Select Committee on Office of the Deputy Prime Minister: Housing, Planning, Local Government and the Regions Eighth Report

3 The Housing Corporation's national role

14. The Housing Corporation has up to now mainly focused on the allocation of funds to individual housing associations and the development of an effective regulation regime mainly focused on financial probity. In recent years it has become concerned with ensuring effective service delivery to housing association tenants. Evidence to the Committee highlighted the Corporation's success in spending 99% of its allocation from central Government in most years. Few housing associations have become insolvent. Submissions suggest that the Corporation needs a new overall vision, remit and strategic role, but that it should retain its regulatory role over all housing associations.

A new national vision and role

15. The Housing Corporation has lost its vision as it has become increasingly confined to delivering increasing numbers of Government programmes rather than helping to develop overall policies and strategies. It should enhance its national role in developing national housing policy, acting as champion of social housing and disseminating good practice.

16. Charlie Adams, the chief executive of Hyde Housing Association, told the Committee:

"It (the Housing Corporation) had a very clear and specific vision in the 1970's and that has gradually been reduced. The reason it has been reduced is that effectively government has added functions and responsibilities and taken away functions and responsibilities and if the Corporation is to have a new vision it is government that has to give it to it; it cannot really create it on its own."[5]

17. The Consortium of Associations in the South East said:

"We believe that government should now give the Housing Corporation a new sense of direction and stability so that it is able to adopt a more creative role than it has over the last decade."[6]

The Local Government Association suggested that the management statement which regulates the work of the Housing Corporation was inadequate.

"The LGA believes that the national policy context in which the ODPM sets out the performance targets for the Corporation is unclear. The ODPM and the Housing Corporation need to think more strategically about what are the key national outputs of the investment and regulatory process. The current use of the Management Statement to define the relationship between ODPM and the Corporation does not reflect the realities of current roles and responsibilities. The Corporation needs to be able to focus on a clearly set out number of prioritised targets."[7]

Developing National Policy and Championing social landlords

18. Evidence to the Committee suggested that the Housing Corporation's role should be to work at a national level to inform Government policies, act as a public champion for social housing at a national level, and help develop a national housing strategy to be implemented by other agencies at a regional and local level.

19. The Council of Mortgage Lenders said:

"With its repository of data and experience of the HA sector the HC is in a position to be an expert commentator, able to advise and warn (although the HC has a weak strategic policy function, and this has limited such work). Unfortunately, it appears that the ODPM and the HC itself have often seen its role as simply that of a delivery mechanism, and that the HC has sometimes been passive in the absence of a positive steer from the Government."[8]

20. The Chartered Institute of Housing goes further, suggesting that the Housing Corporation should take the lead in developing a strategic vision for the housing association sector.

"Its concern with "delivery" and its focus on the regulation of individual associations neither reflects the complexity of local housing markets nor the broader picture of the sector's future. CIH is keen to see the Corporation take a more proactive role in developing a strategic vision for the sector."[9]

National housing strategy

21. Evidence to the Committee suggested that the Housing Corporation should concentrate on developing a national housing strategy which it could help implement with the regional housing boards and the elected regional assemblies if they are set up. The Local Government Association argued that:

"The role of the Housing Corporation as a national investment distribution agency needs to be further developed as the Regional Housing Boards grow in their ability to make regional decisions on resource distribution. The LGA believes that the Corporation will now need to move towards a national resource distribution role rather than a regional role as the Regional Housing Boards will now increase their competence and capacity at the regional level"[10]

The West Midlands Regional Housing Board proposed that:

"there would be a national framework both of funding and of policy and of key strands of housing policy which the regions would be asked in effect to relate to the regional needs in perhaps slightly different ways. So the Housing Corporation, through that relationship with ODPM, would be very much part of that."[11]

Disseminating best practice

22. The Housing Corporation could have a clearer role in disseminating good practice. It has an £8.5 million budget for Innovation and Good Practice, and Community Training and Enabling. The results of this programme of development work have not been used strategically and do not appear to be effectively disseminated. With the possible exception of the Market Renewal Programme, it does not appear to have been particularly influential over Government housing or social policy. David Cowans from the Places for People Group told the Committee:

"There needs to be a role for someone to have an overview of the whole housing market and to relay best practice between regional agencies, otherwise one can inadvertently create ossification as regions do not learn from each other. Hopefully that would not happen, but it might."[12]

Jon Rouse, the Corporation's new chief executive, accepted that the Housing Corporation could use its information more effectively:

"It (the Housing Corporation) has done an extraordinary amount through its Innovation and Good Practice Programme on these issues. What it has not been so good at, and this is something we need to correct, is disseminating its findings in a form which housing associations and local authorities and other housing providers can use on an accessible basis. That is something that we need to correct…….. What we need to do more in future is benchmark performance so there are very few hiding places."[13]

23. The Housing Corporation should no longer be a passive delivery agency for Government housing programmes. It should take on a national role in terms of contributing towards a national framework for housing and acting as the public champion of social housing alongside the Local Government Association and the National Housing Federation. It needs to take on a strategic role in overseeing the work of the Regional Housing Boards.

24. The Housing Corporation should retain its regulatory role over housing associations and should use the best practice and examples of innovative projects which it has developed to raise the quality of housing association management. The results of its innovation and good practice programme should be actively disseminated and used in a way which informs strategic priorities.

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5   Q3 Back

6   THC24 Back

7   THC13 Back

8   THC10 Back

9   THC14 Back

10   THC 13 Back

11   Q263 Back

12   Q7 Back

13   Q357-358 Back

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Prepared 29 June 2004