As a recent housing network Q&A showed, the issue of where accountability lies in social housing is causing debate in the sector.
After I left the TSA I met one of the larger housing associations to talk through how I might help them develop their approach to tenant scrutiny. I was initially reassured by them that they had welcomed the approach of the TSA and then quietly disillusioned by their relief that they didn't have to meet the co-regulatory ideals set out in the Regulatory Framework.
They weren't against tenant involvement in service delivery. They just didn't want any real accountability or scrutiny of that service. Ironically Grant Shapps has turned out to be one of the biggest advocates of both co-regulation and tenant scrutiny.
In theory the answer is quite clear – accountability rests with the landlord's governing body for meeting the TSA's standards including involving tenants in service delivery and improvement, the opportunity for local offers, honest and robust self-assessment and tenant scrutiny.
Listening to and working with tenants and landlords throughout the country I'm pleased to say that there is lots of emerging good practice around tenant scrutiny panels, local offers, widening out tenant involvement and effective complaints policies. Although everyone is on a sharp learning curve for many landlords this is an enduring commitment.
However the fact remains that some landlords just don't get it. They took Grant Shapps at his word about getting rid of consumer regulation, buried their head in the sand and left their long suffering tenant involvement staff to get on with something that will keep the TSA off their backs. They have been joined by landlords like the one I mentioned above who have quietly downgraded their plans to a more tokenistic approach.
But what about when things go wrong? When the idea of consumer regulation working through complaints was first floated last summer I looked into the links between how good a landlord was, and their handling of complaints. I came to the perhaps unsurprising conclusion that bad landlords handled complaints badly.
This helped sink the idea that consumer regulation could rely solely on tenants complaining (although remnants of this idea still exist in the absurd democratic filter proposal). What it also did was point out the limitations of an approach that relies solely on landlords to get it right. In addition landlords who don't handle complaints effectively are also unlikely to have tenant scrutiny, local offers or the robust self-assessment that allows them to identify and deal with a range of issues including financial viability and good governance.
The TSA was meant to provide a backstop to ensure co-regulation was solidly entrenched in all landlords. However a combination of talking down of their role in public plus further cuts in funding have left the TSA only able to respond to serious failure. However, the irony is that in reducing the TSA's role the government may have, however inadvertently, stored up more serious failure in the long term.
Phil Morgan is the former executive director of Tenant Services at the TSA, consultant and speaker on social housing
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