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The National Housing Federation (NHF) has said it would be “keen” to develop the metrics for new social landlord league tables rather than see them imposed on the sector by government.
The headline proposal of the Social Housing Green Paper, to create publicly available league tables of landlords, was widely panned by sector bodies including the NHF in response to a consultation on the paper this week.
But the group said it would be “keen” to develop the measures which underpin this table should it go ahead, saying they must “reflect the local priorities, circumstances and diversity of the sector”.
Catherine Ryder, head of policy at the NHF, said: “We’ve been really clear that we have a role to play in that [developing metrics].
“What we haven’t done is take that on and start developing that set of metrics. That work is something we’re very keen to be involved in. We want to convene people and start talking to them, but that conversation is really early.”
The ‘league table’ proposal follows the launch of a Sector Scorecard – a new set of benchmarks of financial performance – developed by the sector and adopted by the Regulator of Social Housing as a means of assessing value for money in March this year.
League tables, though, would cover much wider and more contentious ground, covering subjects such as repairs, building safety, complaint handling, engagement with residents and neighbourhood management.
Performance in the league tables could also be linked to access to housing grant.
In its consultation the NHF said: “We have heard from many residents that they do not think league tables will make them feel more empowered or better equipped to hold their landlord to account.”
It added that this could “entrench stigma”.
This view was echoed by Tpas, which represents tenant engagement organisations, and said the idea of league tables was “essentially pointless”.
The proposal was also criticised in consultation responses from the Local Government Association, the Chartered Institute of Housing, the G15 group of large London providers and the Association of Retained Council Housing.
Simon Dow, interim chair of the Regulator for Social Housing, has previously hit back at critics of league tables saying they had not provided "any compelling case for what to do instead".
All our Social Housing Green Paper coverage in one place:
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