About transparency….

In relationships – at work and at home – a lot of emphasis is put on trust. Trust, openness, and a willingness to be candid or frank when there is a problem. We value authenticity in our friends and leaders. Even when there is bad new we prefer to know about it rather than being kept in the dark.

So, as housing associations, how do we feel about transparency?

I have been at the table when colleagues have expressed concern about their salaries being published. I have heard the arguments against putting fire safety certificates online. I remember many meetings where the sector got angry in response to threats to introduce Freedom of Information, and relief when we could claim that it would not be possible for the Government to insist on it. Of course there are down sides to providing “too much information”, and there are risks, but in general I think we need to move towards much greater transparency.

The Freedom of Information Act forces public authorities to give information to anyone who asks for it, within a reasonable timeframe. Housing Associations already must respond to Subject Access Requests.

However, in practice I think our residents are disappointed. Neither FOI nor SAR appears to give them what they want or need. They often end up with lots of paper, lots of redactions and nothing much to go on. Journalists have been more successful as they know the right questions to ask and by collating information from several bodies (eg all local authorities) they create a useful data set that they can analyse.

However if we move away from these flawed and contested official mechanisms and begin to consider the advantages of being open, and publishing more data openly, we may reach different conclusions. Let’s start by asking what a customer (or resident) might usefully like to know about, and decide how to share the information that we already have. As Francis Bacon said “Knowledge itself is power”. This way tenants could access what they could usefully know, for their own benefit, or to hold us to account. We could ask them what they would like to know, or simply record their requests and respond not only one to one, but make the same information available to all.

I would start by giving tenants quite a lot of information about their home. In fact we should be willing to share everything we have – from the instructions on how to use the central heating, to the floor plan, to the investment history and forward plan, valuation, the building safety information, and so on. This would empower tenants and absolve them from having to ask. At the same time landlords would have to spend less time answering questions and fulfilling SARs. Being open and honest – even if it’s bad news – builds trust, over time. Transparency of course will reveal that some of our information is not top notch. But transparency would help to drive improvement.