Chief executive places tenants at the heart of TSA’s ‘transparent’ system
Red tape cut as Marsh opts for local liability
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The Tenant Services Authority plans to axe more than 50 diktats and good practice notes in a bonfire of red tape.
Instead it will place much more responsibility for meeting standards in the hands of landlords, tenants and housing association boards.
In a consultation on its plans for a new regulatory framework, the TSA vows to spend its first full year cracking down on the poorest performing providers and admits that it will rely ‘in some areas on the absence of indications of non-compliance, including complaints, whistleblowing etc, rather than explicitly collecting and assessing information’.
Landlords will have to publish annual information stating whether or not they have met national standards.
Six standards form the centre of the TSA’s regulatory plan: tenant involvement and empowerment; home (including repairs and maintenance); tenancy (including allocations and rent); neighbourhood and community (including anti-social behaviour); value for money; and governance and financial viability.
Landlords and tenants will work together to develop local standards - although the TSA does not define what a local area is.
Peter Marsh, chief executive of the TSA, said: ‘In return [for the reduction in red tape] we will expect landlords to be more transparent in their performance and make themselves more accountable to their tenants. Our clear shift from topdown targets to local accountability, coupled with applying the standards to all social housing providers - so that, regardless of which social housing provider they rent from, all tenants will receive a similar standard of service in the future - represents the biggest shake-up in housing regulation for decades.’
Some industry figures have suggested the emphasis on co-regulation could mean housing associations operate more competitively, raising salaries to attract the best senior staff.
Hugh Laird, chief executive of the Board Development Agency, said that, in order to attract the right kind of people to meet the new responsibilities, associations ‘may work more competitively and raise salaries in line with commercial organisations’.
The document also states that housing providers ‘must offer and issue the most secure form of tenure’.
Tenants’ organisations had threatened to campaign against the regulator over a line in a previous TSA consultation document which stated that ‘the use of less secure tenancies may be justifiable in areas where demand for homes significantly outstrips supply’.
But the new consultation does give landlords some room for manoeuvre by stating that they must use the most secure form of tenure compatible with the ‘sustainability of the community’.
Michael Gelling, chair of Tenants’ and Residents’ Organisations of England, said: ‘The proposed framework places tenant involvement and empowerment at the heart of regulation, and this can only be positive.’
The shape of things to come
What the consultation says
‘Those organisations where we have no indications of risk of standards failure, and about whom there are no other contra-indications of compliance, can expect to be subject to only minimum levels of regulatory engagement.’
‘We expect that most inspections will be targeted short notice inspections rather than full inspections.’
‘To limit burdens, we want the annual reports on standards to rely, as far as possible, on information that providers collect for their own purpose.’
What Peter Marsh says
‘We will expect landlords to be more transparent in their performance and make themselves more accountable to their tenants.’
New rules - The countdown
5 February 2010
Statutory consultation closes
March 2010
TSA publishes decision statement on regulatory framework
1 April 2010
TSA co-regulation begins
1 October 2010
Deadline for providers with more than 1,000 properties to publish plans for developing local standards, and a report detailing how they already meet national standards
1 April 2011
Local standards come into force
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Readers' comments (5)
gollygosh | 12/11/2009 2:08 pm
Tenants will look forward to this- despite the lack of trust they hold for HA's. I hope that they are not let down again and that the sector can build secure and responsive services without the cold hand of charity and patronising attitudes being so evident.
Good Luck. GollyGosh
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Stephen West | 12/11/2009 6:45 pm
The biggest failure of RSL' s/ Housing Associations is to adequately consult and listen to the views and concerns of its residents. Our landlords Orbit South have failed to consult and listen to its residents in Bexley on several important services that affect their residents. The biggest and far reaching of all is the removal of what many residents considered in the past to be a designated warden service akin to their own estates and blocks of flats. This was altered to a Pooled Estates/ Pooled Block Warden Service which can see two / three wardens on our estate together for an hour of any day and then no sighting of a warden until the next day. At weekends a skeleton service is in operation which means that we may see two wardens on our estates for just ten minutes in the morning and that in high rise blocks of 50+ dwellings we are fortunate to get a cleaner to clean communal areas twice maybe three times a week. For these services our estates can be charged tens of thousands of pounds in a year.
Our landlords will not budge despite many many complaints from residents that they are not receiving the services that they feel they are contributing towards in their rents and service charges. There is no independent body to appeal to, and Boards of Governance are impossible to get in direct contact with unless having to go through the landlords complaint system which can take many months.
Residents want more empowerment to be able to dictate to their landlords the services they want within their blocks and on their estates that they live and are prepared to pay for, it should not be left to the other way round of landlords failing to consult and dictating to its residents what services they are going to provide when and where and at what cost.
Stephen West
Chairman
Orbit Bexley Housing Association Independent Leaseholders Group
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DavidJ | 13/11/2009 9:17 am
Leaseholders now have more control over the management of thier blocks than ever before. With the introduction of the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002 they have more access to information, enhanced consultation rights, and 'no fault' right to manage by establishing a either a RTMCo or by appointing other agents. However if you are in a mixed tenure block of flats then this may not be the case, however you still have your consultation rights, and access to expenditure receipts/accounts.
However, it will be interesting to see how the TSA's proposals affect rented tenants on a day-to-day basis, but I have to say less red tape is always welcome.
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Pam Lockley | 15/11/2009 10:52 am
Is this really going to be the biggest shake up for decades? Red tape is not the same as regulation. Everyone supports red tape being reduced, but when "industry figures" draw the bizarre but depressingly predictable conclsion that higher pay will be needed for senior managers, my view is - "Someone needs to regulate this!"
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Veritas | 20/11/2009 1:28 pm
I very much doubt if the TSA will be able to deliver this new approach, welcome devlopment though it is. There are now so many senior leaders incapable of indepenedent thought or getting any real sense of what matters to tenants. The senior leaders who could do so have been replaced by people more interested in progressing their own careers. Many of them have no sense of civic duty to public service. They only service their personal bank accounts to the highest bidder.
Well done Tony Blair et al.
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