Written evidence to be reported to the House
Housing and Regeneration Bill
4:15 pm
David Orr: There are a number of things to say about that. First, neither I nor anyone else involved in housing associations will say that all practice is perfect in all cases. We do not live in a perfect world and there is no doubt that on some occasions, the performance of individual housing associations, either with respect to individual places, tenants or more generally, falls below the standards that we expect. However, whenever there is a systematic evaluation of the performance of housing associations, they always do better than local authorities. That is in systematic evaluations of tenant satisfaction levels and related matters.
The issue is about how to ensure high-quality standards. My argument is that housing associations as independent organisations have been invested in by the Government to deliver a service. It is proper that they should be accountable to Government for the public investment that they have received. It is correct that the regulator should be able to direct with regard to rents and housing management standards, and we do not take issue with that. Our issue is about the extent to which the regulator is able to require a housing association to do things that are not necessarily in pursuit of the housing association’s own objectives, and to intervene even though there has been no mismanagement or misconduct. The provisions currently in the Bill would allow that.