The Steve Hayes Way (AKA - Hayes-On-Why)

When a home is always personal, but a communications director makes their job personal too, the result is conflict. This blog explores how GreenSquareAccord’s Steve Hayes blurred the line between professionalism and vendetta — and why residents are left paying the price.

When a Job Become Personal…

At what point does a job stop being just a job and become something more personal? For most people working nine to five on minimum wage, the answer is simple: it doesn’t. The job is there to pay the bills, nothing more. You clock in, clock out, and leave it behind at the end of the day.

But as you move up the chain into management, and beyond, the dynamic begins to shift. Is middle management really that emotionally attached to their role? Or does it depend on whether emotional attachments are lacking in other areas of life? Where exactly is the line between professional responsibility and personal obsession? At what stage does criticism stop being taken as feedback and start being seen as a personal swipe or insult?

For residents, that question doesn’t even exist. A home is always personal. It’s never just a house. It’s not “stock,” it’s not bricks and mortar. It’s where we recoup, relax, love, eat, share and build memories, grow together. A home is security, comfort, and identity. Threaten that, and you threaten someone’s life at its very foundation. Of course residents will take that personally, and of course — they should!

This is where the contrast becomes striking. Take Steve Hayes, Communications Director at GreenSquareAccord. The first time I realised this had become personal for him was when I was speaking to ITV. They warned me: “You need to be careful of Steve Hayes — he has taken this personally. He is out to get you.”

And for what? For calling out things that are true. Let’s be absolutely clear: GreenSquareAccord have never taken me to court for libel. They have never sued me for slander. They have never shown any evidence that I am lying or making things up. They’ve been offered the right to reply, and they’ve refused to take it.

The Background…

The property I share with my wife is a shared ownership home with GreenSquareAccord. It has been our home for ten years. And although it suits GreenSquareAccord to deny my resident status there, it is my home. It’s where my wife and I wake up together, have breakfast, go about our daily routines. In the evening we sit, relax, eat, love, and laugh. It’s where we regain the strength we’ve lost during the day. When things are tough, it’s where we seek solace.

It’s a space for friends — where I cook meals when people come over, where we share company. It’s where I watch films with my niece, play video games with my godson. This isn’t some abstract concept. This is a tangible commodity, a real asset. It’s also security. The money we pay into it will one day, hopefully, go towards our retirement. Or, let’s be realistic, it may be needed to fund end-of-life care.

That’s not unique to me. For most families, a home is exactly this — personal, fundamental, and irreplaceable. So when residents speak out, it’s not about ticking boxes or filling in forms. It’s about protecting the very core of who we are: the foundations of our home.

But when things go wrong — and they inevitably do — GreenSquareAccord’s first instinct is not to listen, but to deflect. They’ll put out a polished post on social media. They’ll direct anyone complaining back into the customer service desk. The same desk then fires out a Pavlovian response, before the complaint disappears into a void of inaction. Residents are forced to chase, to pursue, to repeat themselves.

Customer comments left on Facebook.

Meanwhile, senior leadership are out on the conference circuit, telling rooms full of people how great they are, boasting of achievements, advising others on “best practice.” All while failing to deliver on the basics.

And here’s the crux: when you fail to support my home, that is not a professional misstep — it is a personal attack. Because it impacts me and my wife directly. And when we try to move beyond a customer service desk that can’t respond, when we call out GreenSquareAccord publicly, we are calling out the very work being mishandled by those who are also polishing their own professional reputations online.

If their careers are as important to them as they clearly believe, then we have to admit the truth: both sides are dealing with raw emotion. This is where it becomes personal.

The Other Perspective…

The role of communicator is a curious one. I recently had a conversation with a comms professional, trying to make sense of the dilemma I find myself in. The predicament, really, that both sides are locked into. The horns of the argument that neither of us seems willing to let go of.

Her response was simple: when you’re working in communications, you have to believe in what you put out. You can’t just churn out empty words — you have to believe the statements you make. And once you believe them, you become emotionally involved. You’ve invested yourself in the message. It’s not just corporate spin anymore. It becomes part of your own reputation.

When you put out a message, you trust it to be true, and you expect others to trust you in return. You build that trust with your audience. You lean on your credibility. That takes passion. It needs passion. But passion cuts both ways. It’s what turns criticism into vendettas.

And this is where the problem lies. Has Steve Hayes — along with his team of loyal communicators — become too emotionally invested? Too supportive of one another to push back? Has the narrative they’ve built overtaken their strategic sense? Has the story they’ve told themselves, and promoted so fiercely, blinded them to reality?

When you’ve tied your personal reputation so tightly to a professional message, any criticism must feel like a personal attack. And when someone like me calls out the spin, it lands like a jab at the core of who they are. It questions their belief system, their credibility, the trust they’ve worked so hard to build. If that trust crumbles, so does their reputation. And reputations are everything in the communications game.

But here’s the point: they don’t have the right to take it personally. This is professional accountability, not personal abuse. Yet Steve Hayes has become so entangled with his own PR narrative that he can no longer separate the two. He’s gone too far down the cul-de-sac he created to be able to turn around — he can’t turn back.

The Comms Promise…

To understand Steve Hayes’ position even more, it’s worth looking at his track record. His pitch to GreenSquareAccord at interview was (we can assume based upon his actions and previous LinkedIn descriptions) built around a key promise: to promote the reputation of GreenSquareAccord as a leading housing association and its senior leadership team as “serious thought leaders” within the housing sector.

As soon as he started, this effort became obvious. An incessant stream of posts and articles appeared, shared back and forth across industry publications. But for residents, these glossy headlines didn’t stack up against reality. They painted a picture of excellence that simply didn’t exist. It wasn’t just me saying so either. One early example, prompted by Hayes, saw Sophie Atkinson jump on what was dubbed the “Pink Bandwagon” during Pride Month. The post was swiftly and brutally called out by a member of the LGBTQ+ community as little more than pinkwashing.

Then came the awards. Residents like me quickly pointed out that these ceremonies aren’t organic recognition of achievement — they are funded events. You buy your table, you sponsor, you nominate yourself. The winners are less about merit and more about money. Yet Hayes leaned heavily into them. Alongside his colleague Laura Pickett, Head of Marketing and Communications, they treated themselves to nights out at residents’ expense. We paid for the travel, the food, the table, even the award itself. And how was this presented back to us? As celebration. As proof of success. Social media flooded with photos and statements designed to maintain an image that simply isn’t true.

The same can be said of the conference circuit. It’s not about substance, it’s about selling tickets. If your organisation is failing, why would anyone want to hear from you? The answer is simple: because you’ve got a chequebook and influence. And with Ruth Cooke’s ties to the National Housing Federation, the veneer of credibility was already built in.

But it doesn’t end there. Hayes has been ferocious in protecting this PR bubble. He’s actively blocked me, and others, from participating in events. And here’s the line he crossed: it might be one thing for a housing association to be cautious about a resident critic, but when a communications director starts proactively contacting third parties to shut down opportunities, you move onto dodgy ground — legally, ethically, and reputationally.

From there, things escalated. Copyright threats. Harassment allegations. An arrest. At every stage, the priority was silencing me rather than addressing what I was saying. But the harder the push, the stronger my case has become. I was forced to back up every claim with evidence: emails, internal letters, data, photographs, videos. Every piece was fact-checked by the likes of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, who scrutinised the lot before publishing. The evidence stood. It was later discussed in the House of Commons itself.

And that’s the difference. Hayes deals in words. He needs people to believe his spin. But I’m not relying on belief — I’m relying on cold, hard facts. My position isn’t built on carefully crafted narratives; it’s built on a bedrock of truth. That is why I can defend it. That is why it can stand up to parliamentary scrutiny. And that is why it’s so difficult for Steve Hayes to counter.

Both Sides…

So on one hand, you have me fighting first for myself and my wife. Then it extended to my neighbours. And now, as my platform has grown, I’m supporting more and more residents. Through the Housing Sector Podcast, I give a voice to leaseholders, shared owners, tenants, people living with disrepair, campaigners across the country. I provide a platform where they can speak freely about their battles — battles the sector continues to ignore while people like Steve Hayes promote a narrative that simply isn’t true.

For me, this isn’t about ego. It’s about fairness. But with Steve Hayes, it looks very different. As he now scrambles for his next job, his fight seems less about GreenSquareAccord and more about protecting his own reputation. Don’t take my word for it — Google his name. Type “Steve Hayes GreenSquareAccord” and see what comes up. What you’ll find is content written as a direct result of his own actions, and the organisation’s. A pattern of behaviour is there in black and white.

Now imagine you’re a housing association looking for a communications lead. Would you really want someone whose track record is tied so closely to reputational damage? Someone who, rather than showcasing achievements, will spend half the interview defending his own conduct against the published record of a so-called “disgruntled resident”? That’s a hard sell. It makes him a risk — and why would any employer want to take that risk?

That’s why I believe his latest efforts — striking YouTube content, citing “personal information” — aren’t about protecting Ruth Cooke, or GreenSquareAccord, or even the colleagues he once shielded. They’re about protecting himself. The surface has been scratched away. The trust is broken. By his own hand, Hayes has shown he can’t be relied upon to tell the truth.

To this day Steve Hayes attempts to have content removed from YouTube

And here’s the irony: the damage is already done. The impact on residents remains. The tactics are unchanged. But even GreenSquareAccord now appear to be distancing themselves. In their Stage One response to my complaint, they made it clear Hayes’ actions were his own. Why? Because they can sense the scent of legal trouble in the air. And when that comes, no one wants to be standing too close.

Steve Hayes now being ‘thrown under the bus’ the GreenSquareAccord

Where Are We Now…

For me, for my neighbours, and for countless others in homes that no longer even meet the housing sector’s low threshold of being warm, safe, dry, and affordable, it will always be personal. A home can never be anything else.

For a communicator, a marketing team, there is of course a need for polish — the spit and shine that presents an organisation to the outside world. But there also has to be truth. Honesty. Above all else, professionalism. Steve Hayes has blurred that line. He’s unable to distance himself from his role. He’s made it personal.

When that personalisation results in residents being targeted — in my case, being arrested at my own home, in multiple attempts to have my website taken down, in YouTube strikes claiming privacy or copyright — then the role of communicator has collapsed into something else entirely. Especially when every one of my claims has been held up by external, third-party professionals. Hayes’ story doesn’t hold water. We’re now in the desperate last throes of a man trying not to address issues, but to hide them.

And as if to prove the point, another email dropped into my inbox this morning: yet another YouTube privacy complaint. This time about content that’s over a year old. Hayes has reported it multiple times before. Internally, his team even claimed to GreenSquareAccord’s higher-ups that he’d already had it removed — which was false.

All he’s really achieved is to drive more traffic to it. Each new strike only highlights the very evidence he wants hidden. And as I re-watch that content, I’m reminded of how far I’ve come — not just in my own personal journey, but in the journey of the housing sector itself.

Let this be a warning to others: it’s a slippery slope. Steve Hayes now finds himself having to answer serious questions not about the broader failures of GreenSquareAccord — that’s for Ruth Cooke and her board to answer to the Housing Ombudsman, to the Regulator of Social Housing, and perhaps one day even to a judge. No, Hayes is left defending his own personal actions, his own failures as a communications director.

That is the price he now has to pay.

And Now…

The videos Steve Hayes doesn’t want you to see….