#HousingDay 2016 (A view)

 

Today is "#HousingDay 2016" a day that "celebrates positive impact of social housing on thousands of people across the UK. Stories by #ukhousing landlords, staff & #proudtenant".

While I think this is a really good idea to challenge negative stereotypes about social housing and drew attention to its positive impact, there is a national housing crisis across all tenures - with unaffordable, poor quality and insecure tenancies in the private and social sector. Sky high property prices in many parts of the country also means that buying a home for many people is just never going to happen.

This is not actually a "housing" problem - it is a political problem. We need a political will to build more homes of all tenures.  If you increase supply you will bring down house prices and rents.

We need to move away from paying the mortgages of buy to let landlords with housing benefit and instead using this money to subsidise the rent of new build rented and shared ownership property.

There needs to be a democratising of housing for all. Most leasehold arrangements are feudal and allow freeholders to rip off leaseholders.

There is no real voice for tenants and residents associations any more in many parts of the country.

Many housing associations and councils are "mates clubs" and "union busters", run for the benefit of their executive and senior management with no accountability or respect for their residents or their staff.

Things can change. It doesn't have to be the way it is now. Maybe lets turn next years "Housing Day" into a national campaigning day, demanding access to truly affordable, well run, secure and good quality housing for everyone.

Things are so dire for so many people that we need a revolt rather than a celebration.

Action For Children - "Well run charties do not treat their staff with contempt"

UNISON General Secretary, Dave Prentice, attacks the Charity "Action For Children" after 73.5% of members vote for strike action.

Believe me, for Charity workers to vote this way must mean that they are being treated with complete and utter disdain by their senior management.

Is it right that the CEO of this Charity is paid nearly £164,000 per year when they haven't yet implemented a Living Wage policy for all staff?

The unfairness of senior managers giving themselves pay rises (don't believe the guff about "benchmarking") while cutting the real pay of their junior staff, year in and year out, sticks in the gullet of members, who are passionate for their jobs but simply can't afford to live on the money they get.

It is especially damning when you have a Children's charity whose staff struggle to earn enough to  feed and clothe their own children adquately .

If you look at their accounts (see above for 2015) you will see the number of highly paid jobs paying between £60,000 per year and £160,000 per year has jumped to 46.  In 2013 there was "only" 26. 

Charities are under pressure not only for having maverick Chief Executives and for unethical fund raising but also for being too often run as a senior management's "mates' club".  When, and if, they trouble themselves to consider their employees, the attitude is, "as long as I'm alright Jack, and sod the little people". 

Why Nationwide Building Society has some pretty rubbish governance

I spent today recovering from UNISON conference and trying to catch up on my post and emails.

I was completely ticked off when I responded to the ballot papers I had received while away for the Nationwide AGM next month. This is the biggest mutually owned building society in the world with some 14 million members.

The candidates for election or re-election to its Board appear to be entirely white, but only 2 of them are women. There are no employee or member representatives on the Board and as far as I can see in a move reminiscent of North Korea, only "approved" candidates had been allowed to stand and fill positions. I pointed out on the Nationwide AGM survey and twitter that they appear to have "a white middle class mates club" running this hugely important mutually owned organisation,

There appears to be 13 directors on the Board but only photos of 11 on the website. So I am unclear about the diversity of the entire Board.

Elsewhere in the annual report they claim that they expect by July 2015 to have 25% of women on Board and "33% of the entire director population (divisional directors and above) to be female and 8–15% of the entire director population to be Black Asian Minority Ethnic (BAME) by 2020".  Which until they explain more about divisional directors is entirely meaningless and would I think suggest that they can fulfill their target on "BAME" by only including less senior staff.

The final thing that drove up the blood pressure was reading the report on director remuneration (which was largely complete gobbledygook) and seeing that  the CEO's total pay had gone up from £2,571,000 in 2013/2014 to an unbelievable £3,278,000 in 2014/2015. An increase of over £700,000 in one year. Since 2009/10 it has over doubled from £1,539,000

This is just shocking and really disappointing. I have been a member of the Nationwide since a child. I hope that other members will like me vote against the annual report and the proposed directors (I withheld my vote on the female candidates).

What a mess the mutual movement is in when even the Nationwide acts as badly as their private sector counterparts.

Update: A member of the Building Societies Members Associations has pointed out that they have an article on their website here on Nationwide.

Financial Reporting Council "Why we are too lazy and owners too stupid to vote in pooled pension funds"

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) is a well known "mates club" of financial services industry representatives pretending to be a UK independent regulator on corporate governance and investment.

Top Finance blogger Tom P at "Labour and Capital" comments on the latest FRC report that dismisses attempts by pension schemes who invest in pooled funds to be able to vote on their shareholding.

As Tom points out there is no good reason for this not happening whatsoever. The only reasons I can see is that most (not all) asset managers are just too lazy to arrange this and think that asset owners are too stupid to be able to vote. 

I am also forced to conclude that the FRC doesn't want pesky share owners to be able to vote because they may have the blooming cheek to vote down their mates obscene (and growing) executive pay and other super generous perks.