Examination of Witnesses (Questions 353
- 359)
MONDAY 5 FEBRUARY 2007
MR MATTHEW
GARDINER, MR
GAVIN SMART,
MS TERESA
BUTCHERS, MR
DAVID COWANS
AND MR
RICHARD BAYLEY
Q353 Chair: Would
you mind saying who you are and, since we have such a very large
number of witnesses, and, as you will have noticed, we have got
incredibly behind already, on this series of questions I will
try to get the members of the Committee to focus the questions,
but could you focus your answers as well?
Ms Butchers: Teresa Butchers,
I am the Chief Executive of Devon and Cornwall Housing Group.
The group has 13,000 properties in management and two associations,
Devon and Cornwall Housing Association, which is a traditional
association and Penwith Housing Association based in Penzance
which is an LSVT.
Mr Gardiner: I am Matthew Gardiner.
I am a Director of the National Housing Federation, the trade
body that represents 1,400 housing associations in England; I
am also Chief Executive of Trafford Housing Trust, which is a
10,000 home stock transfer in Trafford that is two years old.
Mr Cowans: My name is David Cowans.
I am the Chief Executive of the Places for People Group and we
have made a separate submission. I will not bore you with the
details because they are in the papers.
Mr Bayley: My name is Richard
Bayley. I am the Group Head of Planning, Policy and Performance
at Places for People.
Mr Smart: I am Gavin Smart. I
am an Assistant Director for Research and Futures at the National
Housing Federation.
Q354 Mr Betts:
Housing associations have been around for some time now. They
have got track records of varying degrees of quality. ALMOs are
very new, yet from the Audit Commission's inspection reports ALMOs
do rather better, do they not?
Mr Smart: It is true to say that
ALMOs have done very well and provide a very good service, and
I do not think we have a problem with that. I would draw your
attention to the fact that the ALMO inspection regime is relatively
simple in comparison with the inspection regime that housing associations
have to conform to, and also it is not only the inspection regime
that housing associations have to meet. I think part of the explanation
is in trying to hit a wider range of targets, but that is not
critical of the ALMO sector, who have done a very good job.
Mr Cowans: My view is that there
is more than enough work for everybody in this business and, if
people are doing well, then that is great, there is work for everyone
else to follow. So, long may it continue.
Q355 Mr Betts:
That is one way of glossing over the subject, I suppose. I look
at the Audit Commission's inspection scores and I see the excellent
rating of ALMOs, about 25%. On the chart that I have got for housing
associations, you can hardly see it, they are down to a couple
of per cent. That is an awfully big difference, is it not? Fine,
ALMOs are doing well. Why are not housing associations doing well
as well?
Mr Gardiner: If I can offer one
possible explanation for that, which is that the focus for the
ALMO is both smaller in terms of its organisation, and its focus
on its achievements and star ratings for its financial future
makes the organisation that much more committed to delivering
the stars that the Audit Commission requires. I think housing
associations have taken a broader view of their role within communities
than ALMOs are able to do. I think that the iNbusiness for neighbourhoods
agenda that many housing associations follow is not the same as
the star rating agenda that the Audit Commission expects ALMOs
and housing associations to follow.
Q356 Mr Betts:
I find it difficult, when I certainly know an ALMO which is very
much involved in managing open space in the widest sense and employing
local community wardens, that ALMOs are not addressing the issue.
Many of them are. I want to pick up on one thing you said there
about ALMOs being able to focus on their particular area. Is it
the fact that some housing associations have got so big and are
such grand national bodies that they have lost touch with the
direct day-to-day management of issues in the community?
Mr Gardiner: We have very large
housing association able to manage issues, but my view on that
would be, no, that the mechanisms exist for housing associations
to co-operate and collaborate with each other at the neighbourhood
level irrespective of where their head office might be located.
Mr Cowans: I think it is true
that there is a different management task from someone running
a lot of property very close together than those who, like my
own organisation, run properties across a broad range of geographies.
However, that concentration of property of itself might make some
efficiencies but it also reduces people's choice, I would argue.
I also think it is very difficult to deal with specifics in the
generality of the average. I would hate to sound like the academic
who was here before me, but there is this real difficulty about
dealing with vast averages, because in particular geographies
in particular places different organisations do particular things
very, very well and others do not, and I think in the overall
mix of housing services and regeneration of services and, in my
own case, supporting housing for sale and all the other things
we do, there is a lot of added value that the Audit Commission
themselves would accept does not get picked up in the inspections.
I would echo my colleague's view that there is a view about the
inspection process. The other interesting thing is if you look
at the key lines of inquiry approach which the Audit Commission
adopt, they are growing all the time on their understanding of
this broader role for housing providers. I think there is also
a role for traditional Housing Associations in broadening that
range of activity. I would be the first to say we always need
to get better. I was not trying to gloss over it at all, I was
simply making the point that if people are doing well we all ought
to follow them.
Ms Butchers: With Carrick ALMO
being a near neighbour of my association, I think there are a
lot of things we can learn from ALMOs as traditional associations,
but I also think there is a lot of work we can do together. Certainly
in my area the tenants of both the ALMO and the associations do
a lot of work together and learn from each other. As other people
have said, I think there is space for both.
Q357 Emily Thornberry:
What kind of incentives would help to improve the overall performance
of Housing Associations? At what level should they be able to
kick in? Should they be at an RSL level or should they be set
at a estate?
Mr Bayley: I think the main incentive
is around the regulation of the housing sector going forward,
and that is to have a less bureaucratic regulation, more customer-focused
regulation, and a long-term framework with a long-term framework
and a long-term funding framework, to support that. If you have
that kind of mix of regulation and framework, what it injects
is customer focus into how we, as companies, provide our products
and services and it allows us to create some efficiencies which
we can then feed back into the communities we work with.
Q358 Emily Thornberry:
We would all agree that the services should be customer-focused,
but how would you do that? What are you talking about?
Mr Bayley: What I am talking about
there is to have a good set of regulations which are outcome-focused
around customer products and services, customer deliverables,
so that we would be judged on what the customers think of our
service.
Ms Butchers: I think there is
already a set of incentives building up in the way the Corporation
is now managing a much more risk-based regulation so that there
is an incentive for there to be, as it were, less risk, to perform
better, in order to have less regulations. It is following that
move a bit further along the line that would be helpful so that
one of the rewards and incentives for good performance is less
regulation, and that can be both in terms of visits, in terms
of returns submitted, and so forth, there is a whole stream of
things that could help.
Q359 Emily Thornberry:
When things go wrong at RSL level the Housing Corporation can
simply shift all the property to another RSL, can they not? Do
you think that it should be possible to be able to do anything
like that at a estate?
Ms Butchers: I think the idea
of giving tenants some choice as to who their landlord should
be is a very interesting one which would start to bring in elements
of choice. You have to look at the economies of scale, so you
could not go down in some rural villages where you have got half
a dozen houses and so forth, it might be quite difficult, but
it is a very interesting avenue to explore, yes.
Mr Cowans: Just to broaden it
out a bit. If the supply of rented housing is the focus, then
the interesting issue for me is not just about the traditional
services, it is how we can create real choice for people. In our
submission we talk about, and have developed this year, our own
mortgage product to allow people to acquire a property at a range
of discounts and at a range of different proportions of equity,
and what we are prepared to do on our balance sheet is shift them
up and down the tenure chain as suits their particular situation.
That starts to create a whole new market for what we talk about
because people do want the opportunity to move tenure as suits
their circumstances. Moving grant and other subsidies to suit
the individual rather than the property or the producer might
be another incentive so that we create a real market for the individual
to have a discussion with the housing provider about what circumstances
they are in, what the market looks like, what is the best fit,
and what is the set of financial products which then helps them
in that situation. I know this is radical, I do not suggest we
do it next week, but it is a direction of travel I think we should
be engaged in modelling.
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