“No one can listen to our calls?” a manager from Clarion, the UK’s largest housing association, asks one of her team on a recording that has been leaked to Sky News.
“Don’t tell anyone I told you this,” she goes on – before instructing him how to pretend he’s put up an important fire safety notice in one of their buildings.
“Just put it up on a plain bit of wall … take a picture,” she says, telling him that she’ll “come and find” him if it turns out she can’t trust him.
She brags about her management style. “I’m trying to help you hit your targets,” she says – adding: “My team is always on point, we always meet our targets.”
The recording will add to fears of residents of social housing that their safety is not taken seriously by landlords.
The conversation took place in 2022. It was reported to Clarion’s HR team in September 2023. However, an investigation only began in September 2024 when the recording was sent to Clarion management.
The manager involved was only sacked this summer – almost two years after it was first raised with Clarion.
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A Clarion spokesperson told Sky News: “In 2023, our HR team received an email from a former employee raising concerns, but no supporting evidence was provided despite our request. When an audio recording was shared with us in September 2024, we immediately launched a full investigation, which led to the dismissal of a staff member.
“It is deeply regrettable that information was not shared sooner, as this would have enabled earlier action. Building safety remains our top priority across all Clarion homes.”
They added that their “investigation included interviews of all relevant team members to ensure this was an isolated incident”.
The fire safety notice being discussed in the recording was a poster advising residents who have disabilities or vulnerabilities to contact Clarion.
The need for a building owner to identify people who will need additional help in the event of a fire is part of compliance with new regulations introduced since the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017 killed 72 people.
Disabled and vulnerable residents must be identified so that a “person-centred fire risk assessment” can be drawn up by the fire brigade.
Those documents should then be stored in a box on the ground floor of high-rise buildings so firefighters can easily access them in an emergency.
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Arnold Tarling, a chartered surveyor, says the consequence of the information not being available in the event of a fire could be “death or serious injury”.
However, he says he isn’t surprised by the recording we have obtained. He believes cutting corners on fire safety “will be industry-wide” for several reasons.
“Money saving, couldn’t care less, lessons haven’t been learned, ‘it won’t happen to me,'” he says, describing an attitude he says he encounters across the housing sector.
He believes there needs to be stricter enforcement but also says workers in the industry must be prepared to call out wrongdoing.
“The fire brigade, the building safety regulator, whoever it is, needs to check, do spot checks and enforce. But when you’ve got a file which has been faked, how do you know that it’s been faked? So these issues will just simply slip through and won’t get corrected,” he warns.
‘Those in power don’t care enough’
Edward Daffarn, who survived the Grenfell fire, told Sky News that complacency about fire safety “is actually a widespread problem that still prevails”.
“I stood underneath the burning carcass of Grenfell in the days after the fire and I was absolutely convinced that it would be the catalyst for societal change,” he said.
However, more than eight years on, a new competence and conduct standard for social housing is yet to come into force and will not be fully implemented for another three to four years.
“The only conclusion I can come to is that those in power, those people who have the power to make the change necessary, really don’t care enough about people that live in social housing,” Mr Daffarn claimed.
Clarion central to government’s housing plans
As a major home builder Clarion will be one of the companies needed if the government is to deliver its ambitious target of 1.5 million new homes by the end of this parliament.
Housing campaigner Kwajo Tweneboa told Sky News: “I do worry about the fact that they are going to be in charge of housing thousands of more people up and down the country.
“They are also my landlords and it’s an absolute disgrace that five years into me campaigning, there’s still situations like this.”
A company spokesperson said: “Clarion continues to invest heavily in maintaining and improving our homes, and as a strategic partner of Homes England we are committed to playing our part in building safe, affordable homes that help tackle the housing crisis and give people a place they can call home.”
A Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government spokesperson said: “These allegations show a total disregard of vulnerable people whose lives and safety depend on strict fire safety laws.
“We are tackling the poor treatment of social housing tenants using lessons learned from the Grenfell Tower tragedy, so it can never happen again.
“Those breaking the law can already face prosecution for criminal offences including prison sentences and we’re introducing new laws so that residential personal emergency evacuation plans are required for all high-rise homes – with funding to help social landlords provide these for tenants – and ensure staff managing social housing have the skills and training to keep residents safe.”
