One of the key proposals in the Social Housing Green Paper was
to strengthen the regulation of social housing and develop a suite
of measures or performance indicators for landlords which would be
reported to the Social Housing Regulator and published in league
tables to demonstrate how landlords are meeting the needs of the
residents.
We have previously reported how as a response
to the Social Housing Green Paper ARCH had established dialogue
with HouseMark, the National Federation of Almos (NFA) and the
Councils with ALMOs Group (CWAG) on how the sector might develop a
workable set of performance indicators and had involved the Local
Government Association (LGA), National Housing Federation (NHF) and
the Housing Ombudsman in those discussions.
The cross sector working group been widened and has come
together to seek to develop and influence new measures that better
reflect what tenants feel are important.
The working group now comprises representatives from ARCH, the
National Federation of ALMOs, the Council with ALMOs Group, the
National Housing Federation, Chartered Institute of Housing, the
Housing Ombudsman, Local Government Association, HouseMark, the G15
& G320 Group of housing associations and the Tenant
Participation Advisory Service and the Group have had preliminary
discussions with the Social Housing Regulator.
The Working Group recognises the need to put tenants at the
heart of any potential new consumer standards and is seeking to
talk to tenants very early in this work to steer the thinking if
the group in the right direction. As part of its programme of work
the Group has asked TPAS to facilitate two roundtable meetings with
tenant representatives to get tenants views on what new measures
could be used to assess landlords' performance against the
consumer regulatory standards.
ARCH Tenant Group representatives have been invited to take part
in these roundtables which are taking place over the next couple of
weeks in Manchester and in London with a cross section of housing
association, ALMO and Local authority tenants.
Watch out for more information on the ideas emerging from the
Working Group in future editions of the ARCH e-bulletin.