TSA's local offers 'are a success'
The Tenant Services Authority has hailed pilots of its local standards a success, but has warned providers need to work harder at improving underperforming services.
In a report on 39 trials of the local offers, which took place across the country over the past six months, the regulator says the local standards approach has successfully reduced burdens for providers.
The report, Going Local – landlords and tenants working together to raise standards, says landlords would not find it difficult to set local offers, which are standards relating to the regulatory framework agreed between social landlords and their tenants.
It says landlords need to improve arrangements for improving services when they fall short of agreed offers, and also develop better offers concerning value for money, as very few of the pilots developed targets in this area.
Chief executive Peter Marsh said: ‘Grassroots engagement with tenants was the starting point for these trials – and we’ve seen plenty of this.
‘These trailblazers have shown that tenants are getting involved in drawing up local offers and asking for sensible improvements, and landlords have engaged well with tenants and demonstrated how co-regulation and tenant scrutiny work in their organisation.’
The regulator published a second report yesterday on landlords’ progress on tenant involvement and empowerment. It found providers were beginning to see the business case for shaping their services according to the views of tenants.
The study, Making voices count, says: ‘For traditional housing associations, in particular, there is an increasing inclination to look at commercial businesses for ways they might take their own organisations forward.
‘This is evidenced by the establishment of call centres and one-stop shops, and an interest in the approach of retailers to obtaining and acting on customer feedback information.’
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Readers' comments (9)
michael barratt | 16/06/2010 10:00 am
“The Tenant Services Authority has hailed pilots of its local standards a success, but has warned providers need to work harder at improving underperforming services.”
Localism to me represents a right wing attempt at the erosion of the National responsibility for housing standards with the likely consequences of great variances across the country for the worse in the quality across the country of local authorities and housing associations housing.
Landlords setting local offers in respect to standards is an absurd idea in a market in which demand far outstrips supply. Based upon my experience, tenants local authorities will encourage to be involved in drawing up local offers and asking for so called sensible improvements, will be those who are easily managed and flattered. Tenants that can be persuaded to intone the mantra ‘sensible’ improvements with the subtext being those ‘improvements’ those the housing providers is willing to give
Any tenants questioning and looking too closely at so-called offers will soon be marginalised and precluded from further participation. The term tenant participation as envisaged by TSA, will be a continuation of a few tame and unrepresentative tenants rubberstamping their housing providers policies on behalf of the entire tenant population.
Make no mistake what TSA and the Government propose is a reduction in investment in public housing accompanies by cost cutting.
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| 16/06/2010 10:06 am
TSA a success according to...the TSA. Didn't see that one coming.
In addition check out the "landlords need to...develop better offers concerning value for money, as very few of the pilots developed targets in this area."
Given the amount of publicity generated by the recent PAC report on DHS, the £37Bn blown on what was supposed to be a £19Bn project, along with the OFT fines for all those well known DHS contractors involved in bid rigging, one would have thought that VFM would be pretty high up the list of standards. Welcome to the topsy turvy world of the TSA.
They are doomed...
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Anonymous | 16/06/2010 10:15 am
TSA clutching at straws..
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Terence J Edwards | 16/06/2010 1:19 pm
Obviously the comments are not from residents,but I fear they are correct about the TSA, the people who write adverse comments about it , maybe the same as those who think residents should say nothing and be kept in their place, but those are the same people who let social housing go to rack and ruin in the first place .
IF THE GOVERNMENT REALY CARES ABOUT SOCAL HOUSING.
THEY SHOULD KEEP THE TSA ,AND GIVE IT ALL THE POWERS IT NEEDS
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michael barratt | 16/06/2010 1:40 pm
Dear Terence
You are incorrect, I am a Crawley council tenant.
Crawley Borough Council in 2005 downgraded its void standards. As a then member of a Town hall tenants' Performance monitoring panel. Two years ago I proposed with unanimous tenant support (including the support of all those tenants who had previously unwittingly supported the reduction in standard) that in future all incoming tenants should have the same standard of decorations etc. that would be expected of an outgoing tenant i.e. the incoming tenant should not be responsible to put right any delinquency of an outgoing tenant. The Council to my knowledge never acted upon that tenant vote and subsequently proposed downgrading the responsibilities of the monitoring panel - I resigned.
Believe me I am all for tenant participation however I do not want to be Pavlov's dog.
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Harry Lime | 16/06/2010 2:21 pm
Michael, the example you've given there is hardly surprising is it? It smacks a little of turkeys voting to abolish xmas. To ensure all residents moving into a property would have a minimum standard of decoration would add massive costs onto the void budget of an association. Do you really think outgoing tenants would really give a monkeys unless they're making a transfer? Equally would a RSL spend time and resources chasing them to put it right? The onus would be put onto the RSL to decorate the properties at great expense. When I was a housing manager a view was taken during the void, any rooms that weren't decorated to a satifactory standard (only ripped or incomplete, not a personal opinion of taste) then £30 per room in B&Q vouchers were given for materials. To me that was more than reasonable
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michael barratt | 16/06/2010 4:39 pm
Dear Harry
Surely council and housing association tenants should be entitled to a decent decorative and repair standard when moving into a new home. Of course housing services can be delivered for less cost although the consequences are likely to be expensive.
In the days of the horse and cart, a customer complained to a feed and grain merchant that his prices for were too high. The merchant replied that good fresh feed was expensive however feed that had passed through the horse once was of course considerably less expensive.
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Anonymous | 17/06/2010 8:32 am
michael barratt | 16/06/2010 4:39 pm
I didn't realise that providing a property to live in was in any way similar to the horse and cart.
Standards are dumb and lazy management. It is what the Audit Commission and the last government have been pushing for the last decade. It didn't work and cost a fortune. Better still to have the resident involved in the void process and saying what matters to then instead of having massive waste driven in by doing lots of things that people don't necessarily want.
Standards actually make services worse and increase waste.
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Michael Hill | 25/06/2010 0:53 am
Anonymous | 17/06/2010 8:32 am
michael barratt | 16/06/2010 4:39 pm
I take it that Anonymous is not a tennant and hopefully drives a Toyota!! That's what driving down costs without consulting the customer experience gets you. Standards are fair to the customer and provider. They should provide a clear picture to the provider of what is required and how to manage effectively to at least achieve, hopefully exceed the standard.
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