63. 2. Early thoughts on area for standards? THEME Standards to apply 1. The Service Offer to tenants Quality of accommodation (Decent Homes) Tenant Choice and Customer Service Repairs and Maintenance Neighbourhood and Estate Management Anti-social Behaviour and Security 2. Tenant Empowerment and Involvement Empowerment Complaints Local Area Cooperation 3. The Tenancy Agreement Rents Tenure Allocations 4. Governance Governance 5. Viability Viability 6. Value for Money Efficiency and Value for Money
71. Standard Areas for Local Pilots Theme Standard Area Service offer to tenants Quality of accommodation (decent homes) Tenant choice and customer service Repairs and maintenance Neighbourhood and estate management Anti social behaviour and security Tenant empowerment and involvement Tenant empowerment The tenancy agreement Allocations
72. Response and Programme Landlord Type Proportion of Applications Proportion of Pilots Housing Associations 70% 61% Arms Length Management Organisations 16% 16% Local Authorities 11% 13% Co-operatives/ Tenant Management Organisations 3% 6% Multiple Landlords 1% 3%
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75. Ladders of Intervention Routine Remedial Radical Supporting Improvement Compensation Enforcement Notice Appoint board Member (or Radical?) Penalties Compulsory Transfer of Management Appoint a Manager Compulsory Tender Direction to HCA Short Notice Inspections Voluntary Undertaking Kitemarking Peer Support TSA Support Through Tenant Excellence Ongoing Monitoring Inspections (or Remedial?) Draft Intervention Toolkit
76. National Tenant Voice from grass roots to government Richard Crossley NTV Co-ordinator
77. The story so far…….. Cave Review proposed a National Tenant Voice to “to give tenants both a voice and expertise at national level” Government set up tenant-majority project group to advise it on setting up NTV
78. Citizens of Equal Worth Project group produced its report following consultation with tenants Proposals accepted by Housing Minster in Dec 2008 Project group asked to continue advising on the set-up Road-shows held May/June 2009
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80. NTV structure - a non-departmental public body National Tenant Council 50 tenants Board 9 tenants, 6 others Accountability Committee 7 members tenants 24 nominations 26 by open recruitment Others: open recruitment
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84. National Tenant Council NTV Board Accountability Committee CLG – as sponsoring government department National Tenant Organisations County federations District federations Regional groups Tenants Forums Tenants and Residents Associations T e n a n t s Policy decision-makers: government, regulator, etc
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91. To express an interest in receiving further information: e-mail [email_address]
The outline for today will be: Who are we and what do we stand for? Key messages from the National Conversation – our “golden threads” Emerging thoughts on developing the new regulatory framework Key questions in our discussion paper Sharing our initial thinking – still listening to tenants and landlords, and all stakeholders including government.
TSA is the new regulator for social housing . The scope of our remit is broad - Initially we will work for those tenants that live in homes provided by Housing Associations. From Spring 2010 we will work across Councils, ALMO’s (EXPLAIN ALMO) and HA’s to ensure that all tenants are receiving excellent services We have new powers to take action to improve services for tenants where landlords aren’t delivering for their tenants Our ultimate aim is to make a difference to the 10 million people living in social housing and improve the prospects of those 5 million people who can’t afford to buy a home but aren’t considered needy enough to be allocated a home to rent.
The first phase of the National Conversation was focussed on capturing information about the levels of service that tenants are receiving from their landlord whilst also building a picture of the levels of service already being delivered. At the regional events views were polarised with some tenants telling us that they were very satisfied with their landlord and others telling us that services they received were not up to a satisfactory standard. When filling out the questionnaire, the feedback has been more mixed, with the vast majority saying that they were either very satisfied or fairly satisfied with the services that they receive from their landlords. The feedback has now been analysed and those issues that are important to tenants are summarised as follows [skip to next slides]
TSA’s standards will be the foundation defining where we can apply our enforcement powers. Therefore we believe there should be clear reasons for why we set a standard in any area. This list provides our initial thoughts for the areas to be covered and the way they might be organised into ‘themes’. These are based around our thinking that there are 3 principles that should underpin the rationale for setting any standard: Where TSA receives a direction from government – e.g. rents, tenant empowerment and quality of accommodation Where the achievement of standards is necessary for the achievement one of TSA’s statutory objectives On the back of tenant feedback/priorities We are asking for feedback on these proposed areas for standards, and also - at this stage - for ideas on what the objectives for each of these standards should be. The wording for the Standards will come later. There may be more areas of really important work that landlords do – the list of TSA standards must ultimately reflect the purposes and reasoning behind TSA being set up to regulate social housing, as set out in the HRA2008.
There are also a number of themes that cut across all standards - diversity and addressing the needs of vulnerable tenants. Diversity The TSA has duties to eliminate unlawful discrimination and promote equality. We will use the development of standards and the way in which we regulate to help us achieve this. We need to decide whether there should be a national diversity standard that stands alongside all other standards or whether we should include specific references to diversity issues in all standards. Having a separate standard on diversity would in some cases be easier for the regulator to assess compliance. However we believe it would be better to look at how tenant’s different needs are met within each of the service delivery and service offer standards. So that our focus would be on the outcomes delivered, as these are what’s important to tenants. Tenants with care & support needs Many tenants and potential tenants have particular needs for care and support that cannot always be met in general needs housing. It is also true that many people needing and receiving care and support do live in general needs housing – they’re not exclusively living in designated accommodation. It is important that landlords ensure that the needs of these tenants are considered and addressed throughout their services. We need to ensure that the requirements of vulnerable tenants are considered in all national standards. As with diversity, our proposal is to ensure these are ‘mainstreamed’ within the outcomes delivered. But we are keen to hear all views about this.
The TSa’s approach to regulating landlords are underpinned by the vision set out by Prof. Martin Cave for “co-regulation” OR a mix of centrally driven regulation and self-regulation by landlords with their tenants. The challenge for us is to get this balance right – the initial balance will depend on mechanisms available for independent scrutiny and validation, and over time we would see this capacity increasing, so that overall the balance moves towards greater self-regulation. The key to co-regulation will be landlords and tenants working together to improve services; plus landlords and tenants working with TSA to develop the regulation framework. Our discussion paper is implicitly an invitation to the sector to help this go forward in a ‘co-regulatory process’.
Hello I work in the team that is responsible for the Tenant Excellence Fund. The Fund has been set up by the TSA to identify and share best practice in the social housing sector, to drive up landlords’ aspirations and performance for the benefit of tenants . Tenant Scrutiny – RLSR and Accreditation LSPs Transformational Change Involvement Policies and Compacts
We are still fleshing out the details of what we mean by best practice and are looking to answer a number of questions such as what do we mean by best practice? – is this just innovative practice? Or is it more broad than that? How can we best share best practice to you? How do tenants and landlords want to find out about and access best practice? Do you want to know about things that have not worked so well as well as those that have? Would this be as beneficial and interesting to you? Do you want to know about things that have been tried elsewhere but have not worked so that you can learn from them? We want landlords to learn from each other about the best ways to do things. We realise that there are landlords out there who are being innovative, who are doing things differently and rather than reinventing the wheel – we want other landlords to learn from them. We see that the TSA has a role to play in this – not in owning the best practice as this will often come from other organisations across the sector - but in identifying best practice and excellence and sharing it with others.
Local standards are about landlords and tenants working together to improve levels of service delivered. We see local standards being in addition to national standards that we will set for what every tenant in England should receive from their landlord. We also want a framework that encourages landlords to set out their own local offer in relation to some standard areas which is over and above the national standard. In setting these local standards we want landlords to work with their tenants to understand the different priorities of tenants in different places. Local standards will also allow resources to be prioritised in areas that matter most to tenants and will increase ownership in the framework for landlords and tenants – and this is particularly important as we are to move towards a point where the main conversations about service improvement are between the landlord and their tenants rather than the landlord and the regulator as it has been in the past. SUMMARISE So I have talked about local standards but what do we mean by ‘local’? Local will mean different things to different people. For some local will mean tailoring services to a particular neighbourhood or estate, for others it may mean a local authority area or even wider such as sub regional. It maybe that there are a number of providers operating in the area defined as local who may all sign up to the local standard rather than each having their own. These are just some examples of what may be seen as local. Number of landlords/ 1 landlord Our initial view has been to leave the definition of local to landlords and their tenants and we are deliberately not being prescriptive in what we mean by local at this stage. So to pilot this approach of setting locally agreed standards with tenants, we invited applications from landlords to work with the us in a number of standard areas and to work up the definition of what ‘local’ is. The closing date for these applications was 5 August 2009. National standards will be in set to ensure all tenants get a high level of service across ALL standard areas – local standards go further than this
These are the standard areas that are applicable under the Local Standard Pilots. Quality of Accommodation : current government policy is that all social rented homes (with some limited exceptions) should meet the government’s Decent Homes Standard by December 2010 and should then continue to be maintained to that standard. That would be expressed in the TSA’s national standard but local standards may be agreed eg energy efficiency Tenant Choice & Customer Service : a local standard in this standard area may relate to customer care for supported housing tenants with those tenants very much involved in setting the standard and how it will be measured. Repairs & Maintenance : this was the top priority identified by the first phase of the national conversation. Supplementary local standards could be around options to make the repairs service more convenient to tenants and increase right first time rates Neighbourhood and Estate Management : this standard area would cover all aspects of how landlords manage communal areas of housing estates and social housing – those areas that they own and manage which are beyond the immediate front door of their tenants’ homes. so that tenants have a safe and clean neighbourhood to live in. A local standard could be around agreeing a local standard across a number of landlords operating in one area. Anti social behaviour & security : this can vary from place to place – in some areas tenants may not see this as a priority for them so would not think it necessary to have an additional local standard. However, in other areas this may the main focus for a local standard if this is the top priority for tenants. Tenant Empowerment : a national standard may outline that tenants are given a wide range of opportunities to influence but locally landlords could set out with their tenants a standard that will increase decision making opportunities Allocations : if local standards are agreed then we would expect landlords and local authorities to work together to make sure that the interests of existing and future tenants groups are incorporated. TESTING to see if can set local standard
As I have said the closing date for applications was 5 August and in total we received 182 applications spread across the standard areas on the previous slide. Increased budget from £200k to £280k – up to £9k per pilot and over 30 pilots The majority of applicants were HAs (70%) but a variety of landlords did apply. We are just finalising the programme and applicants will be notified by 9 September but you can see from the slide where we are currently up to. The proportions of landlord type are well balanced compared to the proportions of applications we received. Quality of Accommodation (decent homes) – 4% (6%) – JOINT LOWEST for both Tenant choice and customer service – 16% (23%) – JOINT HIGHEST Repairs and maintenance – 12% (16%) Neighbourhood and estate management – 26% (13%) Anti social behaviour and security – 7% (13%) Tenant empowerment – 31% (23%) – JOINT HIGHEST Allocations – 4% (6%) – JOINT LOWEST for both
We are looking to these pilots to trial working in partnership with their tenants to agree and put in place local standards by April 2010. The work that they do will help to shape our thinking in a number of ways: They will each capture details of their partnership working with landlords and tenants – looking at how standards are formulated as well as how landlord performance against the local standard will be assessed and measured. This may include collating new local level data and making it available to tenants at a local level. They will also explore how these local standards can be reported to the TSA as the regulator and how we will then assess compliance against local standards. As local standards set will vary from location to location we need a way to make comparisons across providers so will be looking to the pilots to identify ways of grading performance that will enable tenants to easily assess and compare performance across landlords. So even though local standards will be different – you will still be able to see how your landlord is performing compared to other landlords. From these pilots we are keen to capture what works as well as what doesn’t work. We believe that this is just as important.
As I have said, we are just in the process of finalising the list of those that we would like to take forward and all applicants will be informed by 9 September. We will publicise which landlords have been successful and which standard area they are concentrating on. All successful pilots will begin to capture some of the baseline information so that we can measure the impact of the local standards on the service that tenants receive as well as how they have been working with tenants to agree local standards. We will then get an interim report from each of them in December which will include progress to date and details on how tenants have been involved in establishing the local standards. In March next year we will receive a further interim report including lessons learnt (good and bad) and how they have progressed in setting the local standards. All pilots should have local standards in place by April 2010 and landlords will report to us later in the year on the impact of the standards In addition to these pilots we will be commissioning a piece of work to bring together all of the findings and ensure that the lessons are disseminated widely and can be easily replicated. SUMMARY/ ANY QUESTIONS
There are three parts of the NTV structure: There will be a National Tenant Council – which will debate policy issues There will be a tenant majority management board – which will look after the day to day management of the NTV And there will be an accountability committee – that will choose the members of the National Tenant Council and the management board
