It’s not often that Tenant Services Authority chief executive Peter Marsh shares a page with David Beckham and Basshunter, but critics of the regulator seem to be reaching out to new audiences.
The News of the World yesterday carried a story claiming ‘Government watchdog resolves just 12 complaints a year’, and attacking the ‘£38 million watchdog quango’ for wasting public cash.
Whether any NoTW readers could tear themselves away from stories about the sexual habits of Celebrity Big Brother contestants, and David Beckham being turned down for a role in The Simpsons, to take an interest in social housing regulation is unclear.
So why has the paper suddenly decided to go for the regulator? The data it uses is hardly breaking news – it was published in the TSA’s annual report last November.
One clue could be the commentator quoted in the story, shadow housing minister Grant Shapps, who declares ‘taxpayers’ money is being wasted’. Mr Shapps has been vocal in his criticism of the TSA in the past; could the Conservative Party now be seeking new outlets for his concerns?
Either way, the angle taken by the paper seems a little unfair. Although the regulator only dealt with 12 of the 396 complaints it received directly, the vast majority of the remainder were referred to other organisations – often the relevant housing association or ombudsman – who would presumably be best placed to deal with them.
Have your say
You must sign in to make a comment
Readers' comments (2)
Melvin Bone | 11/01/2010 1:25 pm
Basshunter? What the hell has fishing got to do with housing?
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Stephen West | 13/01/2010 6:47 am
Quite frankly the Tenants Services Authority is just another quango just like the useless Housing Corporation that it replaced as neither are there to serve tenants rather than to monitor how millions of £s of public money it dishes out to Housing Associations is being spent, any Government department can just as easily do that without another layer of civil servants adding to the pockets of taxpayers . The word Tenant in TSA is just a blind as just like its predecessor it does not deal with complaints brought by tenants against their Registered Social Landlord that have not been dealt with to their satisfaction by their landlords in house and biased complaints system. The advice it gives is exactly the same as the HC was before, take your complaint to the Housing Ombudsman don't bother us with it that's not what we are here for. But the Housing Ombudsman will not take up a complaint brought by a tenant or group of tenants unless it has first gone through all the stages of the landlords in house complaints system first.
The trouble is, where does the disgruntled tenant or group of tenants go with their complaint against their RSL if as it is in our case our landlord refuses to acknowledge our complaint and deal with it through its normal complaints system, who do we take our complaint to then as we are blocked from even taking it to the Housing Ombudsman and the Tenants Services Authority is not there to deal with tenants complaints even if the complaints are against the services tenants are not getting but paying for. If we write to the landlords Board of Governance there is no guarantee they will see the letter of complaint as it first goes through the executive officers who only let the Board members know what they want them to know. The complaints that we hear off about the TSA are complaints against itself and the service it claims to be undertaking and has nothing to do with complaints brought by tenants against their landlords, the whole system is flawed and hopefully with a change of Government this quango the TSA will be swept away and hopefully a system brought in that will deal with real tenants complaints against their landlords who refuse and guillotine the complaint from being dealt with in the first place. Oh yes and any elected Councillors who might happen to sit on main boards of governance or subsidiary service boards of a Stock Transfer Association are not there for the benefit of their former local authority tenants but for the benefit of the Local Authority and former landlord as they never get involved with tenants complaints or respond to any correspondence from tenants regarding their RSL. Tenants of a Stock Transfer RSL are getting a raw deal from their landlord and can no longer hold their elected councillors to account over the shoddy services and treatment that they now receive from their current landlords.
Lets hope if the Tories do get in next time around that Grant Shapps is good by his word and kick the TSA in to the history books along with the past useless Housing Corporation, and set up a regulator with real teeth that can effectively monitor housing providers that get huge Government handouts and by that the best way of achieving that, is to listen to the complaints brought by tenants against their landlords that their landlords choose conveniently not to deal with for fear of public embarrassment and ridicule.
Stephen West
Chairman
Orbit Bexley Housing Association Independent Leaseholders Group
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment