Tenants cut loose
Grants Shapps’ critics say his axing of the National Tenant Voice is unfair and misguided. Chloë Stothart reports.
When the two heads of the National Tenant Voice stepped into the office of housing minister Grant Shapps last Tuesday they knew the future of their organisation was up for discussion. But the news that followed was a shock.
Mr Shapps cut to the chase. He told the pair he had to pull the plug on the organisation right there and then.
The NTV, set up in March to gather the views of tenants and represent them to government, would have its £1 million funding withdrawn at the end of August, he said.
Richard Crossley, the NTV’s chief executive, who met Mr Shapps with the organisation’s chair Michael Gelling, was taken aback. He says: ‘We knew it was a possibility [that funding would be withdrawn] but we thought we would have a chance to make our case before he made a decision.’
The Communities and Local Government department justified Mr Shapps’ move in a statement which said the group’s £1 million annual budget ‘did not represent best use of money’ and added that a national body for tenants was ‘too distant’. Instead it wanted to see tenants given the power to ‘drive up the performance of local housing’ with ‘more power and voice’ put directly into their hands. It added that the idea of local tenants panels could be developed. These exist in some parts of the country, often to hold a local landlord to account.
So what has tenants’ reaction been to the news and what is likely to happen next?
True to form, tenant champion Mr Gelling has seized the initiative. He will now talk to other NTV members and national tenants’ bodies to see whether there are ways of continuing with some elements of the NTV, albeit without government cash. The ideas will be sent to the CLG early next week.
One possibility is to get a small amount of money from the tenant empowerment fund to work out a future plan for the organisation. Funding from landlords might be a long-term solution, but members would need to consider how to stay independent under such a set-up.
Alternatives
Could the Tenants and Residents Organisations of England to do the job originally intended for the NTV? Mr Crossley thinks not.
He says the NTV, which was set up by the major national tenant groups and includes members of many of them on its council, existed to fill gaps in tenant representation.
The other tenant groups are usually membership organisations which, by definition, are set up to represent their members.
The NTV had no such restrictions and could aim to reach those tenants currently unrepresented by existing groups, he adds.
The other option is the government’s plan for the local tenants’ panels, although it is unclear how these would work.
Mr Crossley thought Mr Shapps’ speech at the Chartered Institute of Housing’s conference in Harrogate in June, which mentioned tenants’ panels, proposed that they be the penultimate stage in the complaints process before involving the Housing Ombudsman rather than vehicles to shape national policy such as the NTV.
The cuts came as tenants were already reeling from the news that the future of the Tenant Services Authority, set up to be a tenant-focused regulator, is also under threat. Mr Crossley is clear the axe falling on both outfits is very bad news for tenants. ‘Some landlords are very good, some are pretty poor and there is a range in the middle,’ he explains. ‘Some tenants will suffer and the question is how they have redress when their landlord is not treating them fairly.’
Professor Steve Hilditch, who helped to set up the NTV, thinks that the demise of the NTV and threats to the TSA send a ‘worrying message’ to landlords which do not want to involve tenants in decisions.
He adds: ‘Rents, regulation, housing revenue account reform: all of those things are decided nationally and one role of the NTV was to have tentacles in communities picking up views and taking them nationally. That is what the NTV should be doing so if there is no NTV I think the government is saying it does not want tenants’ input on big national issues.’
Tenants’ thoughts
Some tenants like Mr Shapps’ idea of a network of local bodies but say these organisations still need a strong a national body to take their views to central government.
Indeed, it appears the minister has disappointed some tenants living in his own constituency. Jeanette Johnson, who sits on the tenants’ panel in Mr Shapps’ Welwyn Hatfield constituency, says: ‘I don’t think it is a good idea to pull the funding. I know they have to save money but I think they are looking in the wrong place. We need both national and local groups. It does not have to cost much money.’
Other tenants doubted how much the NTV, even once fully fledged, would have been listened to by government, but thought that the axing of its funding told a story about the new government’s attitudes to tenants.
Nigel Homer, a director of the Federation of Enfield Community Associations, says he thinks there will be other ways to getting tenants voice heard, perhaps through lobbying by existing federations. ‘The current government is set up by millionaires for the benefit of millionaires,’ he says wearily. ‘Tenants are not millionaires so I would think they are a low priority for them.’ The statement might sound a little cynical but the question now is whether Mr Shapps’ actions confirm or disprove it.
‘Shock’
Richard Crossley had hoped the NTV had a chance of avoiding the incineration in the government’s bonfire of the quangos. He says it was cheap compared with other quangos, with an unpaid chair and 50-tenant council; the chief executive is the only member of staff hired so far.
‘It is a real blow. We are still all in a state of shock,’ he says. ‘We have to look rationally to see what we can salvage from it.’ He refutes the idea that the organisation is remote. ‘We have a council of 50 tenants from around the country with links to other groups and individuals. Our plans were to spend a lot of time getting out to tenants that do not currently have a voice; the unheard.’
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Readers' comments (8)
Dave Hollins | 24/07/2010 3:44 pm
Good luck to the NTV in trying to keep going despite the appalling behaviour of Grant Shapps. Given his policies and plans, it doesn't surprise me that Shapps wants to silence tenants!!
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| 25/07/2010 1:47 am
I wish he'd silence you.
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Starlord | 25/07/2010 3:39 am
To date I've had no luck whatsoever making contact with the NTV despite sending emails! They appear to be as remote as the others. They "aim to reach those tenants currently unrepresented by existing groups". Do they indeed! How so? I've been hearing this for well over a year now. Hopeless! I think good riddance myself! Something far more ‘down to earth’ at the ‘grass roots’ level where tenant’s really live is called for, and not something so remote that is filled with many of the ‘usual suspects’. It must also be a level playing field!
TENANT PANELS
I cannot see how the idea of a ‘tenant panel’ would work if simply tacked on to existing approaches. What if the landlord refuses to admit a complaint through their 'complaints process' in the first place? This is very common in my own experience when dealing with my landlord New Charter Housing Trust Group Limited based in Tameside, Greater Manchester.
How could the 'tenant panel' even be involved if the ‘landlord is in Control’? No ‘Communities in Control’ here! The ‘tenant panel’ would be completely unaware of the complaint!
It would be absolutely essential that tenants elect tenants to serve on this ‘tenant panel’. The landlord should not be allowed to select 'nodding donkey’ tenants, as is so often the case at present under the current ‘tenant involvement’ agenda where landlords are in charge! It must be done independently of the landlord.
Perhaps we could have a tenant elected ‘tenant panel’ comprised of tenants chosen from tenants of all Social Landlord’s, based perhaps on Wards or Constituencies. No landlord would be in charge and tenants of different landlord’s would collectively judge all landlords! That sounds like a good idea to me! I like the sound of that!
HOUSING OMBUDSMAN (RSL's)
The Housing Ombudsman is powerless to act unless a written agreement or contract exists between landlord and tenant, or between landlord and tenant group. In other words the landlord can easily ignore tenant groups that don’t meet ‘their’ criteria! Too much power is in the landlords’ hands!
Further, no written agreement exists between landlord and non-constituted tenant groups. As such the landlord is not obliged to do anything and any grievance such a tenant group may have has no value when presented to the Housing Ombudsman. Again the Housing Ombudsman is powerless to act simply because there is no written agreement! And the landlord holds all the aces for they are not obliged to provide funding to facilitate meetings of such an embryonic tenant group until it is both formally constituted and agrees to the landlord’s terms!
And when a complaint is made about Governance matters a 'tenant panel' will be ineffective simply because the Housing Ombudsman is powerless to act on such matters. The landlord can simply ignore any such complaint as well as the views of a ‘tenant panel’ and let it pass to the castrated Housing Ombudsman!
NTV & TSA
It has not been my experience that the TSA has been a “tenant-focussed regulator” at all! The TSA was supposed to have some power in relation to Governance matters but this has not been my experience.
I for one would feel no remorse at the passing of the TSA, and the Housing Ombudsman for that matter. They can both 'bite the dust' for all the use they have been to date! If retained they need a complete overhaul. Something with real teeth is needed to empower tenants, something that would 'fit in' with this Coalition Government's ideas of the 'Big Society.'
I agree that the demise of the NTV and perhaps even the TSA will “send a ‘worrying message’ to landlords which do not want to involve tenants in decisions.” I know this would be the case with New Charter Housing Trust Group Limited!
What the NTV ought to have been doing and what it actually was doing are not necessarily the same! What feed-in mechanisms were there for tenants? How was the NTV going to reach down towards disenfranchised tenants who have no tenant representation and those tenants who are intentionally dis-empowered by their landlord! How would they reach out to tenants independently of their landlords?
I sincerely hope that grass-roots tenant empowerment is on the agenda and that the Coalition Government will enable real grass-roots feedback about such matters as "rents, regulation, housing revenue account reform”, etc. As it stands I have no such means and haven’t had any such means for the whole of my 26 years tenancy to date!
Love, Light & Laughter
Starlord
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Anonymous | 26/07/2010 12:31 pm
Tenants' panels wont work as they will not be designed to. Shapps is being a Tory he wants a society where those that have get more. The Localism Bill is the vehicle to deliver this as a self servers charter.
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| 26/07/2010 9:59 pm
"Shapps is being a Tory he wants a society where those that have get more. The Localism Bill is the vehicle to deliver this as a self servers charter"
No, the Tories want a society where effort is rewarded, not a society where others who can't be arsed live at the expense of those who can. God helps him who helps himself, as they say, and a self servers charter is infinitely preferable to a time servers charter, which was the public sector non-job creation scheme, and the lifetime-on-benefits scheme, as created by NuLab. The pendulum is swinging back toward reason and sanity at last...
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Sidney Webb | 26/07/2010 10:19 pm
I remember that film - wasn't the pendulum situated over a frightening pit or something - yep, get the analogy, good one!
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Chris | 26/07/2010 10:31 pm
Wouldn't it have been more hypocritical if Shapps had continued with the NTV and pretended to listen to it. Hey - hate the guy, but on this at least he is being up front with both fingers.
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Anonymous | 29/07/2010 2:34 pm
Bliss is it in this dawn to be alive and witness a bonfire of the vanities of national socialism aka the Labour project.
Now Grant, I think Meyrick Cockrell and John Moss, not forgetting John Redwood, have some interesting ideas about social housing landlords.
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