One of the UK’s largest and most high-profile housing trusts has had one of its poster adverts for a shared ownership scheme banned by the advertising regulator.
Notting Hill, which is part of a wider group called Notting Hill Genesis (NHG) that operates 64,000 properties across London and the South East and houses 140,000 people, was referred to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) about the poster by an NHG residents’ association.
“The Joint Committee of Notting Hill and Genesis Residents is very worried about these ads as many NHG shared owners are finding themselves in difficult situations due to soaring service charges and rent increases coupled with stationary wages,” a statement says on its website.
The NHG poster was seen last year within the London Underground with the strapline: “I own a 2 bedroom apartment and pay less per month than my friends pay to rent a room in a flatshare!”. It referred to the Shared Ownership scheme operated by NHG across nearly 30 developments in London.
But the committee wondered whether buyers would be confused by the phrase ‘I own a 2-bedroom apartment’ when the scheme being promoted was operated via the government’s Help to Buy: Shared Ownership funding arrangement.
Home ownership?
In evidence submitted to the ASA, NHG claimed that schemes like this had been referred to as ‘home ownership’ by the government and trade bodies for decades and that applicants to its one went through a ‘fully supported experience’.
But the ASA said that consumers would understand the poster’s claims to be a comparison between the monthly cost of paying rent and paying a mortgage. It concluded that because the poster’s text did not make it clear that the service was a shared ownership scheme, the ‘ad was misleading’.
“The ad must not appear again in its current form,” the ASA says. “We told Notting Hill Genesis to ensure that their future advertising of Shared Ownership properties made clear the nature of the scheme.”
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