ROOF Blog

The Tenant Services Authority is offering social landlords small grants to help them develop ‘local deals’ with their tenants. Grants up to £9,000 will be made available to housing associations, councils and arm’s length management organisations to improve services in response to local needs.

Gwyneth Taylor from the National Federation of ALMOs (arms length management organisations) argues that if government funding dries up for ALMOs, which manage council housing on behalf of local authorities, one million council tenants would be affected. The federation has put together a paper providing examples of activities ALMOs can undertake to deliver social housing, including greater tenant involvement and adopting charitable status.

Social tenants should expect the same high quality service, irrespective of their landlord, Peter Marsh, chief executive of the Tenants Services Authority, said yesterday. He said that by spring 2010 the TSA aims to regulate all providers of social housing including arms length management organisations (ALMOs), housing associations and local authorities. It will be the first time social housing tenants will all be regulated in the same way.

Meanwhile, the National Federation of ALMOs (NFA) has published a report outlining the organisations’ roles in delivering social housing. Several local authorities managing more than a million council homes are contemplating large-scale voluntary transfers to keep their housing services viable. ALMOs could expand their role to undertake new build, increase tenant involvement and possibly adopt charitable status.

Services for council tenants could deteriorate as the recession continues, a Housing Quality Network study into housing management has warned. The report found that disrepair was the main reason for council housing being classed non-decent, with three-quarters of non-decent homes still in need of major repairs. Arms length management organisations (ALMOs) consistently offered a better service to residents than councils, however, and rent arrears had fallen from 2.4 per cent to 2.2 per cent.

The UK’s leading arms length management organisations (ALMOs) are meeting to discuss the most effective way of progressing towards the 2012 deadline for all homes to meet the decent homes standard. ALMOs are said to be under increasing pressure from the government to become more innovative in establishing best cost prices, market competitiveness and in establishing value for money for their tenants and local authority landlords.

The Homes and Communities Agency has released new guidance for local authorities, arms length management organisations and registered social landlords to bid for funding to provide social rented sites for Gypsies and Travellers. The national housing and regeneration agency has published guidelines on a government fund worth £32 million – including grant and bidding timetables, and instructions for completing bids.

A number of arms length management organisations (ALMOs) could convert to housing associations to shore up their financial future, the National Federation of ALMOs said. Making the transition would mean that ALMOs would be able to ‘escape’ the unpopular housing revenue account subsidy system, and their debts would no longer be on the public sector borrowing requirement, potentially allowing for greater investment. A spokesperson for the National Federation of ALMOs said that while the numbers are relatively small at the moment, if the subsidy issues are not resolved there will be a lot more converting.

The Housing Corporation has signed a social housing funding agreement with an arms length management organisation (ALMO) for the first time. Stockport Homes is to receive £1.02 million from the Corporation to fund 17 new homes. Grant agreements were also signed with five other new partners including Barratts, Bovis, and Countryside.

The Tenant Services Authority, the new social housing regulator will consult with councils and arms-length management organisation (ALMO) tenants and landlords, bringing them under its remit, alongside housing associations and other for-profit providers, as recommended by the Cave report. The TSA goes live in December and will spend its first eight months in informal consultation with tenants and providers before opening its register to local authorities and ALMOs in 2010.

The housing ombudsman has published its annual report, and revealed that the number of complaints considered by the service has increased by more than 10 per cent since last year. The largest number of complaints was about disrepair, accounting for 32 per cent of the total. The ombudsman said that tenants in social housing will soon have a single regulator, access to the service, and a forum for their voices. In contrast he slammed the rights of private sector tenants, calling their treatment as that of second class citizens.

A third of homeowners think the value of their property has not been affected by the housing market downturn according to research by a property valuation site. Around 32 per cent of people said they thought their home was worth the same or more than it was 12 months ago, even though the research showed that 97.3 per cent of UK house prices had fallen in this time. A further 38 per cent of homeowners expect their property to hold its value or increase in the coming months, prompting a spokesperson to comment that there was a significant gap between perception and reality.

A Bill allowing councils to impose higher energy efficiency standards on new homes is set to become law today. The Bill allows councils in England and Wales to require that a proportion of energy used in developments should come from renewable sources, and they may also be allowed to set higher efficiency targets than under the current rules.

Shelter is again under fire for its support for the proposed eco-town in Middle Quinton, from local MP Peter Luff. Mr Luff said that the Shelter report into the eco-town, which called for ‘much needed social housing’ in the area, was influenced by Communities and Local Government. In a letter to Shelter he agreed that while there was a need for more social and affordable housing in his constituency, he argued that there was no such need existing at the preferred site of the town.

Meanwhile in Wales, Shelter Cymru has claimed that as many as 24,500 empty homes could be used to house thousands of families on council waiting lists. It wants councils to use their legislative and financial resources to use the homes, all of which Shelter claims have been empty for six months of longer, for more than 80,000 households currently on the waiting list. A Shelter spokesperson said: ‘People are unable to find suitable homes in their communities and allowing properties to remain empty has both social and economic costs.’

The Gambling Commission has postponed a raffle in which a £1 million property was the prize. The draw was due today, and 46,000 tickets have been sold, each costing £25 each. But the commission, which has recently warned homeowners who were considering selling their houses in this way that they could be breaching the law, has said that lotteries are the ‘preserve of good causes and cannot be operated for private gain’. There have been several similar schemes of late as homeowners have tried to the beat the credit crunch. The owners of the house said they were in discussions with the Gambling Commission to resolve the issue as soon as possible.