What are my STAIRs rights?
We want you to have easy access to information about your home, your tenancy and the services we provide. The introduction of STAIRs aims to make this process even simpler.
A lot of the information required as part of STAIRs is already available on our website, but to make things as easy as possible for you, we've created our STAIRs hub.
Here you'll find information about how your home and housing services are managed.
Behind the scenes, we're working hard to collate information we believe you'd find useful and will continue to publish on the hub.
Phase 1 of STAIRs is a publishing scheme, meaning we’re required to publish more information about things such as:
- How decisions are made
- Policies and procedures
- Service performance
- Complaints handling
- Spending and investment in homes and services
- And customer engagement and consultation activities.
You can find links to key information further down this page.
From April 2027, customers will have the right to request information about how your social housing is managed. Unless there’s a lawful reason for us not to share it, we'll provide the information within the timescales set out under STAIRs.
You can request information about matters such as:
- How services are delivered
- Decisions affecting your home or neighbourhood
- Performance information
- Policies and processes relating to social housing management
In some instances, we won’t be able to share information. For example where it contains personal data, is commercially sensitive or where another legal exemption applies.
We’ll let you know how to make a request closer to the time.
In the event that the information you want is not part of our published suite of documents, you can make a data access request to our Data Compliance Team who will consider your request.
Such requests are restricted to our customers and their designated representatives.
Requests for information covered by STAIRs can only be considered by our customers or their appointed representatives. If we can't confirm this, we may turn down the request.
We're not required to disclose information under the Freedom of Information Act, so there may be cases when we won't disclose information to journalists or members of the public.
We can choose not to publish or disclose certain information, and you can find our guiding principles on this page.
| Reason for refusal | Explanation |
| Not information we use in managing the business. | We aren't required to collect information or data that we don't currently use in the management of Thirteen. |
| Not available at the time of the request. | The information will be created after the information request was received. For example, detail of the Group’s accounts is produced annually, and we wouldn't produce a set of accounts outside these timescales |
| Disclosure would compromise data protection requirements. |
It's deemed reasonable to withhold information where the response could result in disclosure of other people's personal data, even if redacted. This is in line with GDPR legislation. |
| Identity of customer requesting information. | The identity of the applicant can't be established to our satisfaction. We undertake security questions with all customers and their appointed representatives. |
| Unclear request. | The request doesn't provide enough clarity to provide an appropriate response. |
| Time taken to fulfil. | The work involved with responding to the information request would exceed 18 hours of employee time. |
| Cost of fulfilling a request. | Where alternative options to electronic data is requested, we'll take into consideration whether the cost is reasonable and whether this can be reasonably provided. |
| Repeated request. | The request is repeated, including where a registered provider receives repeated requests from multiple applicants acting in coordination. We'll periodically review our website content so we can signpost to appropriate existing information. |
| Abusive | We operate a zero tolerance policy to abuse of colleagues. Any request deemed to be offensive, or communicated in an abusive manner, may be declined. |
Information we consider outside the scope of STAIRs
The tabs below state topics which we believe are outside the scope of STAIRs.
This is not an exhaustive list, but provides examples of the types of information not published by Thirteen.
We'll continue to update out website with latest information and review requests to help make decisions on what we may publish in future.
- Contracts or agreements unrelated to the provision of housing management services (e.g. payroll services)
- HR policies unrelated to social housing management (e.g. disciplinary policy)
- Finance policies governing day-to-day business operations, unrelated to the provision of housing management services
- Investment strategies relating to non-social or private housing
- Information which relates to internal discussions and the development of internal policy and strategy before board approval.
- Housing allocations
- Homelessness assessments
- Housing benefit or council tax-related decisions
- Planning applications and planning enforcement actions.
- Service charges for non-social housing
- Commercial lease management.
- Leasehold properties
- Shared ownership schemes where shared owner has staircased to own 100% of property equity
- Shops, offices, community centres, storage units or other non-residential lets
- Any build-to-rent or for-profit schemes, held separately from the PRP.
- Group level commercial ventures (e.g. renewable energy subsidiaries, trading companies, joint ventures for private sale developments)
- Care and support contracts delivered on behalf of local authorities (for care and support only)
- Commercial investment or treasury activities.
Can't find what you're looking for?
A lot of the information required for STAIRs is already available on our website, so you may not always find what you're looking for in the hub.
You can use the search function at the top right of our website to help
If you're wanting information specific to your dealings with us, you can make a data access request by contacting our Data Compliance team at Data.Compliance@thirteengroup.co.uk.
If you still can't find what you're looking for, contact us.