FOIA to apply to Tenant Management Organisations from April 2027

The Government has announced its intention to make Tenant Management Organisations (TMOs) acting on behalf of local authorities providing housing management services subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in their own right from 1 April 2027. It does not apply to TMOs where they are providing services on behalf of housing associations or other PRPs.

The Government’s proposal seeks to make TMOs subject to FOIA in respect of any information they hold in relation to the following services provided under a contract with a local authority:

• repairs, maintenance and service provision; 
• rent collection and recovery; 
• leaseholder and freeholder service charges; 
• financial management; 
• renancy management; 
• staffing and management relationship between the TMO and the local authority; and
• performance, monitoring and reviewing of standards.

Due to the tight timescales, it is important to start looking at how the TMO will prepare to comply with these obligations, and the tighter ICO regulation and enforcement regime under FOIA than under the applicable parallel STAIRs scheme for private registered providers (PRPs).

Details of the actual proposals are still to be published. However some of the initial key steps that we would recommend include:

• start by looking at how the TMO will handle requests, how will requests be received, who has ownership of the request. The easiest option would be to utilise the existing processes for handling data protection subject access requests (DSARs), but it is important to note that there is no requirement to quote FOIA when making a request. It is therefore important that staff are able to identify a FOIA request and know how to escalate it. 
• liaise with suppliers and the local authority to make them aware of this change, and that the TMO may have to publish information in its possession in response to a request.
• identify where local authority partners and suppliers are holding information on behalf of the TMO, and agree processes to obtain information that the partner organisation holds behalf of the TMO in order to be able to respond to requests within the statutory timeframes.
• review what information is held to determine whether there is a need to retain it. It is important to have a retention policy so as to be able to identify if there is a legal need to hold information. This also has benefits in terms of reducing the costs and resources involved in retaining this information.

Anthony Collins has an experienced Data Governance team specialising in data protection and information law. For further support and information regarding these changes, please get in touch.