GreenSquareAccord - Judgment Day

Written by Ben Jenkins

Before I say anything else, I want to thank Ruth Cooke and GreenSquareAccord. My experiences as a resident over the past decade have given me a purpose and a voice I never knew I had. My GreenSquareAccord Residents Support site is where that journey began. That work has grown into my own Housing Sector platform and the work I now do as a housing campaigner.

I never expected any of this when I first started speaking up about problems in my home, including a basement leak and a broken lift. Both still affect us regularly to this day. While I have grown as a person, GreenSquareAccord has continued to fail despite repeated staff changes and senior leadership shake-ups.

Good governance and proper oversight aren’t nice-to-haves; they’re essential. This judgement has been a long time coming, and I’m glad it has finally arrived. On with the story.

Regulator says weak governance and financial resilience now put the landlord’s long-term viability and social homes at risk. The organisation says services will continue as normal, while residents and campaigners point to a much longer record of poor service and unanswered concerns.

GreenSquareAccord has been downgraded to G3 for governance and V3 for financial viability after the Regulator of Social Housing found that the organisation had failed to address weaknesses that had been identified repeatedly since its 2021 merger. For residents who have been recording the same themes for years, the judgement feels less like the arrival of new information than formal recognition of a long-running pattern.

The regulator’s judgement is unusually direct. It says merger-related challenges remain, that actions taken over the past five years have had limited effectiveness, and that the landlord has not shown the board is receiving reliable information or challenging key risks consistently. It also says the organisation relies heavily on selling social homes to maintain cash flow and financial sustainability.

The downgrade does not, on its own, amount to a new judgement on the quality of repairs or other consumer services. The regulator left GreenSquareAccord’s existing C2 consumer grade unchanged because the latest investigation focused on governance and financial viability. But C2 is not a clean bill of health. The regulator’s 2025 inspection had already identified weaknesses in service delivery, overdue repair work and relatively high complaint levels.

That distinction matters when the organisation tells customers that “this judgement is not about the safety of their homes” and that “services will continue as normal”. The first statement describes the scope of this particular investigation. The second offers reassurance, but no timetable, service recovery measures or explanation of what residents experiencing poor service should expect next.

For many residents, the question is not whether services will continue. It is whether the service they have received for years is acceptable as normal.

What the regulator found

GreenSquareAccord manages around 25,500 social homes across 36 local authority areas. It employs the equivalent of about 1,500 full-time staff and reported turnover of £209 million for the year to March 2026.

The regulator downgraded governance from G2 to G3 and viability from V2 to V3. In its grading system, G3 and V3 indicate that the provider does not meet the relevant requirements and that serious regulatory concerns exist. GreenSquareAccord is working with the regulator to improve its position.

The governance findings include weak financial risk management, poor forecasting, repeated failures to meet budgets and insufficient assurance that risks were identified, monitored and mitigated in time. The regulator found significant weaknesses in information quality, systems and internal controls. GreenSquareAccord still relies on multiple systems that are not integrated, manual processes and labour-intensive workarounds. The board, the regulator said, was not consistently receiving information that supported effective, risk-based decisions.

The regulator also found that the board had commissioned external reviews and knew about the problems, but that there was insufficient evidence of consistent and effective challenge over key strategic and financial risks. Its conclusion was that GreenSquareAccord was not being managed with the skill, diligence, effectiveness, prudence and foresight required by the standard.

The recovery and transformation programmes now being put in place remain at an early stage. The regulator said there was not yet enough evidence that they had produced lasting improvements. This is a central point. The judgement does not say that no action has been taken. It says that the organisation has not demonstrated that its plans have fixed the underlying causes or delivered sustainable change.

The financial judgement is equally serious. GreenSquareAccord remains within its lender covenants, but the regulator says that continued compliance depends on significant property disposals, cost reductions and transformation programmes. The organisation has a history of weak financial performance, financial losses, weak interest cover, poor forecasting accuracy and repeated failures to meet budget targets. Performance deteriorated materially in the year to March 2026 despite mitigation measures approved by the board.

Most starkly, the regulator says GreenSquareAccord’s business plan relies heavily on selling social homes to maintain cash flow, support liquidity and deliver long-term financial sustainability. The plan will result in a lower number of social homes. Further options to manage adverse financial scenarios include additional disposals and reductions in repairs and maintenance expenditure.

That is not the same as saying that every home sale is being made to cover a particular service failure. GreenSquareAccord says proceeds from strategic disposals will be reinvested in existing homes and future investment programmes. But the regulator’s finding is clear that the organisation’s long-term viability now depends on high levels of asset sales and savings, and that the plan may reduce the stock available to social housing tenants. Any further reduction in repairs and maintenance would be felt directly by residents.

A merger whose problems remain unresolved

GreenSquareAccord was formed in April 2021 when GreenSquare Group merged with Accord Housing Association. The merger was presented publicly as a way to create a stronger organisation, improve local services and expand the supply of affordable homes. The same jargon is rolled out every time a failing housing association is taken over by a larger organisation that appears, on paper at least, to be stable, financially viable and successful.

The latest judgement does not use the phrase “failed merger”, although I have on multiple occasions. It does, however, say that challenges arising from the merger remain and that actions taken to address underlying issues over five years have had limited effectiveness. It describes an organisation still working across unintegrated systems, manual processes and workarounds, with continuing weaknesses in information and control. Those are not peripheral integration problems. They go to whether the board can understand performance, manage risk and make sound decisions.

The early record was already difficult. Shortly after the merger, GreenSquareAccord reported that due diligence had uncovered serious health and safety compliance gaps in homes formerly owned and managed by Accord. The regulator’s 2021 notice concerned fire, electrical and asbestos safety. The Regulator’s later review said hundreds of properties did not have current fire risk assessments, some had never had one, more than 10,000 had never had an electrical inspection and no asbestos surveys had been carried out in communal areas. The regulator said the failings created a risk of serious harm to tenants.

GreenSquareAccord self-referred the issue and began a recovery programme. In 2023 it regained a G1 governance grade after the regulator said it had strengthened its governance and compliance framework and had robust, reliable and up-to-date data. The Housing Ombudsman’s 2024 report recorded that progress and said the building compliance issues uncovered after the merger had been addressed, while setting out the compliance figures supplied at that time.

That history makes the 2026 downgrade more than a sudden financial shock. The organisation moved from a G1 rating in 2023 to G2 in 2025 and now G3 in 2026. Its viability rating moved from V2 to V3. The latest findings return to familiar themes of weak information, control and oversight, while the regulator says that the underlying merger challenges have not been resolved effectively.

The record does not prove that merging was inherently the wrong decision. It does raise a sharper question about whether the promised benefits were ever delivered, whether the risks were understood and managed, and why the same organisation has returned to serious regulatory concern after previously assuring the regulator that its systems and governance had been strengthened.

Residents were recording service problems before the regulator’s latest warning

The regulatory story is also a resident story. The GreenSquareAccord Residents Support site, which I started in 2021, after Ruth Cooke instructed her team to put a communication ban in place against me, including telling me not to mention her in hashtags. She was well aware of what was happening. This would later lead to not one, but two failed court actions and my arrest by police. I believe there is strong reason to say these actions were taken at Ruth Cooke’s request. Even if she wasn’t the driving force behind every step, she knew what was going on and did nothing to stop it. I suspect she was the driving force. After all, the buck must stop at the top.

It followed years of trying to get repairs, safety and communication issues addressed and to give other residents a place to share their experiences. 

The site’s public archive includes records of a failing lift and major basement leak raised in 2019, repeated concerns about security, fire safety and communication, and correspondence with senior staff before the merger. In an April 2019 response, a senior customer services manager acknowledged that the service I and my neighbours had received had fallen short of what we should expect. In 2020, Ruth Cooke responded to concerns about repairs, leaks, lifts, electrical issues, CCTV and safety. She acknowledged that GreenSquare did not always get things right and referred to inspections and planned works.

Those records do not establish that every later failure was inevitable or that the problems in one building represented every GreenSquare or Accord home. They do show that residents were raising persistent concerns about service, safety and communication before the merger and throughout the years in which the organisation said it was changing.

The archive documents issues such as access and security problems that residents said had continued for years, windows and doors first raised in 2019 and still unresolved after commitments made in 2020 and consultation in 2021, delays in repairs and communication, sewage and drainage problems, lift faults and fire alarm concerns. Some posts also record improvements or acknowledgements by GreenSquareAccord. The record is not one-sided. It shows the gaps between commitments, residents’ experience and the eventual response.

That is why the regulator’s observation that the landlord has taken action after problems occur but has not shown it has addressed root causes resonates with the resident record. A campaigner’s website is not a substitute for a regulator’s assessment, and its reports should be read as residents’ evidence and commentary. But the dates, correspondence and repeated issues are part of the public record. They make it harder to treat the latest downgrade as a problem that appeared without warning.

The Ombudsman had already identified recurring failure

The Housing Ombudsman’s special report on GreenSquareAccord, published in October 2024, followed an investigation into whether there were systemic failures. The investigation began after six findings of severe maladministration across three determinations relating to cases from 2018 to 2021. The Ombudsman said the cases reflected failures by the landlord to fulfil its responsibilities and caused detriment to residents.

The Ombudsman then examined 30 cases determined between August 2023 and February 2024. The cases related mainly to events between March 2020 and January 2023. It identified recurring problems in complaint handling, compensation, policies and procedures, governance and repairs. In the reviewed cases, maladministration was found in 93 per cent of complaint-handling findings and 79 per cent of property-condition findings. These figures describe findings in the Ombudsman’s selected case sample, not the proportion of all GSA complaints or homes affected.

One important finding concerned the old “resolve” stage in GreenSquareAccord’s complaint process. Residents could be kept in an informal step before a complaint entered the formal stages. The Ombudsman said the extra step lengthened the process, confused residents and delayed escalation. It also distorted the organisation’s complaint reporting. In 2022 to 2023, GreenSquareAccord recorded 4,694 expressions of dissatisfaction, but 3,402 were closed at the resolve stage and only 1,292 progressed to the formal stage the landlord counted as a complaint. The Ombudsman said the figures reported since the merger did not accurately reflect the volume of complaints handled.

The report also found examples of delayed or blocked escalation, repeated stage-one replies instead of independent review, weak record keeping, policies that were outdated or missing, and compensation offers that did not adequately reflect residents’ experience. In the cases reviewed, the Ombudsman ordered more than three times as much compensation as GreenSquareAccord had offered.

There is relevant balance in the same report. The Ombudsman said GreenSquareAccord had engaged extensively, had proactively begun improvements and had made changes to its strategy, policies and governance. It noted that there had been no severe maladministration findings since August 2023 and that the cases considered predated the new strategy. The Ombudsman commended the organisation’s engagement with its investigation. That progress should be acknowledged. It does not erase the findings or answer whether improvements have been embedded across the organisation.

GreenSquareAccord’s own 2025-26 complaint report provides a more recent picture. It reports that 77 per cent of stage-one complaints were fully or partially upheld, down from 85 per cent the year before. The organisation says this shows improvement, while acknowledging that too many residents still experience service failures, particularly in property services and communication. Its report says 53.1 per cent of complaints in the last three months of the year concerned Property Services, and that delays and service failures made up nearly three-quarters of those cases. It also records two severe maladministration findings by the Housing Ombudsman during the year, both arising from property issues.

The report says the Housing Ombudsman’s maladministration rate fell to 44.8 per cent in 2025-26 from 51 per cent in 2024-25. That is progress by the landlord’s own measure and should be reported. It sits alongside the continuing volume of upheld complaints and the regulator’s finding that high complaint levels reflect the need for better tenant outcomes. The question is whether the improvement is now durable and reaches residents whose repairs and communication problems have not been resolved.

Even this achievement was clouded. Complaints fell after GSA took a range of steps, yet the result was later credited to The Trials of Mrs Tranter, a training package marketed by Steve Hayes through Creative Bridge. The package was sold to other not-for-profits on claims that had not been independently verified. It won four Golds at the Communicate ICEA awards, became an IoIC finalist and was runner-up at the Institute of Leadership awards. Award organisers later confirmed they had not checked whether the claims behind the entries were accurate. This is the kind of damage GSA has done to trust across the wider sector.

Michael Gove’s letter was already a public warning

In December 2023, then Secretary of State Michael Gove wrote directly to Ruth Cooke after the Housing Ombudsman had made six findings of severe maladministration and begun its special investigation. Gove described the findings as “quite simply appalling” and wrote that GreenSquareAccord had “failed your residents”.

He outlined cases involving a pest infestation that had gone untreated for years, a vulnerable resident whose noise complaint took seven months to receive a response, and a resident who moved into a home with multiple repair problems, including a faulty boiler and outstanding roof repairs. He identified common failings in excessive delay, poor communication, poor record keeping and a failure to follow the landlord’s own policies. He said he expected the organisation’s changes to improve service and that he would take a personal interest in the Ombudsman’s investigation.

The letter matters because it shows that concerns about leadership, complaints, records and resident treatment had reached the most senior level of government. It was not a private disagreement or a campaigner’s description alone. It was a public warning from the Secretary of State, based on the Ombudsman’s findings.

I never thought I’d find myself agreeing with Michael Gove. Perhaps we can write this off as the one and only time this strange event will happen. If it happens again, I fear the seas may boil and the stars may fall from the sky.

The question now is what happened after that warning. Which commitments were tracked, who checked that they worked for residents and what did the board do when the same broad concerns appeared again in the regulator’s 2026 judgement?

“Services will continue as normal” is not a recovery plan

GreenSquareAccord’s public response says it accepts the regulator’s findings, has made progress strengthening governance and financial oversight, and has a clear plan for further improvement. Ruth Cooke also says the judgement is not about the safety of residents’ homes and does not change the organisation’s commitment to safe, quality homes and services. The statement ends by saying GreenSquareAccord remains stable and services will continue as normal.

The regulator’s judgement does not reassess the consumer standards, so it would be wrong to present the G3 and V3 ratings as a new ruling on repairs or home safety. But the unchanged consumer grade is C2. In October 2025, the regulator said that C2 reflected weaknesses in safety and quality and transparency, influence and accountability. It described overdue and high-priority fire safety actions, a significant backlog of overdue repairs, relatively high complaint levels and a need to sustain better outcomes for residents.

The latest statement gives no public milestones for clearing overdue work, no resident-facing measures for whether response times are improving, and no detail about how the organisation will protect repairs and maintenance if its financial plan comes under further pressure. Telling residents that services will continue as normal may offer reassurance to some. To residents who say normal service has meant long delays and repeated chasing, it risks sounding like a promise that nothing will change.

Continuity is not the same as recovery. Residents need to know what will improve, by when, how progress will be measured and what happens if the promised improvement does not arrive. Agreeing deadlines is something the sector shies away from, just as it shies away from accountability. “Services will continue as normal” is not good enough. There must be dramatic change, and it cannot be led by the same people who brought us to this point.

The numbers behind the asset sales

GreenSquareAccord’s financial position cannot be reduced to a single headline figure. Its 2025-26 financial report recorded an operating surplus of £47.6 million, compared with £34 million the year before. The same report said the group completed 231 strategic housing disposals and that gains from those disposals helped offset strategic simplification costs. The company said proceeds would be reinvested in existing homes and future investment programmes.

Those reported figures do not cancel out the regulator’s concerns. The financial report also recorded a total comprehensive deficit of £0.3 million, with strategic simplification costs partly offset by £24.9 million in gains from property disposals. The regulator examined budget performance, financial losses, interest cover, forecasting and the organisation’s ability to meet costs over the long term. It concluded that the financial plan depends heavily on social home disposals and future savings, and that it could not be assured the planned improvements would be delivered. A reported operating surplus in one year can sit alongside long-term risk, particularly when property disposals and restructuring costs are part of the picture.

The issue is not whether a housing association should ever sell a home. Providers may dispose of homes that are uneconomic to maintain, unsuitable for current needs or part of an agreed asset strategy. The issue is whether sales are becoming a structural condition of financial survival, how many homes are involved, which communities will lose homes, and whether residents are being given clear reasons and meaningful support.

Internally, these may be labelled “units” or “stock”, but they are people’s homes and part of our communities. If, like me, you believe the home sits at the heart of a community, you can see how cancerous GSA’s approach to survival has become. And the treatment intended to fix the problem may prove more brutal than the disease itself.

This year alone, we’ve received several invitations to staircase and buy a larger share of our shared-ownership home. GSA may call it a unit, but it’s our home, one it has failed to maintain properly while our service charge keeps rising.

The regulator explicitly warns that further asset disposals and reductions in repairs and maintenance could be among the options used to manage adverse scenarios. That warning makes scrutiny of future sale plans essential. Residents should be able to see the numbers, the criteria for deciding which properties are sold, the expected effect on local stock and the ring-fencing of money for repairs and safety.

This year alone, we’ve received several invitations to staircase and buy a larger share of our shared-ownership home. GSA may call it a unit, but it’s our home, one it has failed to maintain properly while our service charge keeps rising.

Each time a letter arrives, my wife and I ask ourselves whether we really want to put more money into a relationship that is clearly failing. The cash injection may benefit GSA in the long run, but it is unlikely to benefit us.

The people who raised concerns were often left to do so alone

There is a second accountability story behind GreenSquareAccord’s downgrade. For years, residents and campaigners have raised issues that are now reflected in formal findings. Yet public support from parts of the sector has often been limited, even when private encouragement was offered.

I have sought help and support from organisations including the Chartered Institute of Housing and Four Million Homes. My experience is that the support I hoped would translate into public challenge often did not. I am not suggesting that these organisations were regulators or had the power to compel GreenSquareAccord to act. The question is what support they offered to residents raising well-evidenced concerns and whether the sector’s public commitment to resident voice was matched by visible action.

Subject access request material also gave me correspondence involving Matt Baird, a recruiter associated with the Social Housing Roundtable. I read that correspondence as distancing the organisation from my campaigning while exploring potential commercial work with GreenSquareAccord. That was difficult to reconcile with the support I had experienced from him in person. 

Big Picture Training told me in an email that it would not risk its livelihood by supporting me. Other people have privately expressed support on LinkedIn but have not wanted their names attached publicly. GreenSquareAccord employees have also spoken to me privately. I understand why staff may be reluctant to speak openly when their jobs and references are at stake. Their caution is understandable. The wider consequence is that residents can be left without public allies while the organisations with the greatest resources and institutional standing remain quiet.

I have also raised concerns with the National Housing Federation and its chief executive, Kate Henderson. The NHF is not a regulator, and it cannot decide a landlord’s regulatory grade. But it represents housing associations and speaks about standards, accountability and resident involvement across the sector. It should be asked what it knew about the concerns raised with it, how it responded and whether it considered any action appropriate.

The NHF announced on 5 October that Ruth Cooke had formally stood down from its board. That timing is notable because the regulator’s downgrade followed two days later. There is no public evidence that the board departure was connected to the judgement, and it should not be presented as such. The separate questions remain. What responsibility does the NHF believe its leaders carry when a member organisation faces years of serious concerns, and what does meaningful sector accountability look like when residents say they were ignored?

This is not a claim that every organisation named knew every detail or could have prevented the current position. It is a question about the sector’s response to warnings, the difference between private sympathy and public support, and the cost to residents when people with influence decide not to speak.

Legal pressure and the cost of speaking out

The history of the GreenSquareAccord Residents site also includes a legal dispute. GreenSquareAccord sought an injunction in 2023 over my campaigning and use of its logo. I offered a more limited undertaking than the one sought. The application was dismissed after that undertaking was given. GreenSquareAccord described the outcome publicly as a successful court action that would help customers contact it. When the organisation later alleged that I had breached the undertaking, the court dismissed the claim in August 2024 and ordered the costs to be borne by GreenSquareAccord. The judge confirmed that the undertaking did not require historic pages to be removed.

In November 2024, MP Siân Berry referred to my case during a House of Commons debate on strategic lawsuits against public participation. She described the legal threats and the dispute as an example of the pressures faced by a resident campaigner. That is a parliamentary account of the case, not a court ruling that GreenSquareAccord’s actions legally constituted a SLAPP. I have described the sequence as SLAPP-like because of its effect on a resident publisher trying to report matters of public concern. The label remains my characterisation, not a judicial finding. Although the label “SLAPP” has no legal bearing in itself, GreenSquareAccord’s actions against me were raised in a parliamentary debate about the use of strategic lawsuits against public participation.

This matters to the current story because independent resident scrutiny should be part of how a landlord learns about failures. If the people who document poor service face legal pressure, while sector bodies remain publicly silent, residents may lose one of the few routes they have to make patterns visible.

What happens to leadership now

Ruth Cooke has led GreenSquare since 2019 and continued as chief executive after the 2021 merger. She remains GreenSquareAccord’s chief executive. The latest judgement does not make a personal finding against her, and it is the board, not the regulator’s published grade, that will decide the organisation’s leadership arrangements.

There is an earlier chapter that should not be lost from this story. Howard Toplis was GreenSquare’s chief executive for six years and left in February 2019. The regulator’s notice that March said GreenSquare had failed to complete a large number of high-priority fire safety actions, alongside gas and lift safety concerns, and that tenants had faced an increased risk of danger from fire over a significant period. In June 2019, the regulator downgraded GreenSquare’s governance to G2 and reported a clear lack of leadership around health and safety. The public record establishes the timing and the findings, but does not explain why Toplis left. It would be wrong to say he was removed because of the notice. So whilst public record doesn’t explain why he left, we can only speculate and suggest that he fell on the proverbial sword.

Toplis was appointed chief executive of Welsh landlord Tai Calon in 2020. Tai Calon announced in 2024 that he would leave that August, and its 2024 ESG report describes his contribution as his final statement as chief executive. I understand he has since retired, although the cited public material confirms his departure rather than giving a reason for it. His move to a new chief executive role is part of the documented leadership history; it does not by itself show that his appointment was a reward or that he left GreenSquare because of the regulatory findings. The question for the sector is what accountability, if any, followed the 2019 episode.

The 2019 GreenSquare findings must also be kept separate from the safety failures identified after the 2021 merger. The Regulator says the later failures concerned homes formerly owned and managed by Accord, including hundreds without current fire risk assessments and more than 10,000 without an electrical inspection. Those were legacy Accord properties, and the published evidence does not attribute those specific failures to Toplis. While GreenSquare was the dominant partner and Board, it clearly had stock issues of its own. It would therefore be wrong to characterise Accord’s stock as the cause of all the problems and headaches.

We must all surely agree that the public is entitled to ask whether a chief executive can continue to lead an organisation after a further governance downgrade, a serious viability downgrade and a regulatory conclusion that the board has not consistently challenged key risks and that the organisation has not addressed root causes effectively. The answer should not be left to rumour or private briefings. The board should explain what accountability has been applied, what has changed at executive level and how it will judge whether the recovery plan is working.

The pattern raises a wider question about executive accountability in the housing sector. Residents should be able to see what responsibility leaders accepted, what consequences followed and what assurance boards require before appointing senior figures to new roles. The more immediate question is whether GreenSquareAccord’s board believes the current leadership has the confidence of residents and the regulator needed to deliver recovery.

The test from here

GreenSquareAccord says it accepts the regulator’s findings and will work with the regulator. The regulator says it will engage intensively and expects the board to consider all available options to secure long-term viability. A failure to respond positively could lead to further regulatory action.

Residents now need more than another strategy, review or programme. They need clear answers on how many homes will be sold, what happens to the proceeds, whether repairs and maintenance will be protected, how the organisation will address overdue work, and how the board will receive reliable information about residents’ outcomes.

They also need a way to see whether change is happening. That means regular, public reporting against specific measures, including repair backlogs and completion times, complaint response times, upheld complaints, repeat failures, safety actions and resident satisfaction. The measures should show outcomes across different services and places, not just a single organisation-wide number that can conceal local problems.

The latest downgrade is not proof that nothing has improved. The Housing Ombudsman recognised steps taken after its investigation, and GreenSquareAccord says it has begun new recovery work. But the regulator has now concluded that the improvement programmes have not yet demonstrated sustainable results, that merger challenges remain, and that the financial plan depends on selling homes and delivering savings that are not yet assured.

For residents who have spent years documenting the gap between promise and experience, the question is whether this time the findings will lead to lasting change. “Services will continue as normal” is not enough if normal has been a service residents have had to fight to receive.

Right of reply

We are sending right-of-reply requests to everyone named in this article wherever contact is possible. Given the timing, we have not been able to seek responses before publication and have decided to publish the story now. If responses arrive, we will publish them as an update, in full or in part at the respondent’s request.

Sources and further reading

Ben Jenkins
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