When times are hard

Start saving your coupons. There’s less state funding for innovation and good practice to go around than there used to be - hitting on bright ideas for doing housing better could be about to get harder.

When the Housing Corporation disappeared in December 2008, so too did its multimillion pound funding pot for innovation and good practice. Enter the Homes and Communities Agency and the Tenant Services Authority - along with its decidedly less generous tenant excellence fund.

While the corporation shelled out a massive £80 million in IGP cash during its 12-year life - an average of £6 million a year - the TEF totals a comparatively paltry £550,000 in its first year. The 37 organisations which received the first TEF rations last September could only look back wistfully at the IGP days when they could bid for as much as £20,000 to £100,000 for specific projects.

De facto successor

The TSA insists that the TEF, open to housing associations, arm’s-length management organisations, tenant management organisations and housing trade bodies, was never intended as a replacement for the IGP. As it stands, though, it is the only state funding to have been introduced since with similar aims.

The old IGP required bidders to demonstrate they could make a ‘significant impact and measurably improve good practice’. The TEF aims to identify excellent practice and innovation in the sector and encourage future innovation. Unlike the IGP, which centred on certain themes such as tackling worklessness and promoting community cohesion each bidding round, the new fund focuses on the themes included in the TSA’s new regulatory framework due to come into force in April, such as local standards and tenant scrutiny.

What does all this mean for the state of innovation and best practice in housing? In March, the TSA will present the fund’s ‘lessons learned’ - the first wave of innovative findings and suggestions for best practice from its September payouts. Before that happens, Inside Housing has run its first best practice and innovation survey of 27 housing associations and ALMOs across England to find out whether they think the new guy will bring out the best in them.

Initial response

Their first impressions aren’t promising: more than half reckon the TEF is an inadequate alternative for the corporation’s IGP; and 41 per cent of respondents say state funding for innovation and best practice in housing is inadequate. Typical is one Newcastle-based housing association’s survey response: ‘Where’s the innovation gone?’

That’s not to say there’s widespread disagreement with the fund’s aims. When asked ‘should the TSA be spending money on the TEF during tough economic times?’, 59 per cent of organisations respond, yes, innovation is as important now as ever; and 37 per cent answer that it is more important then ever.

‘We need to deliver better services for less money and therefore need to challenge the norm and do things differently,’ says one major south east association.

Of the themes covered by the TEF, 48 per cent of those polled say ‘local standards’ is most useful to their own organisation. More generally there is disagreement over the value of the categories. One housing association, which owns 20,000 homes across the south east is one of the 37 organisations which have received TEF cash. All 37 are focusing on local standards, and this recipient is in favour: ‘the TEF’s themes cover key areas of challenge for social housing providers, reads its survey response.

‘There may be less money in the TEF than the IGP but it is now more directly focused on researching and sharing good practice. IGP provided welcome additional funding for housing associations to pilot added value projects but this didn’t necessarily feed sector-wide innovation.’

Others are less convinced. ‘The categories are too restrictive,’ responds a midlands-based association. It sets aside £100,000 from its own reserves for new initiatives annually, and it liked the IGP’s approach. ‘It allowed landlords to trial things with financial risks mitigated,’ it says.

One of the survey’s biggest spenders on innovation - £250,000 annually - is an association based in Stoke-on-Trent. ‘It feels like there is a greater restriction to the TEF which, by definition, focuses thinking rather than empowering thinking and innovation across any area.’

The 27 repondents identify environmental sustainability, personalisation, community projects, anti-social behaviour, and training and employability as areas neglected now the IGP has gone.

Graeme Foster, assistant director of tenant participation at the TSA, gives assurances that the TEF will move on to other areas in response to industry demand during the coming years; but first things first - the successful implementation of its new regulatory framework is its most pressing concern.

Scant resources

With tightening public finances there’s perhaps less the watchdog can do to calm disquiet over the size of the fund. ‘It feels like housing providers are being asked to scrabble around to win very small amounts of funding,’ says another major provider. The 37 landlords looking at local standards, for example, received up to £9,000 each from the TEF. That’s 91 per cent lower than the maximum IGP payout.

Some landlords are dipping into their own pockets, though just eight of those polled reveal how much they have spent on innovation and best practice during the past 12 months. Most say these areas are integral to all areas of the business, and therefore do not have a separate budget. ‘We don’t differentiate between innovation and good practice and our mainstream budgets,’ explains one respondent.

Several respondents stress that funding bodies should take the same approach. ‘Their money should not be spent to help organisations to do what they should already be doing - supporting tenants, excellent maintenance - rather, it should be used to pursue genuinely innovative or radical solutions,’ states a well-known London-based housing and care provider.

Respondents are also tapping other sources of cash for innovation, including the Communities and Local Government department and the Department of Health. Meanwhile they say the Chartered Institute of Housing, Audit Commission, Housemark and Housing Quality Network supply them with best practice information, albeit sometimes at a subscription cost.

Overall, almost half those polled (48 per cent) consider they have adequate access to the resources needed to create and share examples of best practice. ‘However, more best practice information from sources such as the TSA and HCA would improve this,’ one response suggests.

Larger organisations tend to have a more positive response to this question. One mega association which owns 55,000 homes across the country says: ‘In our experience, there is a culture of sharing best practice formally and informally among the larger housing associations in England.’

On the other hand, smaller organisations would like a forum in which to share ideas. A small rural provider with around 900 units suggests, ‘There needs to be more focus on specialist associations which cannot always use mainstream examples of best practice.’ Several organisations state that the housing sector lacks a single forum, or hub, in which all examples of best practice are held.

Critical as they may have been about the new guy in town, they have not written him off yet. ‘We are still awaiting the results of the local standards pilots to give an informed view,’ says a north east-based landlord.

‘IGP was quite an established programme, the TEF is in its early days,’ sums up the group chief executive of another organisation working on the TEF local standards pilot. ‘It is naturally focused on getting the regulatory environment right - I hope it’s just a start.’

The TSA’s Mr Foster says that it is. ‘Topics [covered by the TEF] will move on, and we target our small amount of resources to best effect.’ The TEF may be small, but its thrifty ways may win the landlords over yet.

Additional research by Gene Robertson

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