On poor housing and what is a profession

A series of tragedies have placed a spotlight on the specialised skills required of those who manage social housing. But what does it mean to be a ‘professional’?

The Grenfell fire of June 2017, which killed 72 west London residents, and the tragic death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak in a housing association home in Rochdale in 2020 have led to a much-needed debate on the knowledge requirements and ethical standards that should be required of social housing managers.

The Grenfell residents lost their lives because their persistent and well-justified fire safety concerns were ignored by the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO). Awaab’s father had complained to Rochdale Boroughwide Housing about the damp and mould that infested his house three years before his son died. He was told to paint over it. And we should not forget the six victims of the wholly preventable Lakanhal House tower block fire, in 2009, whose landlord was Southwark Council.

The Social Housing Regulation Bill, tabled last year, will restore powers to the Regulator of Social Housing to enforce standards that had been weakened in 2010 by then housing minister, Grant Shapps. The bill has been consistently attacked by housing campaign, Grenfell United, as lacking in teeth. It was only a coroner’s damning verdict on Awaab’s death from a severe respiratory condition, published last November, that impelled housing secretary Michael Gove to introduce an amendment that has been called ‘Awaab’s law’. The coroner, Joanne Kearsley, warned that there is risk of future deaths occurring, unless action is taken.

The amendment will require a foundation degree, or level 5 qualification, for senior housing executives and a level 4 qualification for housing managers. It’s estimated that this will require 25,000 housing staff to go back to college, which represents a milestone for social housing management.

This positive move, which has been described as the biggest reform to professional standards in social housing’s history, is welcome, but it only goes half-way. It’s interesting here to compare the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) and the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH), as ‘professional’ bodies. Both have their roots in Victorian legislation. The forerunners of both had instituted their own systems examinations, administered by boards, by the early twentieth century. But that doesn’t make you a ‘true’ profession. Is estate agency a profession? Or journalism?

‘True’ professions

Long-established and acknowledged professions, such as the law, medicine and accountancy, require a body of knowledge and training and, also, occupational roles that are only available to individuals who are members of their professional body. In the UK the designation ‘chartered’ is regarded as benchmark of professionalism. An organisation can only confer that title on a practitioner if it has been granted a royal charter, placing it under the jurisdiction of the Privy Council.

The wheels of officialdom turn slowly. Neither the CIH nor the CIEH gained their royal charters until the 1980s and it was a further decade before the CIEH offered chartered status to its members.

Members of its precursor, the Sanitary Inspectors’ Association, had been discussing the desirability of professional recognition virtually since the beginning of the association, in 1883. In November 1912, a reader, JC Dawes, wrote to the Sanitary Journal calling for professional status for practitioners of ‘sanitary science’. The journal’s editor, HH Spears, responded, somewhat sarcastically: “It will be very useful for the public health worker of the future to know that they are in the vanguard of science, when they are fumigating a room with fire and sulphur, or spraying disinfectant, when removing fever patients to hospital, or working a smoke machine to test drains.”

Spears continued: “All talk about science is so much flapdoodle when applied to the sanitary inspector. However great a scientist he (sic) becomes, he will still be the eyes and nose of his superior officer.” Spears was acknowledging a structural issue that was to impede the professionalisation of environmental health until the 1970s. Legally, sanitary inspectors worked “under the direction” of medical officers of health, who were medically qualified and enjoyed superior salaries and legal status and security of tenure.

Link was broken

The First World War, in which many sanitary inspectors worked for the Royal Army Medical Corps, did not change this situation, nor did the creation of a health ministry in 1919. The link was finally broken in 1974, when medical officers of health transferred to a new employer, the NHS. But newly-christened and comprehensive environmental health services were shattered by severe cuts to public spending caused by oil crisis of the mid-1970s. Arguably, they have never recovered.

Housing managers, too, worked predominantly in local government for most of the twentieth century. While they were never managed by a professional cadre of superior status, working for local government has never attracted the cachet enjoyed by those who practice the law or medicine, even though a commonality is the fundamental and life-saving nature of these occupations.

For housing this may have contributed to the deaths of the Grenfell residents and Awaab Ishak, who was born in a damp and mould-infested house and who never had a chance to be healthy. Members of professions have clout – they are respected and listened to. If they fail in their duties, they are demoted to civilian status, at a huge cost to salary and reputation. The well-paid managers of the Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) and the CEO of Rochdale Boroughwide Housing, who has since been dismissed, did not risk shame and stigma if they ignored the repeated pleas to be noticed of those lives they were responsible for.

I said earlier that that the requirement for the training of housing managers only goes half-way to what is required. Why? The law stipulates qualifications for housing managers, but it won’t require registration with a professional body, as is the case for solicitors or medical professionals, who can be struck off or suspended for misconduct. Neither housing nor environmental health, which are both now practised in all sectors, will enjoy true professional status until this step is reached.

It may never happen. The reasons are embedded in social attitudes as much as legislation. Housing and environmental health have their professional roots in local government which has been battered by cuts for decades. Neither body has a swanky set of oak-panelled rooms in Westminster – a repository of its intellectual capital and iconic objects.

And neither has a library. The CIEH disposed of its once-cherished library in 2017. Such matters may seem trivial. But tradition and a sense of shared history are actually essential to any profession. For an organisation whose members are vital to public health, you lose them at your peril.

This blog is posted on the RHE Global website

Will Hatchett has been a journalist since 1986. He was editor of Environmental Health News from 1998 until 2018. The views expressed here are purely his own.

Photo: Armley, Wikimedia Commons, John Casewell