The persuader

The new head of the Tenant Participation Advisory Service has injured her leg playing basketball. ‘It’s a great loss to the game,’ she says wryly, crutch in hand.

The injury might have her hobbling about on court, but Michelle Reid isn’t about to let a mere limp lessen her pace at her new job.

In April this year, Ms Reid became chief executive of tenant empowerment organisation TPAS. ‘I knew when I took the job I’d have to hit the ground not just running but sprinting,’ she says.

I meet Ms Reid in Manchester on her 88th day in charge. She is keeping a careful count, which is not surprising; those 88 days have been eventful, to say the least. They have seen a change of housing minister, announcements about dismantling the housing revenue account system and more money for house-building - not to mention the small matter of a new, tenant-led regulatory framework to be thrashed out.

‘It’s an exciting and scary time - but those two things often go together,’ she says. ‘This [framework] is one of the most important things to happen in social housing for decades. I don’t know what change we will see in the next 20 years that will match up to this, if it’s done properly.’

TPAS - the organisation has 300 landlord and 1,000 tenant association members, and an annual turnover of around £1.5 million - has its part to play. The challenge facing the organisation and its new chief is how to reach England’s 10 million tenants, and how to persuade people that they really can have a hand in setting the standards by which their landlords will have to operate and deliver.

‘That’s the thing I need to get to grips with over the next few years - the next few days, really,’ says Ms Reid, who took over as chief executive from the well-known Phil Morgan. ‘I keep hearing this phrase, and I’ve said it myself: tenants must seize the opportunity now to shape these new standards… I think people will need more time to maximise that opportunity, but it’s crucial that people do.’

Eye-opening

Ms Reid is genial and relaxed, with short asymmetric hair and a grin never too far away. She moved from Newcastle to Manchester to study drama when she was 18, and after graduation found a job with the city council’s housing department.

There was more than enough drama there to keep her happy. ‘I fell into housing, but I have to say it was one of the best trips I ever took,’ she recalls. ‘Working in Moss Side in the 1990s was one of the most eye-opening things I could ever have imagined doing.’

Ms Reid describes herself as a ‘very, very proud Northumbrian’, but while the odd Geordie twang creeps into her Mancunian diction - ‘if my mum rang me now you’d think I was bilingual’, she says - she calls the city in which she now lives her home.

In 2002 she left the housing sector altogether to run George’s House Trust, an HIV charity based in Manchester. Those intervening years have, Ms Reid avers, been great preparation for her return to housing.

‘I have been working for the past seven years in a sector where people are extremely under-represented and [whose] voices aren’t heard, and I am passionately committed to making sure there is a chance for people to be heard,’ she says.

The time spent away from this sector has also, she claims, kept her uninfected by cynicism. ‘I bring enthusiasm, I bring commitment, I bring positivity,’ she says. Asked what she does outside work, Ms Reid has to have a bit of a think. ‘It’s a seven days a week job,’ she says finally. ‘I’m not on call, thankfully.’

A workaholic, then, but with undiminished enthusiasm and optimism. Both qualities will be prove crucial in bringing the participation gospel to the disengaged and the cynical.

‘There is apathy [among tenants] and that’s because of having waited so long and promises having been made and not delivered upon,’ Ms Reid says. ‘That’s why the job now is to encourage people to see this as the thing we have all been working for… It’s about trying to re-engage with people who have become disheartened.’

She has spent much of her tenure so far travelling around England to meet tenants, and another major opportunity for dialogue presents itself tomorrow at Ms Reid’s first TPAS conference. ‘No pressure there,’ she smiles. ‘I’m really looking forward to it… I’m sure I will be much wiser at the end of that weekend than I am now. A lot of what tenants say at that conference will inform my planning of the next six months of where TPAS should be going and what TPAS should be doing.’

Her keynote speech is where Ms Reid will officially introduce herself to a group that has, as she puts it, arrived at a historic moment. The tenant movement will soon learn whether basketball’s loss has been its gain.

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