HOUSING ASSOCIATION SACKS EMPLOYEE FOR JOINING POLITICAL PARTY

Hightown Housing Association appears to be the latest publicly funded organisation to display a flagrant abuse of institutional power, leading to a charge of a potential breach of the government's regulatory standards, for which official guidance includes, "[housing associations must] make best use of their resources to deliver what they are required to as landlords".

For a social housing provider to fulfil the requirement to "make best use of their resources", their pre-eminent goal should be to lead, manage and care for their workers first: they are the organisation's most valuable "resource".

Hightown, which also is a registered charity, cites among its values, "We want to create environments where differences are celebrated, where staff feel supported and where everyone is valued and respected."

Surely, if "everyone is valued and respected", then that must mean "everyone".

However, it appears that not all are valued and respected. The company sacked one of their employees because he supported a political party, Reform, while being happy for other workers to be Labour party members or supporters. The Free Speech Union is taking up his case.

This story is regrettable, not only because of the distress caused the sacked employee; not only because it reveals that the housing sector (and possibly those civil servants paid to regulate it), boards and senior executives may have been infected by the "woke mind virus" and disingenuously are propagating left-wing, cultural Marxist ideology.

It is particularly serious because social housing providers are accountable for providing homes and neighbourhoods for some of Britain's poorest and disadvantaged people.

It is egregious that taxpayer-funded bodies make the new religion of "diversity, equity and inclusion" ("DEI") their priority; and that they operate, not on on merit, but willingness to worship at these shrines.

As long as they do this they will not be viewing tenants' wellbeing as the fundamental reason for their existence.

And a regulator that permits this distortion of governance and service delivery is not fit-for-purpose.

While the hypocrisy of such actions against employees who do not sign up to the woke/DEI agenda is appalling, this reveals a cognitive dissonance that, in my experience, exposes that boards and senior executives (aided and abetted by the approach of the social housing regulator) are incompetent in responding to the needs of tenants and communities.

I believe we need a major investigation into the regulator, consultants and various figures at the top of the sector to enable us to get social housing doing what it needs to.

See the full story here: Saba Poursaeedi - I lost my job because I was a Reform UK candidate