Spotlight on attitudes, respect and rights – relationship of equals
Published in January 2024
Report summary
The cost-of-living crisis, increase in mental health difficulties and housing shortages have changed the landscape for landlords to an increasingly challenging and complex environment to navigate. There is a pressing need for landlords to create human-centric policies, adapt to meet the needs of all their residents and ensure the most vulnerable residents are not left behind. For many landlords, their current approach is potentially inadequate for responding effectively to the needs of the population it serves.
Central to this report is what it means to be vulnerable in social housing today, but also most importantly, how landlords can respond effectively and how to do so without stigma or marginalisation.
Key themes in this report
This report focuses heavily on people and processes, looking at:
- vulnerabilities
- reasonable adjustments
- discrimination
- contact restrictions
- contractors
- investigation allegations
- service charges
- complaints handling
The featured case studies in this report have been selected to illustrate the range of findings and outcomes and how lessons can be drawn from those to share more widely.
The full report
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View this presentation to understand why we choose to do a spotlight on attitudes, respect and rights, the research we did, and the call for evidence data.
Further learning on attitudes, respect and rights
Attitudes, respect and rights
Poor communication is often the root cause of housing complaints, eroding trust and leading to escalating issues.
Discover resident and landlord guidance, reports, and training options to help you understand this key topic.
View more Spotlight reports
Spotlight on: Knowledge and Information Management
This report reveals how landlord’s services can be held back by weaknesses in data and information, that can turn an ordinary service request into an extraordinarily protracted complaint.
Spotlight on: Damp and mould
Landlords must demonstrate to residents learning from damp and mould complaints. We encourage landlord staff and managers to review the case studies and learning in this report, actively consider how you would respond to the case and whether you would make the same mistakes.
Spotlight on: Noise complaints
At the heart of our findings in this report is a fundamental unfairness: most noise reports concern household noise rather than Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB), and yet most landlords handle it under their ASB policy.