... not with all of these flaws

Did the minister consider for one moment:

• The workload and cost involved for hundreds of landlords having to carry out consultation on the cost of changing thousands of tenancy agreements, and then making the amendments?
• The cost in staff time and mileage of pre-inspection to ensure that work is really needed and the correct work is being ordered?
• The cost of staff time for producing and filing a letter giving written consent to go ahead, plus the cost of postage?
• The cost in staff time and mileage of post-inspection to ensure work really has been done, and to a safe standard?
• The cost in staff time dealing with disputes over the quality or cost of work?
• The cost of staff time in raising cheques and auditing the process to prevent abuse of funds?
• The cost of producing a covering letter to go with cheque and postage?
• The higher costs involved in doing individual one-off jobs rather than more cost-effective batching of work by type and area?
• The loss of bulk purchasing capacity to achieve best value?
• The fact that many small firms in a brutal economic climate are unlikely to give much attention to ethical or equal opportunity issues, or environmental sourcing of materials, or carry out costly Criminal Records Bureau checks on employees?

The largely unsupervised work, if done by tenants on their own, is a miserable substitute for a proper apprenticeship scheme that might develop real skills and lead to worthwhile employment opportunities?

While there was certainly some merit in the barely used right to improve scheme, the tenant repair scheme is yet another example of governments producing populist but unworkable or costly initiatives, or as with anti-social behaviour orders, tinkering with basically sound ideas that took years to get off the ground, just when some benefits were being seen.

John Pearce