considering the possibility of Service Charges being levied on freeholders on the estate.