Obviously there will be personal pain for Audit Commission employees who lose their jobs - although some may survive if discussions aimed at establishing a private housing audit/inspection business succeed. But more widely, the impact of commission’s abolition might not prove that severe. The organisation’s inspection role had already been dramatically scaled back in recent years. Aside from its short-notice inspection programme, its only other housing roles were inspecting organisations when the regulator had concerns about their performance and assessing whether arm’s-length management organisations qualified for two-star status, enabling access to funding. Mr Pickles must promptly answer calls for clarity on this issue as there are five ALMOs yet to attain their two-stars and so effectively left in limbo.
The Audit Commission has undoubtedly played an important role in improving standards of service across housing providers and highlighting significant failing services - Birmingham, Hull and the Westminster ‘homes for votes scandal’ to name but a few. Under the new regulatory regime, however, landlords have already taken on responsibility for ensuring performance is continuously improved. Indeed they are already answerable to their tenants on this score, a fact no doubt not lost on Mr Pickles and his officials in their call for future scrutiny of public spending to be conducted by an ‘army of armchair auditors’.
The timetable which Mr Pickles has set his officials to establish a housing regulatory framework to replace all that he has swept away is tight - the regulatory review team must complete its work in time for the upcoming decentralisation and localism bill and the spending review on 20 October. However, there is still an opportunity for landlords to have their say in shaping the future environment in which they operate. They should seize it with both hands.
Have your say
You must sign in to make a comment
Readers' comments (3)
Anonymous | 20/08/2010 8:10 pm
"Under the new regulatory regime, however, landlords have already taken on responsibility for ensuring performance is continuously improved. Indeed they are already answerable to their tenants on this score"
Really? My over-large and powerful social landlord promptly and unilaterally disengaged with historic and effective tenant representation rather than remain 'answerable to [its] tenants'. The TSA appears to be intent on avoiding subjecting this calculated disengagement to regulatory consideration and action. The Audit Commission is not even on the horizon, and the Housing Ombudsman is more concerned with enforcing compliance with the RSL's secretive and largely undocumented 'complaints process' than with entertaining a complaint about this (and many other matters).
Can Stuart MacDonald (the writer of the above article) explain how the landlord's accountability fits into this situation?
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
| 21/08/2010 8:28 am
Quite. It doesn't and he knows it. As pointed out ad nauseum the TSA scrapped all old HC standards for HAs in favour of "local standards" ie whatever the HA wants, it gets and the "light touch regulation" that worked so well over at FSA with the banks. It's not a watchdog, you cannot complain about RSL performance to them and it served no real regulatory purpose whatsover. Who needs a regulator if the position of the regulator is "regulate yourself"? Get rid of it. And they did.
Re AC, check out the FT commentary on the abolition and what is proposed to replace the inspection function:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/09af4d98-a706-11df-90e5-00144feabdc0,dwp_uuid=109b789a-b362-11de-ae8d-00144feab49a.html
"The move would go “hand in hand” with his plan to “create an army of armchair auditors – local people able to hold local bodies to account for the way their tax pounds are spent and what that money is delivering”."
Spot on Pickles. I'll sign up for that. The right local people know where the bodies are buried and know just where to look as they are on the receiving end of the services. I look forward to star chambers where timeserving and incompetent LA and RSL officers are grilled about performance and VFM issues by the recipients of their "services" in a way the AC never did. Be afraid public sector timeservers, be very afraid...!
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Junior | 22/08/2010 11:24 am
While I totally agree with you ILAG - I must say that due to the TSA being involved in our Housing Association inspection. I must say in my heart of heart's. I believe that the Tenant's Trigger in our case did work. We may of been kept out of the loop but behind close doors and with the Local Authority something has or is being done. But like a firm of solicitor's and under the Data Proctection Act the Tenant's wasn't informed. But has we dig deep and deep. I believe over the coming month we find out. I totally agreed with the section you say a "regulator regulating itself" but again in my heart of heart's I believe because I kept knocking on the door and kept senting my evidence in - in a court of law I could proof that if you do nothing we will have our evidence for the Court's.
I want the Management and the Board to be grilled and we been trying to get in to see the Board a number of years........ and stop us going to the AGM too............
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment