Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-42)
MR ANTHONY
MAYER AND
PETER MARSH
21 OCTOBER 2008
Q40 Sir Paul Beresford: Looking at
a web-based system, of course, you have to recognise that a proportion
of your tenants that you were expecting to use it cannot because
they just cannot use computers, but you are obviously prepared
to have an allocation system that suits the horse that you are
dealing with—horses for courses—and are prepared to
make it small enough to represent those people on those estates
or in that particular association.
Mr Marsh: TSA has not yet said
the allocation system should operate on that locality-based approach.
What we were talking about earlier on was a standards framework
but it needs to recognise that what one estate wants can be very
different from what another estate wants, based upon its history,
its stock and its housing need. There is a challenge for large
organisations to make sure that they can be both good as corporate
entities but also engage people locally and I think that is a
challenge that is reconcilable. The idea that 50,000 people in
one landlord's responsibility should all have the same standard
of service is quite frankly bonkers and no wider organisation
would operate in that way. If Tesco can do it I do not see why
a housing association cannot do it as well.
Q41 Mr Betts: I want to move to rents
and we briefly touched on them before. Is it an issue that you
want to be looking at? The extent to which, I suppose, social
housing grants have been spread so thinly has meant that there
has been more private money brought into housing associations
but it has had the effect over a longer term of pushing rents
up to the point where perhaps now they have become a disincentive
to people getting into the workplace because they lose their housing
benefits, or at least a proportion of them, and we can see large
areas of housing where hardly anybody works. The second question
is one you touched on before about this issue of choice, that
the current rent regime across RSLs and local authorities is so
restrictive now that it almost prevents housing organisations
going to their tenants and saying, "We will offer you that
better service. This is the rent that we are paying", either
on a collective or an individual basis.
Mr Marsh: I think some statistics
were published two weeks ago which have shown the divergence between
social rented tenant rents and the outright private market rents.
My recollection is that in every region in England the gap between
those two has grown over the last 10 years rather than shrunk,
so whilst we are, for both the local authority sector and the
housing association sector, on different timelines for rent convergence
I think the rent convergence formula for housing associations—which
is RPI plus a half—has not led to a huge inflation of rents
compared to the private sector. We are back to the fundamental
question of lack of enough numbers of homes to either buy or rent
in the first place. For us the real challenge is the discussion
that we began to have earlier on around the rental policy and
the relationship between rents, service charges and benefits.
That is a discussion that we have only just begun to have and
I do not think we have the full answer to that situation at all
but we do recognise that that is one of the issues that the TSA
will need to develop and tackle in response to its rent policy.
That rent policy is one that the Secretary of State reserves the
right to direct, so we need to have this conversation in partnership
with tenants, with the CLG and with DWP because if there are barriers
that mean that estates that were originally built as mixed communities
become—and I hate the phrase—"residualised estates"
where people choose not to live if they have a choice, then quite
frankly all the section 106 infill schemes that we might be able
to fund, or the Homes and Communities Agency might be able to
fund, will be inconsequential compared to the impact of a concentration
of deprivation in one particular area.
Mr Mayer: In my eight and a half
years away from the fray I see this desperate issue of the poverty
trap a little better but not a lot better. It is absolutely the
case that you are creating segments of society whose incentive
to get out to work is not as high as it should be because of the
level of effective tax they pay as they get into work and do overtime,
etc. The issue of the poverty trap taper or the benefits taper
I remain of a strong view is something that we need to address.
It has got better but it still needs a lot of progress.
Q42 Andrew George: On that very point,
is that something where you see the role of the TSA making representations
to government to be bringing forward particular proposals? Do
you think that is the role?
Mr Mayer: I am a well-behaved
quangocrat; it is for ministers and MPs to lead this debate, not
quangos, but what we can do very easily and if I have got anything
at all to do with it as soon as I get my board enthused with this
issue, is basically do research, get facts about the position,
particularly of individuals around that £10,000/£12,000
income who want to prove themselves, how much they lose as they
get more money, to get the debate going and then fundamentally
leave it to politicians to take the final decisions. Certainly,
if I can make a personal contribution to this whole issue, I would
regard that as something of an achievement.
Chair: On that very positive note, although
I have to say you have a touching faith that all politicians operate
on the basis of facts, although certainly more facts would always
be very helpful, can I thank you both very much indeed? We all
think the TSA is a very innovative organisation and we will be
looking at your progress and doubtless be calling you back in
at some point to check up on what you are doing.
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