Scotland’s for Council Housing: Glasgow Demonstration

——————————————————————————————————-

STO Summer Newsletter

STO Newsletter (summer 09)

STO submission to Scottish Parliament

Scottish Tenants Organisation

Thursday 12th February 2009

The Times announced on Thursday 30 January 2009, that Gordon Brown had ordered thousands of new council houses. At the same time Nicola Sturgeon was announcing a huge boost to public sector building in Scotland. Gordon Brown said “ Today let me be clear: if local authorities can convince us that they can deliver quickly-and cost-effectively – more of the housing that Britain needs, and if local authorities can build social housing in sustainable communities that meets the aspirations of the British people in the 21st century, then we will be prepared to give them our full backing and put aside anything that stands in their way.

(Gordon Brown, New Local Government Network, 29 January)

This announcement which is a significant change in government policy has to be welcomed, however we have heard similar warm words before with no clear strategy being applied to make the words reality. In other words, can the government be trusted?

Louder Tenant Voice Means Listening from the Start

From Inside Housing:-

The watchdog keeping guard over housing associations has become much too close to them.

This criticism was not hurled at the Housing Corporation by an angry tenant but came from the mouth of its own deputy chief executive, Peter Marsh. Last week he called for a ‘revolution in tenant involvement’ when the new social housing regulator is set up later this year.

A more tenant-focused approach to regulation was one of the central recommendations from Professor Martin Cave’s review of regulation – published exactly a year ago. Since its release organisations have fallen over themselves to promote the idea that tenants should be given a greater say over how their landlords are policed.

There have been many fine words. But if tenants are to be given a louder and more meaningful voice there were two meetings at last week’s Chartered Institute of Housing conference that were more important than any others.

The events – hosted by the Tenants’ and Residents’ Organisations of England – gave tenants the chance to list their priorities for the regulator, newly named the Tenant Services Authority.

Inside Housing sat in on some of the discussions and found a genuine desire from tenants for a watchdog which will help them hold their landlords to account.

Barbara Rickards, a Harrogate Council tenant, said there was lots of room for improvement from her landlord – and that the regulator should help flag up good practice. ‘There should be a [nationally recognised] tenant quality mark,’ she said. ‘The [housing] organisation should have a quality mark for how much there is [tenant] involvement and training.’

Ms Rickards said she had come along to the event because of the importance of tenants’ rights.

‘I would go to prison for my rights because I feel so strongly about my principles,’ she said. The TSA needed to make sure that landlords paid more than lip service to those rights, she added. While tenants were often trained in how to hold their landlords to account, their views were all too often ignored, Ms Rickards said.

‘I feel like you have been trained like a monkey [only] to be kicked in the teeth. The officers say “don’t give them the policy papers because they won’t understand”.’

Fellow Harrogate tenant John Brookes said landlords should be charged with writing policy papers that tenants could actually understand. He suggested that if they were not written in plain, accessible English then the TSA should be able to step in.

And he said the new scrutineer should also look at the quality of staff charged with improving tenant involvement.

‘The problem is the same with any tenant participation officer – they are paid by the council,’ he said. ‘At the end of the day the council can come in and pull the strings.’

Marianne Hood, a consultant who chaired one of the sessions, said landlords could hamper tenants’ groups’ efforts to hold them to account – because the organisations themselves often paid for training.

‘One good way of making sure that you don’t have a voice is to make sure that you don’t have resources,’ she said.

‘One good way of making sure that you don’t have a voice is to make sure that you don’t have resources’

Kirklees tenant Cora Carter said that housing associations should be required to have more tenants on their boards – and the regulator should take action if they failed to do so.

The TSA should also be responsible for protecting the rights of tenants from all tenures, she added. ‘There is a group of tenants that haven’t been mentioned at all,’ she said. ‘We need a better and fairer deal for private tenants.’

Avnel Dodds, a tenant from Durham, suggested that the new regulator would struggle to have an impact because many politicians were not interested in tenants. ‘They are so removed from people – working down in London,’ she said. ‘They should alllive in a council house and manage on a weekly wage.’

Tenant participation offi cer Nayan Joshi said tenants should also be able to bypass their landlords and report complaints directly to the regulator themselves.

‘I think the TSA should be able to come into a housing organisation if they are not performing as per tenants’ wishes,’ he said.

Mr Joshi added that every provider should also have its own tenant champion and resident involvement champion ‘so the TSA can come in and audit tenant involvement’.

The TSA should also make sure that tenant involvement training was up to scratch, he added.

At the end of the event the tenants also drew up a main wish list that they agreed the regulator should focus on (see box).

When the chiefs setting up the new regulator meet to discuss their plans for the future they could do worse than start with the suggestions put forward by the tenants themselves.