A league of their own

One of the few measures to make it into the secretary of state’s foreword to the long-awaited, 76-page social housing green paper was the most controversial and eye-catching: performance league tables.

The proposal, published in the summer, was not a surprise and quickly provoked dissent from sector figures. Three months on, all key bodies have come out against the measure, including the Chartered Institute of Housing, the National Housing Federation, the Local Government Association and Tpas.

Critics have raised concerns that a league table approach would be reductive, lack context, risk incentivising the wrong behaviours and, crucially, wouldn’t be useful for tenants since they don’t have the option to change landlords based on performance.

The government’s proposal was set out in a section titled “arming residents with information on landlord performance”, making Tpas’s response all the more damning. The tenant engagement body expressed fears that league tables could increase stigmatisation of social tenants and woudn’t lead to performance improvement. It calls instead for “meaningful data” focusing on individual organisations.

But tenants are not the only intended audience for the performance data.

Since government published the green paper, the prime minister has delivered a keynote address to housing associations, promised long term partnership and scrapped the local authority borrowing cap. But there are strings attached. In return she is asking for more homes, higher quality standards, large-scale development – and building through the next recession. She wants to know that social landlords are delivering, and to link performance and grant funding.

The regulator, for its part, has been tasked with providing robust oversight of consumer standards, and been warned that the government wishes to hold the regulator to account.

The sector’s resistance to league tables could therefore risk putting it on a collision course with ministers and the regulator. Regulatory chair Simon Dow has already confronted dissenters and challenged them to provide a “compelling case” for what to do instead.

The green paper is clear that government favours league tables but concedes that other approaches should be considered. Alternatives will need to satisfy the needs of tenants, government and the regulator. Green paper consultation responses are clear that landlords support the use of metrics, and suggestions far include individual key performance indicators and provision of supporting narratives.

There is no time to lose building on and refining these ideas, and developing a cross-sector proposal.