The Regulator’s Verdict on GreenSquareAccord

When I — a resident of GreenSquareAccord — have the audacity to push back, to criticise, it’s called harassment. For that, my reputation is smeared. I’m dragged across the coals. Sometimes I’m dragged to court. Other times I’m dragged from my home.

But when a governing body — like the Regulator of Social Housing or the Housing Ombudsman — issues criticism for the very same failings I’ve raised, suddenly it’s not so easy for the organisation to dismiss. Or is it?

Because what we tend to get is the same rhetoric in response:
Plans are in place.
We need to do better.
We’ve considered this.
We’ve learned from this.
We’re now doing it this way.
Things are improving.

And yet — year after year after year — we see no improvement.

Residents like myself, like my neighbours, like many in my community, and others far beyond in other counties, are being hit with increasingly higher bills while receiving worse services. We are not given a platform to raise these issues — beyond this resident support site, maybe a handful of Facebook groups, and the carefully selected and largely non-effective ‘Customer Panel’.

Meanwhile, Ruth Cooke, Sophie Atkinson, and the rest of the senior leadership team at GreenSquareAccord know the system well. They know that regulatory scrutiny — whether from the Ombudsman or the RSH — takes time. And that buys them time.

GreenSquareAccord, with its 26,000 homes and £221 million turnover, is facing yet another barrage of damning evidence that its leadership has failed to fix serious, systemic issues. Despite repeated assurances and those now-familiar “simpler, stronger, better” slogans, a recent official judgement — alongside multiple investigations — paints a bleak picture of poor performance, hollow excuses, and residents continually let down.

If, by the end of this blog, you don’t agree that GreenSquareAccord’s leadership team is not delivering the improvements it claims, then please — tell me.

Tell me, as a shared-ownership resident who is expected to pay increasingly higher fees in service charges and rent, while receiving a dwindling service, living in unsafe homes, and watching the company fail to meet even its core obligations — who exactly is in the wrong?

Official investigations and damning verdicts

In late 2023, the Housing Ombudsman made six findings of severe maladministration against GreenSquareAccord — involving pest infestations, noise nuisance, and serious disrepair. These failures, all occurring within a three-month span, were so egregious that the Ombudsman took the rare step of launching a special investigation into the organisation.

The Ombudsman’s September 2023 press release didn’t mince words: “Six findings of severe maladministration is quite simply appalling. You have failed your residents.” This echoed a letter from then Secretary of State for Housing, Michael Gove, addressed to our Chief Executive Ruth Cooke, highlighting “excessive delays, poor communication… and failure to act.” One resident endured a rat infestation for 31 months before GSA took proper action. Another, a vulnerable tenant, waited seven months for a response to a noise complaint and received only heavy-handed, unsympathetic correspondence in return. Gove’s verdict was clear: GSA’s performance “fell well below the standard your residents should expect… I am shocked by the level of failings on your part.”

The Housing Ombudsman’s full investigation report, published in October 2024, confirmed the scale of the failure. It found an astonishing 93% maladministration rate in GSA’s complaint handling. Put simply, almost every case reviewed showed mishandling. The report highlighted critical areas of concern, especially in repairs and complaint handling, and urged GSA to “go further” in addressing root causes. One resident had to live with damp, mould, and no hot water for two and a half years while waiting for basic repairs. Another waited more than two years for plastering to be completed. These are not isolated incidents — they’re patterns. Delays like these, coupled with poor communication and informal, unclear complaint handling, have had devastating impacts on tenants’ lives. 

Fast forward to October 2025, and the Regulator of Social Housing has now issued its own official regulatory judgement following an in-depth inspection of GSA. The findings are no less damning. The Regulator stated that GSA “needs improvement” in tenant services and has “weaknesses” in meeting consumer standards — grading them C2. Most notably, the Regulator downgraded GSA’s governance rating from G1 to G2, pointing to major concerns about the Board’s oversight of operations and risk management.

The judgement makes it clear that GSA has shown persistent underperformance over a prolonged period. While the Regulator acknowledged that GSA’s Board has experience and did carry out some strategic scrutiny, it ultimately concluded that leadership failed to provide effective oversight over key operational areas — including repairs, contractor performance, and data quality. More worryingly, inspectors found significant backlogs in fire safety remedial works, with many high-priority safety actions still overdue. These are not abstract risks — they are serious tenant safety concerns that require urgent attention.

The Regulator concluded that GSA’s leadership must make robust improvements in how services are monitored, how health and safety is managed, and how tenant concerns are addressed. Simply put: even in 2025, GreenSquareAccord is still falling short of the most basic standards. And its senior management structure has not done enough to change that.

Data promises going back a decade

Way back when GreenSquareAccord was simply GreenSquare, the leadership claimed to recognise the importance of data — especially at the property level. As far back as 2015, the organisation publicly committed to transforming its operations using GIS (Geographic Information Systems), stating that 90% of its business data was geographical and needed to be mapped, visualised, and used strategically.

And it all made sense. This was a well-argued, well-presented strategy. A genuine need had been identified. They went out to tender, found a provider that could deliver it, and got buy-in from leadership. According to a case study published by Esri UK at the time, the goal was to create a “granular view” of every property, linking up business units and removing inefficiencies in access, maintenance, development, and repairs. The technology was meant to support smarter decision-making, unlock land, and improve the resident experience across the board.

But here we are — a decade later — and the Regulator of Social Housing’s latest judgement still finds data gaps, unreliable systems, and manual workarounds embedded within GreenSquareAccord’s operations.

The Regulator explicitly criticised the organisation’s lack of adequate management information systems and weaknesses in internal controls — the very areas GreenSquare claimed to be modernising all the way back in 2015. Despite all the investment, all the planning, and no doubt all the costs passed on to residents, the same foundational problems persist.

And let’s be clear: residents will have paid for that system. We funded the research, the tools, the implementation. We were on that journey too. Yet it hasn’t delivered the promised accountability or service improvement.

What’s more, during a 2024 Bevan Britain event, Sophie Atkinson — Executive Director of Governance — suggested that it was Accord’s historic data that caused the last downgrade. She implied that the inability to provide a clear, reliable view of the Accord stock they inherited post-merger was the core reason for their regulatory failure.

So which is it?

Was the technology never implemented correctly? Were the benefits overstated? Or has GreenSquareAccord, for nearly ten years, failed to deliver on a promise that residents are still paying for today?

Widespread dissatisfaction

While GSA’s leadership often insists that “getting things right for our customers is our top priority,” the lived reality for tenants has been very different. Resident feedback and performance metrics paint the picture of a housing provider in crisis, consistently struggling to deliver even the basics.

GreenSquareAccord’s own Tenant Satisfaction Measures — required by the Regulator — rank among the lowest in the sector. In 2023, only around 50% of residents said they were satisfied with GSA’s overall service. Just 36% felt their views were listened to and acted upon. Most damning of all, fewer than one in five tenants — under 20% — were satisfied with how complaints were handled. These numbers are poor by any measure and highlight the enormous gap between GSA’s public messaging and its actual performance. Even when compared to already low national averages, GSA falls significantly behind.

Online reviews only reinforce the statistics. Over the past year, GSA has been flooded with negative feedback on public platforms, including a “Bad” rating of just 1.4 out of 5 on Trustpilot. Tenants frequently report unanswered phone calls and emails, unresolved repairs stretching into months, and a general breakdown in communication and accountability.

As I — on this website, and many others — have stated, residents describe being ignored, pushed between departments, or simply forgotten. Problems get lost in the system. GSA’s culture seems more focused on deflecting criticism than fixing the underlying issues.

Even internally, the cracks are visible. Staff have spoken of feeling burned out, trapped in a culture that appears to prioritise protecting the organisation’s image over addressing real problems. There’s a widespread sense that leadership is more concerned with looking good than doing good.

When fewer than half of tenants feel their homes are safe, well-maintained, or that repairs are being carried out properly, it becomes impossible to say the organisation is meeting even the most basic responsibilities of a social landlord. The mission is supposed to be clear: to provide homes that are warm, safe, and dry. Right now, too many residents are experiencing the opposite.

As has been said by residents time and again: GreenSquareAccord continues to grapple with serious failings in basic service delivery. And the root cause of these persistent problems lies at the top.

Promises, spin, and slow to no progress

Faced with mounting criticism, GreenSquareAccord’s leadership has offered a steady stream of explanations and assurances — but many now ring hollow. One of the most repeated justifications is the April 2021 merger, when GreenSquare and Accord housing associations combined. Leadership has often described this as a disruptive period that “had a significant impact” on services. It’s true that merging two large landlords brings challenges, and GSA claimed it was dealing with integration issues alongside building safety priorities at the time.

But these problems cannot be brushed off as short-term teething issues. The systemic failures persisted for years after the merger, indicating much deeper organisational neglect. Even the Housing Ombudsman made clear that these cannot be written off as “historic issues that are now all resolved,” because similar issues continue to drive complaints and resident dissatisfaction today. Just because the latest ‘new’ strategy was launched in 2023 and a few policies were rewritten doesn’t mean the job is done.

GSA’s leadership points to various improvement initiatives. They claim to have built a more robust complaints-handling process and to be working through another five-year plan to “simplify and strengthen” the organisation. They say all Ombudsman orders have been complied with. They highlight new investments in homes, staff training, and a £61 million spend on improving existing housing stock. In 2025, they even reported a modest rise in tenant satisfaction — with overall satisfaction climbing to 58%, up from just over 50% previously. GSA claims that improvements are being made across all 12 tenant survey categories.

But scratch beneath the surface and the picture is far less reassuring. The Ombudsman has already pointed out clear discrepancies between GSA’s internal performance claims and the actual lived experience of residents. One example stands out: while the organisation boasted of an 88% satisfaction rate for repairs, its official Tenant Satisfaction Measures showed that only 51.8% of residents were actually satisfied. That’s barely half. This kind of inflated reporting suggests that leadership has been relying heavily on selective metrics and public relations — not on meaningful, ground-level change.

Even in areas where GSA insists it has improved, the standard is still far from acceptable. The Regulator’s 2025 inspection acknowledged that complaint handling had begun to improve, but also noted that complaint volumes remain high and that better outcomes are still needed. In other words, the backlog might be clearing faster now, but far too many residents still end up needing to complain in the first place.

GSA has also touted new efforts to involve residents, including the formation of a Customer Panel and increased surveying; both appear little more than ‘patter’ to any resident living in a home they can no longer afford, neglected by the very people they pay to maintain it. Whilst these token efforts are still in early stages, and it remains unclear whether tenant feedback is meaningfully shaping decisions. The Regulator was blunt: Board oversight must be strengthened to ensure improvements are “consistent and sustainable,” especially in key areas like repairs, fire safety, data quality, and internal controls. And when core management systems are still described as “inadequate” and reliant on manual workarounds, it’s clear that the leadership has not equipped the organisation to serve residents properly. Years into this supposed turnaround, major infrastructure and oversight gaps remain — and those gaps translate directly into poor service, missed safety checks, and delays in essential repairs.

Perhaps most telling is how GSA’s leadership handles criticism. Instead of owning the failures and engaging transparently, the organisation has often responded by focusing on its public image. Time and again, it has invested in PR campaigns and community messaging — promoting charitable initiatives, sharing polished updates on social media, even collecting awards — while serious complaints continued to mount.

When residents turned to platforms like Twitter (X) to raise concerns, GSA pulled away from those spaces entirely, citing “inappropriate content” as the reason for withdrawal. Many observers saw this as a deflection. In reality, those platforms gave residents a rare space to be heard — and GSA stepped back the moment it couldn’t control the message.

As we know, in a particularly disturbing example, the organisation took legal steps to silence me, a vocal resident who had been highlighting safety risks and unresolved repairs. GSA went as far as attempting to secure a court injunction against me — not because of defamation or harassment, but because I was speaking up. SHAC described this approach as “propaganda and quashing challenge” — saying GSA was more focused on telling the world what a great landlord it was than confronting the truth. The leadership chose image over accountability.

That mindset starts at the top. The CEO and executive team have too often treated communications like a campaign to manage, rather than a responsibility to be transparent.

Downgraded again

In October 2025, the Regulator of Social Housing issued its latest judgement on GreenSquareAccord — and the message was clear: things are still not where they should be. Following a full in-depth inspection, the Regulator downgraded GreenSquareAccord’s governance rating from G1 to G2 and confirmed a C2 grading under the new consumer standards framework. Both grades mean the organisation remains compliant, but only just — and that there are material weaknesses that must be addressed urgently.

A G2 governance rating means the Regulator found that GSA’s Board and leadership team are not consistently exercising effective oversight, particularly when it comes to operational delivery and risk management. In simple terms: the people in charge are not doing enough to monitor performance, manage problems, or ensure the organisation is being run in a way that protects residents and the long-term health of the business.

The judgement also highlighted serious concerns with internal controls, data quality, and how information flows to decision-makers. Management systems were found to be inadequate, still reliant on manual workarounds — despite the organisation having had years to modernise them. These are not teething problems. These are structural weaknesses that affect everything from repairs response times to the ability to keep residents safe.

Then there’s the C2 consumer standard grading — the first time GSA has been rated under the new framework. A C2 means the organisation meets the bare minimum for compliance, but the Regulator has identified clear weaknesses in service delivery to tenants. Among the most serious concerns: a significant backlog of fire safety remedial works, including high-priority actions that remain outstanding. The judgement made it plain that these safety risks must be addressed — and quickly.

Even GSA’s own data supports the Regulator’s concerns. Complaint volumes remain high, repairs performance is inconsistent, and tenant satisfaction remains far below sector averages in key areas like complaint handling, repairs, and trust. While GSA has said it is working on improvements, the Regulator noted that progress must be sustained and measurable — and that current oversight is not strong enough to guarantee that.

So let’s be clear: this is not a minor course correction. This is a formal downgrade for a reason. Governance, safety, and service delivery are all under scrutiny. The Regulator has now echoed what residents have been saying for years — and put it in writing.

As someone who has often said, “Stop focusing on your PR and start fixing your issues — and the PR will fix itself,” I have to ask: am I not now proven right?

The very things I’ve raised — the issues I’ve been accused of harassment over, the criticisms used to smear my reputation — have now been confirmed and echoed by both the Housing Ombudsman and the Regulator of Social Housing. The facts speak for themselves.

So what would happen if GreenSquareAccord, instead of putting so much energy into controlling the narrative, redirected that energy — and the considerable cost that goes with it — into building a leadership team that could acknowledge when it’s wrong, and actually develop a credible plan to make things right?

Or is the uncomfortable truth this: Ruth Cooke remains in post, alongside Sophie Atkinson, not because they’re leading a recovery, but because no one else is willing to take on the task — because the course correction required is so steep, it’s seen as unwinnable.

Excuses recycled, risks still real

At a Bevan Britain housing sector event in February 2025, Sophie Atkinson, Executive Director of Governance at GreenSquareAccord, offered a detailed account of the organisation’s previous governance downgrade — and her remarks revealed just how deeply embedded the excuses have become.

She described the period after the 2021 merger as a “rollercoaster journey” and compared the regulatory process to The Lord of the Rings, calling GSA’s path “There and Back Again” — a nod to their downgrade to G2, return to G1, and now, once again, being inspected under the new regime. But behind the metaphor was a long list of explanations and caveats: unanticipated post-merger issues, unclear data, Covid-related backlogs, market constraints, evolving legislation, and the sheer scale of inherited problems — particularly from the legacy Accord side.

Atkinson made clear that the initial downgrade after the merger was due to missing electrical testing, asbestos checks, and hundreds of fire risk assessments — the latter framed as a manageable “Covid backlog.” These issues were, in her words, “largely from the Accord side,” implying a geographic and historic split in accountability. She said the Governance Improvement Plan developed in response took more than two years and included both compliance fixes and governance reforms, with GSA in near-constant meetings with the Regulator throughout that time.

But even when GSA was upgraded back to G1 in 2023, Atkinson admitted that the decision was “finely balanced.” The Regulatory Notice wasn’t removed. The action plan still had open items. And the Regulator was reportedly “not very happy” with the volume of outstanding actions still on the books.

Her talk laid out a familiar argument: that as more testing and oversight was done (EICRs, FRAs, rewires), more problems inevitably emerged. That the FRA backlog grew because the original assessments were flawed. That stock had been historically under-invested in. That the organisation was swamped by changing legislation, market constraints, and a surge in post-merger administrative load.

In her words, it became a “tsunami of additional work.”

But this is precisely the problem. Nearly every explanation hinges on inherited problems, external pressures, or the unfortunate timing of regulatory change. While these factors are real, they don’t explain why — four years on — the Regulator of Social Housing still finds GSA lacking in governance oversight, still reliant on manual data systems, still behind on urgent fire safety actions, and still needing to demonstrate that tenant voices are being heard and acted upon.

Atkinson’s final reflection is telling. She questioned whether the G1 grading is even a realistic target anymore, given how “wide” the G2 category has become. In other words, maybe G2 isn’t so bad — maybe we’re just all being judged more harshly now. But that misses the point. This isn’t about whether perfection is achievable. It’s about whether the leadership is accountable for delivering the basics: safety, transparency, and services residents can rely on.

And on that front, the current downgrade speaks louder than any analogy. Residents don’t need another story. They need change.

Time for accountability and real change

All the facts, figures, and official findings now on record lead to an inescapable conclusion: GreenSquareAccord’s leadership has not been working effectively to address the organisation’s deep-rooted issues. The excuses have worn thin. Multiple independent bodies — the Housing Ombudsman, the Regulator of Social Housing, and even the Secretary of State — have investigated and found severe failings that persisted over years, harming tenants.

Yes, GSA’s leaders say they “recognise the need to improve” and have plans in motion. But recognition and plans are not enough; results are what count. So far, the results include record-high complaint uphold rates, thousands of dissatisfied customers, safety hazards left unchecked, and a governance downgrade for failing to properly oversee operations. Meanwhile, residents have faced rent and service charge hikes even as basic services floundered — “an insult” in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, especially given that the CEO received a pay rise while these investigations were ongoing.

The pattern here is sadly familiar in the social housing sector: leadership platitudes and paper strategies, while tenants keep living with leaks, mould, pests, and endless waiting for action. GreenSquareAccord’s case stands out because the evidence is so overwhelming. When over 80% of your residents distrust your complaints handling, it signals a collapse of confidence that any truly accountable leadership would find untenable. As I’ve stated before on this site, “Leadership sets the tone for an organisation’s culture... When leadership falters, it is the residents who pay the price.” GSA’s leadership has faltered time and again — and residents have indeed paid dearly.

For GreenSquareAccord to move forward, it must go beyond cosmetic changes and genuinely rebuild trust. And that starts with accountability at the very top. Ruth Cooke was brought in as CEO to oversee the merger that ultimately failed, producing many of the systemic issues now blamed on legacy integration. She has since failed to deliver the transformation residents were promised. Under her leadership, excuses have become a default response: “We’re working on it,” “Plans are in place,” “We recognise the need to improve.” Yet for residents, there have been no meaningful results. What has continued are pay rises for Ruth Cooke, a growing national profile, and even a seat on the board of the National Housing Federation — all while GreenSquareAccord remains mired in failure. The question must now be asked: how can the Board maintain faith in her leadership when the people most affected — the residents — have lost all faith? We, the residents, are the majority stakeholders in this organisation. We see no progress. We see no accountability. And we are left to wonder: when will the Board acknowledge that Ruth Cooke must go?

This is not one isolated failure. It is another in a long line — another downgrade, another investigation, another broken promise. Is it death by a thousand paper cuts? Possibly. But each one cuts deeper. And with each one, the case for change at the top becomes more urgent. How is her position still tenable?

Ultimately, GreenSquareAccord owes its residents more than apologies and PR campaigns — it owes them competence, responsiveness, and homes that are truly fit to live in. The recent judgement and investigations have stripped away the PR veneer, revealing an organisation where lofty mission statements have not matched reality. There have been no real improvements that residents can feel — not yet. If the current leadership cannot deliver on their obligations, then it is time for change at the top. The stakes could not be higher: people’s health, safety, and dignity in their own homes depend on GSA getting it right. No more excuses — the facts speak for themselves, and they demand real action now.

Conclusion - it’s time for leadership change

Over the years, I’ve consistently shared information with the Regulator of Social Housing — evidence, formal complaints, breaches of Section 20 and Section 22 responsibilities, and updates on emerging issues. The latest case was no exception. I’ve kept the Regulator in the loop, often copying them into emails and correspondence. At times, the response felt automatic or Pavlovian, but credit where it’s due: this time, they responded with rigour and due diligence. They didn’t rely on hearsay or second-hand accounts — they investigated, and their findings echo what I and many others have been saying for years. These aren’t isolated anecdotes; they are systemic failures reported by dozens of residents, shared online, and now confirmed by official investigations.

Despite this, GreenSquareAccord seems determined to downplay the significance of the recent downgrade. There’s an emerging narrative that maintaining top governance and consumer ratings is somehow “unrealistic” in today’s sector. But that’s just another evasion — another tactic to dodge the reality that the leadership team has failed. Sophie Atkinson, in her own words, suggested that achieving and maintaining a G1 rating is no longer feasible. If that’s truly what she believes, then she should step aside. If Ruth Cooke, as Chief Executive, also no longer believes she can deliver the standard of leadership required — or worse, if she believes she has — then the case for her departure is overwhelming.

Internally and externally, GreenSquareAccord has repeatedly sought to discredit those who speak out. I myself have been the target of defamatory claims — libellous language used in internal communications and shared beyond, in a deliberate effort to damage my credibility. I will be addressing those issues more fully in due course. Meanwhile, new Housing Ombudsman investigations are already underway, including my own. I am also continuing to gather documentation for a formal complaint to the Solicitors Regulation Authority regarding Sophie Atkinson’s conduct. This process takes time, because accuracy and fairness matter. I will not make unfounded claims — I never have.

But from where I stand — and from where many of my neighbours stand — the picture is clear. Ruth Cooke cannot continue to lead this organisation. She has been given opportunity after opportunity, and each time, residents have been left with broken promises, unsafe homes, and no meaningful accountability. She is ultimately responsible. The leadership has not changed course — it has simply repackaged failure as “progress.”

So I ask you, the reader: if you believe I’ve misunderstood or misrepresented the facts, tell me. Reach out. Email me. Call me. I welcome dialogue, even disagreement, when it is respectful and honest. If staff at GreenSquareAccord believe I’ve got it wrong — and I know some of you do, though others quietly agree — let’s talk. 

The Regulator agrees. The Ombudsman agrees. The government has written directly to GreenSquareAccord calling out these failures. The facts have stacked up. The excuses must end. Change is no longer optional — it is essential. For the good of every resident who just wants a safe, decent home, it’s time for this organisation to stop defending failure and start demonstrating genuine leadership. It’s time for Ruth Cooke to go.