NTV in bid to carry on independently

The body, set up to give tenants the chance to influence national housing policy, was told by housing minister Grant Shapps last month it was to be scrapped as part of the government’s ‘bonfire of quangos’.

Mr Shapps told NTV heads, however, that he would be willing to consider an application for funds to look into ways in which the body could run independently.

Richard Crossley, chief executive of the NTV, is now working with key members of its 50-strong tenant council to come up with an alternative way of working.

This week he pledged the group ‘will salvage something out of it but we don’t know what yet’. ‘We are not going to give up that easily,’ he added.

The previous government set up the NTV with a £1.5 million budget, which was reduced to £1 million earlier this year.

Mr Shapps told the NTV it was ‘too distant’ and did not represent value for money.

Mr Crossley is the only paid member of the NTV, earning £65,000 a year. The withdrawal of government funding means it will no longer be able to employ staff, such as the administrator and press officer it had advertised for, nor will it be able to pay for its own events.

Michael Gelling, chair of the NTV, explained that the four national tenants groups - the Tenant Participation Advisory Service, Tenants’ and Residents’ Organisations of England, Confederation of Co-operative Housing and National Federation of Tenant Management Organisations - still intended to set up a separate ‘joint national tenant scrutiny committee’.

The groups announced their intention to form the independent committee in April. They saw it as a way to provide an alternative form of scrutiny because, at the time, the NTV was government-funded and unable to speak out during the general election campaign.

‘The tenants’ organisations are still there - they can’t get rid of us,’

Mr Gelling said. ‘And there still needs to be scrutiny.’ Although he said the groups had decided to wait until the government’s review of regulation had concluded before proceeding.

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