A new regulatory framework for social housing in England

Response from Leeds Tenants Federation to the Tenant Services Authority’s statutory consultation on:

A new regulatory framework for social housing in England

Summary

Leeds Tenants Federation does not support the principles behind the Tenant Services Authority’s new regulatory framework. We believe that housing providers need to be regulated firmly in order to protect the interests of tenants, who have little power in the face of the organised interests of the providers.

The Tenant Services Authority plans to introduce ‘light-touch’ regulation to the social housing sector at a time when deregulation and liberalisation have brought disaster to the financial services sector.

If Martin Cave’s 2007 report ‘Every Tenant Matters’ had been published a year later it is unlikely that he would have made the same recommendation to reduce regulation in the social housing sector. The failure of the financial services sector to regulate itself reveals the damaging effects of liberalisation with its absence of scrutiny. This should act as a grave warning against proceeding with a ‘light-touch’ when regulating housing providers.

The influence of tenants in social housing organisations has been increased only through a regulatory framework of process-driven inspection. There is no reason to believe that social housing providers will maintain the same progress once that regime is lifted. The welcome that the TSA’s proposals have received from the housing profession should be a warning to tenants that power is about to be shifted once again from the consumers to the producers.

Whilst the principle of co-regulation would be welcome in an industry where customers had a powerful voice or unimpeded routes of exit, in the social housing sector expecting landlords to actively encourage criticism, scrutiny and intervention from their tenants is, as the phrase goes, like asking turkeys to vote for Christmas. The TSA’s expectation that all, or most, social landlords will consult their tenants on local standards in any meaningful way, or allow their tenants to exercise independent scrutiny in a process that has real teeth, is completely out of touch with reality.

There are a few excellent landlords whose organisational culture is infused with the principles of tenant empowerment. These companies can rightly be trusted to regulate themselves and their tenants will thrive under co-regulation. However, it is our experience in Leeds Tenants Federation, working with three ALMOs and twenty housing associations, including some of the biggest companies in the sector, that most social landlords will see co-regulation as an opportunity to cut standards, resist change, and promote their own interests against those of the customer, while increasing the involvement of their tenants in a bewildering array of fruitless, producer-led forums, panels and focus groups.

Read our full response to the Tenant Services Authority below (PDF file attached).