| There is a shortage of affordable housing and a growing number of public agencies seeking to deliver more homes in the South East and tackle the problems of areas in the Midlands and the North with low housing demand. The majority of the Government's funding for new social housing is managed by the Housing Corporation, but the Corporation's relationships with other agencies are not sufficiently defined and their roles are sometimes duplicated. The Corporation needs to work closely with English Partnerships and all the other new agencies being set up as a result of the Government's Communities Plan. The public funds would be better used if the agencies owning the land and the public funders were brought closer together to promote mixed tenure housing schemes. The Government needs to clarify the distinct roles played by English Partnerships and the Housing Corporation in promoting housing development.
Regional Housing Boards have been set up to prepare regional strategies. They must secure greater participation from within the regions they represent and could take on an important role in overseeing housing investment in their regions, monitoring the delivery of new development. The Housing Corporation should develop a close relationship with each of the Regional Housing Boards, should provide them with monitoring reports and consult them on the distribution of funds.
Under pressure from the Government to lever the maximum number of homes from its funding, the Housing Corporation is allocating more funds to fewer housing associations and prioritising schemes using prefabricated construction systems. There is no evidence that larger housing associations are any more efficient, and if they work across several areas may not provide the quality of management which a smaller locally based housing association could. Over the last 50 years the Government has used prefabricated construction systems to boost the supply of housing. Their design has often been poor, and they have subsequently caused problems in terms of maintenance. The Committee is concerned that the lessons from these systems have not been learned and problems are being stored up for the future.
The Government has transferred the responsibility for the inspection of housing association homes to the Audit Commission. There is a possibility that this could result in the duplication of much of the work of the Housing Corporation which regulates housing associations and is looking increasingly at the quality of their housing services. The Government needs to make a clear distinction between the regulatory role of the Housing Corporation and the inspection regime performed by the Audit Commission. The Housing Corporation also needs to develop new ways to encourage associations to improve their services and to play a greater role in neighbourhood management.
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