Annex C: Extract from the Review of Social
Housing Regulation
In line with the Government's commitment to reduce
the number of quangos, the Tenant Services Authority (TSA) will
be abolished and its economic regulation and backstop consumer
regulation functions transferred to the Homes and Communities
Agency (HCA), generating efficiency savings in back-office functions
and exploiting synergies across investment and regulation.
In order to ensure the continued independence of
regulation, these functions should be vested in a statutory committee
within the HCA, legally separated from HCA's investment functions
and with its membership appointed by the Secretary of State.
The role of consumer regulation should be refocused
on setting clear service standards for social landlords and addressing
serious failures against those standards.
This is a localist solution to resolution of tenants'
problems. Local mechanisms should be used to address routine problems,
with an enhanced role for elected councillors, MPs and tenant
panels in the complaints process. This will enable tenants to
hold their landlord to account and press for better services.
Inspection of social landlords should only be used
where there are grounds to suspect a serious failure against the
standards, but the regulator should be free to commission inspections
from the open market.
In order to maintain lender confidence and protect
taxpayers, proactive economic regulation of housing associations
should continue as now but with more focus on value for money
for the taxpayer.
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