ASA Adjudication on Crawley Borough Council

Ad

A newsletter about the transfer of Crawley Borough Council's housing stock from the local authority control to a housing association. The front page was headlined "Council faces £12 million shortfall to reach Decent Homes Standard" and claimed "The cost of bringing homes up to the minimum Decent Homes Standard is £60m. The Council projects it only has £48 million of funding available. Therefore, the Council has to find savings of £12 million to meet the Government Standard by the deadline of 2010". A section of the newsletter was headed "If in doubt check it out!" and stated "Some tenants may have received information from a group which is opposed to the Council's transfer proposal. We believe in and want a fair and honest debate about transfer. However, please be aware that information from opposition groups does not go through the same rigorous checks as Council information. As a result it could be misleading or inaccurate."

A DVD promoted the transfer and was sent separately to tenants echoing many of the points made in the newsletter. The DVD featured an interview with the Chief Executive of Crawley Borough Council, Micheal Coughlin, who stated "every year we [Crawley Borough Council] have to send around £10 million of your rent back to government to subsidise other councils … [Homes for Crawley] would be able to borrow all the money needed and it would get to keep all the rent it collects to spend on your homes and services". The voice-over stated "In Crawley some tenants may be confused by conflicting messages about transfer". The DVD included an interview with Council Leader Bob Lanzer, in which he stated "I want you to be aware that there are groups and people opposed to the Council's transfer proposals. The Council firmly believes in everyone's right to have their say on transfer. We are also committed to ensuring that tenants receive accurate and balanced information. Unfortunately, experience from other parts of the country shows that groups opposed to transfer have been sending out material that is inaccurate, misleading and, in extreme cases, threatening." The DVD showed someone putting a DCH leaflet through a letter box.

Issue

The complainant, a council tenant and member of the Crawley branch of Defend Council Housing (DCH), challenged whether:

1. the claim in the newsletter that it would cost £60m to bring homes up to the minimum Decent Homes Standard (DHS) was misleading, because the complainant believed the quoted figure included the cost of bringing housing stock up to standards beyond the minimum required by the DHS and also included future maintenance costs;

2. the DVD was misleading and unfairly denigrated local groups opposed to the stock transfer by claiming that information circulated by those groups could be inaccurate, misleading and threatening;

3. the claim in the newsletter that information from opposition groups could be misleading or inaccurate was misleading and denigratory and

4. the claim in the DVD that Homes for Crawley would get to keep all the rent it collected to spend on homes and services was misleading, because it implied that Homes for Crawley would not have to repay money borrowed, including interest, from rents collected.

CAP Code (Edition 11)

Response

Crawley Borough Council (CBC) said they had been considering the transfer of housing stock since 2003 as part of the Government's proposals to bring all public sector housing up to its Decent Homes Standard (DHS). They said part of the process was to ensure that all homes reach the DHS by 2010 and that landlords could demonstrate how they would fund the cost of that work both up to 2010 and for a further 25 years. They maintained that all local authority housing landlords had been through the process and many had opted to ballot tenants on transferring the service to a not-for-profit organisation. CBC said there had been some 400 transfer ballots across the country in recent years.

They said the process was governed by strict guidelines laid down by the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) and monitored by DCLG, the Government Office for the South East (GOSE), the Housing Corporation and independent tenants' advisors (ITA). CBC pointed out that the Government's guidelines made clear that tenants should be consulted at every stage of the process and that they should receive fair, accurate and regular information. CBC said they were confident that all the material it produced on housing transfer consultation was in line with the national guidelines set by DCLG.

1. CBC said the £60m figure represented the cost of meeting the minimum standard of the DHS, as defined by independent surveyors and included the costs of ensuring decent homes and the costs of other essential works, which the landlord would have to carry out. CBC maintained Government guidance stated that local authorities had to include the costs of components that did not fail the DHS but still required attention. They pointed out that, in the front-page article of the newsletter, Council Leader Bob Lanzer was quoted as stating: "The extra investment the transfer would bring ... means that Homes For Crawley could maintain the current housing service, bring homes up to a modern standard and keep them that way for the future." CBC said the £60 million figure was the figure produced by the Council's financial consultants in agreement with the Council and based on an independent stock condition survey. They said the figures were accepted by GOSE and the ITA. CBC also sent information from their surveyors on the cost of meeting the DHS, which indicated that the only practical and sustainable way of meeting DHS was to invest beyond the notional minimum standard.

2. & 3. CBC said literature produced by groups that opposed transfer had not undergone the same rigorous checks that their material had. They maintained that, for that reason, the ad encouraged tenants to seek independent advice if they were confused by conflicting messages. CBC maintained that the reason for including the warning about anti-transfer literature was that Defend Council Housing frequently produced literature in areas where transfer ballots were taking place. They said their aim was to pre-empt any such activity. CBC sent copies of Crawley DCH material along with their responses highlighting what they considered were inaccuracies and points of misleadingness. They pointed out that the statements in the ads were approved by their lawyers, the Independent Advisor, Government Office and the Housing Corporation. CBC sent a copy of some anti-transfer material distributed prior to a transfer ballot in the Sefton area which they considered misleading and threatening.

4. CBC said at no point in the DVD was it stated that Homes for Crawley would not have to repay any money borrowed, including interest, from rents collected.

Assessment

1. Upheld

The ASA understood that the DHS was a minimum standard to which all social housing landlords had to ensure their stock complied by 2010. We noted government guidance stated that the DHS was a level "that triggers action, not one to which work is necessarily carried out." We also noted the complainant sent a letter from the Audit Commission in response to a separate complaint he had made to them. The Audit Commission stated, in that letter, that it was their opinion that the figure quoted by CBC was inclusive of the cost of works beyond the minimum required by the DHS. Although we noted the information from CBC's surveyor, we considered that the newsletter claims were likely to be seen by readers to imply that the £60m claimed was the basic minimum cost of meeting the DHS. Because the newsletter did not make clear that the £60m quoted included expenditure that went beyond the notional level of the DHS in order to make the investment practical and sustainable we concluded that the claim was likely to mislead.

On this point, the newsletter breached CAP Code clauses 3.1 (Substantiation) and 7.1 (Truthfulness)

2. Upheld

Although we noted the DVD did not refer specifically to DCH, we noted it featured a prominent scene of a DCH leaflet being delivered. We understood that Crawley DCH, although affiliated to the wider network of DCH, was an independent group and was responsible fully for the information distributed in the Crawley area. We considered that the claim was likely to lead readers to believe anti-transfer material produced by Crawley DCH was in some way inaccurate, misleading and even threatening.

We noted the Crawley DCH material that CBC sent along with details of what they believed were inaccuracies and points of misleadingness. Although the CBC pointed to several areas of Crawley DCH's material that they considered to be inaccurate, we considered that they had not adequately substantiated that Crawley DCHs material was inaccurate or misleading. Specifically, we considered that they had not demonstrated that any of Crawley DCH's material was threatening. We therefore concluded that the claim was misleading and unfairly denigrated Crawley DCH.

On this point, the DVD breached CAP Code clauses 3.1 (Substantiation), 7.1 (Truthfulness) and 20.1 (Denigration & unfair advantage).

3. Not upheld

We noted the claim in the newsletter stated "it could be misleading or inaccurate" and did not name a specific group. We considered that the claim would be seen merely to highlight that the material distributed to groups opposed to the Council transfer "could" be misleading or inaccurate as it did not have to go through the same checking procedure Council material went through. We concluded that the claim was unlikely to mislead or be seen as denigratory.

We investigated the newsletter under CAP Code clauses 3.1 (Substantiation), 7.1 (Truthfulness) and 20.1 (denigration & unfair advantage) but did not find it in breach.

4. Not upheld

We noted the DVD stated that the requirement for CBC to give £10m of their rental revenues to central government would not apply to Homes for Crawley. We considered that most people were likely to see the claim as highlighting the difference between the CBC controlled system and the proposed Homes for Crawley system. We noted the ad stated that Homes for Crawley would be able to borrow money to fund improvements to its housing stock. We considered that, although the loans would have to be repaid, the rental revenue used to service any loans were ultimately being used to finance improvements to homes and services. We also considered that readers would realise that borrowed money had to be repaid. We concluded that the claim was unlikely to mislead.

We investigated the DVD under CAP Code clauses 3.1 (Substantiation) and 7.1 (Truthfulness) but did not find it in breach.

Action

On point 1, we told CBC to amend the claim to clarify how much of £60m related to the DHS.

On point 2, we told CBC not to repeat the claims.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Non-broadcast)