What do you think would most impress a new Conservative government? Traditional, sober blue? New, tree-hugging green? Or pink?
The Tenant Services Authority (TSA) is clearly going to have its work cut out if it is not to join regional spatial strategies, eco-towns and home information packs on the scrapheap if the Tories win next year’s election - and it will need more than the bold branding that distinguishes it from its predecessor, the Housing Corporation.
As Inside Housing reports today, a plan floated by shadow housing minister Grant Shapps to transfer the regulation of housing associations to local authorities has sparked a rearguard action by landlords, lenders and tenants dubbed ‘Operation Pink’.
Shapps has made little secret of his scepticism about both the TSA and Homes and Communities Agency. ‘Not impressed’ is his general line - with the HCA’s 20 offices and £4.5m a month salaries bill and with the fact that by July the TSA had ‘so far spent its time surveying 27,000 tenants to get responses and then writing a draft report about what it might do’.
We’re now seeing the results of all that consultation and trips in the pink camper van and the TSA appears to be starting to find a balance between cutting red tape for landlords and giving tenants something a bit more meaningful than warm words about ‘empowerment’.
But will that cut any ice with the Conservatives? Transferring regulation to local authorities would certainly be in tune with their localist thrust - even if it would be completely at odds with what they did to local government between 1979 and 1997.
The imminent extension of TSA regulation to local authorities is another factor in the equation. The Local Government Association supports domain-wide regulation but says it ‘will need to be assured the entire regulatory system is designed so that landlords focus on their tenants and delivering for them, not on satisfying what they see as the regulator’s concerns and priorities’.
At the same time it’s very hard to see banks and building societies supporting the idea of regulation of the landlords it lends to by anything other than an independent body - and there is that key argument that having independent regulation saves £500m a year in interest payments.
The grey old Corpie managed to survive repeated threats to its existence in the 80s and 90s because that regulatory role is so vital. Sometimes grey can be the new pink - or even the new blue.
Have your say
You must sign in to make a comment