Life at the sharp end

Sustainable communities need sustainable service providers – and that means attracting and retaining good-quality people at all levels. But the sector is already struggling to fill places.

One reason is the sector's blame culture; as party politicians, council members know the score. Not so the workers and members keen to contribute to society but innocent of the stress levels that go with the turf. People working at the sharp end of housing – whether in arm's-length management organisations, housing associations or PFI companies – face a barrage of criticism.

One of the biggest sources of stress is shock-jockey politicians who see boards as forums for point-scoring – and board members and workers who get caught in the cross-fire as collateral damage.

But tenants, of course, are the main source of complaints. While most complaints are legitimate, people increasingly feel free to make virulent, vague allegations, and even get on the internet to broadcast their slurs.

What protection is there against tenant slurs? Action for libel? Workers may want to stop the smears, but in libel actions it is difficult to get an injunction if the defamer confirms that they will defend any action, particularly using the defences of "qualified privilege" or "fair comment". These defences are not open to anybody proved to be acting maliciously, but at the injunction stage that may be difficult to prove.

For the politicos who slag off board members and housing officers, injunctions will also be difficult: the defendants have been democratically elected, so their public interest defences will be tough to disprove.

The main source of complaints is tenants: people increasingly feel free to make virulent, vague allegations

However, there are ways to get around these defences. If the defamer is using a website, a threat of action against the server hosting the site usually has an immediate close-down effect. If the libels are coming from someone who holds office in an organisation, a letter to every member of that body threatening defamation action, and asking if the member authorised those allegations, may have a salutary effect. So, too, a letter to a politician's central office asking if the allegations were approbated by the party could produce results.

If the defamer is using his or her home to smear workers of the landlord, look at the nuisance/annoyance clause in the tenancy agreement. Older agreements refer to nuisance/annoyance to the landlord, while newer agreements omit the landlord and refer to employees. Older agreements would cover board members, but newer ones probably not – unless members were paid.

It's unlikely, though, that nuisance, annoyance or antisocial behaviour clauses could be used at all. Articles of the Human Rights Act dealing with privacy in the home and freedom of speech respectively would have to be overcome, as well as the Tenants' Charter and the Unfair Terms Regulations.

So far, so gloomy – but come on down the 1997 Protection from Harassment Act (anti-stalking). Section 3 gives a civil remedy (where the test is the balance of probability), with injunctions available on standard terms. But what is harassment? Once is not enough; there have to be repeated actions which include conduct alarming or causing distress to persons, or which any reasonable person would think amounted to harassment. If someone has a genuine complaint, they can put it in moderate language to the board or any regulator, or take legal action. Going beyond that enables those abused to use the act, and clause 3 allows, where an injunction has been given, the arrest of the abuser if they persist.

Regulators that have mandatory powers over providers but seem subject to few constraints can also raise the blood pressure of housing workers. The ombudsmen have startling powers to award compensation and order contractual rights to be ignored. No one denies the need for bodies which can monitor performance and remedy mistakes. But many feel, including lawyers, that too many investigations are carried out and managed by people who have little practical experience of the sector.