Property management company Pinnacle PSG became the first private sector organisation to apply to the Housing Corporation to become a manager of Government funded social housing.
Pinnacle became the first ever non-registered body seeking to be accredited by the Housing Corporation, following powers granted by the Housing Act 2004 which first allowed private sector organisations to be accredited to manage new social housing.
The Housing Corporation's aim is to ensure all tenants receive no differences in terms of services they receive. Following a consultation, which took place last year, the Housing Corporation developed an accreditation framework that will ensure that any non-RSLs who gain accreditation will offer good quality services to residents. The framework sets out the processes and minimum standards for what bodies applying for accreditation hope to achieve.
Housing Corporation Chief Executive, Jon Rouse, said: "This is great news, and a solid vote of confidence in our private sector accreditation framework.
"This announcement also illustrates how we are embracing relationships with the private sector. It comes hot on the heels of our announcement that Barratt Homes has become the first ever private house builder to secure funding from us to build subsidised affordable homes in England. We are building a true economy in affordable housing provision, where the key question is not what type of organisation, but rather what can you offer tenants and tax payers.
"We are looking forward to working with Pinnacle over the next few months as their application progresses."
John Swinney, Chief Executive of Pinnacle, added: "Gaining Housing Corporation accreditation would mean a great deal to our organisation. As well as recognising the high quality of our service provision, accreditation would enable us to play an ever more active role in the National Affordable Housing Programme alongside our RSL and private developer partners."
For a copy of the framework, please visit the Housing Corporation website at www.housingcorp.gov.uk. The framework can be found there, within the Housing Corporation's publication 'How We Regulate'.
Pinnacle PSG includes Pinnacle Housing (social housing management), Pinnacle Maintenance Services (repairs and maintenance management) and Rockpools (public sector executive search and development).
Audit Commission local authority inspection reports released during July 2006 included the following:
Bromsgrove District Council (Strategic Housing)
Zero-star poor service with uncertain prospects for improvement.
Chester-Le-Street District Council (Housing Inspection)
One-star fair service with uncertain prospects for improvement.
Forest of Dean District Council (Affordable Housing)
Two-star good service with uncertain prospects for improvement.
Mid Sussex District Council (Affordable Housing)
Two-star good service with promising prospects for improvement.
North Yorkshire County Council (Supporting People)
Two-star good service with promising prospects for improvement.
Plymouth City Council (Supporting People)
Two-star good service with excellent prospects for improvement.
Restormel Borough Council (Affordable Housing)
One-star fair service with promising prospects for improvement.
Waltham Forest London Borough Council (Supporting People)
One-star fair service with promising prospects for improvement.
Warwickshire County Council (Supporting People)
Zero-star poor service with uncertain prospects for improvement.
West Somerset District Council (Affordable Housing)
Zero-star poor service with uncertain prospects for improvement.
Wolverhampton City Council (ALMO Inspection)
One-star fair service with promising prospects for improvement.
Wyre Borough Council (Strategic Housing)
One-star fair service with promising prospects for improvement.
There was only one Audit Commission RSL inspection report released during July 2006:
Walsall Housing Group (Housing Services)
One-star fair service with excellent prospects for improvement.
Walsall Housing Group (WHG) was established in March 2003 following a large scale voluntary transfer of 22,800 homes from Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council.
Dr Mike Biles, the Housing Ombudsman, published his 2006 annual report. It shows that, for the first time since the inception of the service, how landlords handle complaints through their internal procedures has taken the pole position in the list of problems brought to the Ombudsman's attention.
Dr Biles said: "It is understandable that tenants will feel frustrated when they identify shortcomings in their landlords' performance and, using the internal procedures to complain, the problems are made worse by the poor administration of the process".
The report points out that landlords need to consider the handling as well as the outcome of complaints. "Achieving the right balance should help improve landlord-tenant relations through efficient complaint management" added Dr Biles.
An increase in this type of complaint is largely responsible for another sizeable growth in the demand for the Ombudsman's services, including a significant increase in complaints requiring investigation. "Despite that, we have still managed to meet and, in some cases exceed, our performance targets within a resource envelope that expanded only by the rate of inflation" concluded Dr Biles.
The report includes a digest of several topics arising out of casework as well as a number of example decisions to illustrate the range of issues tackled by the Ombudsman.
The key facts in the report include:
A full copy of the report is available online from the Housing Ombudsman Service's website at www.ihos.org.uk, or from its office by calling 020 7836 3630.
This is the first of a number of articles to be featured in coming months, in which we invite RSLs and local authorities that have attained three-star ratings from the Audit Commission, to discuss the inspection process and its implications. This article features West Kent Housing Association, which was the first housing association in England to be awarded the maximum three stars for excellent housing services with excellent prospects for improvement.
At West Kent we took the inspection process seriously. Getting three stars has been a key objective in our business plan since 2004. We wanted to have some external validation of what we, and our customers, already believed - that we really do provide excellent services. But, and it is an important but, we also understood that excellence is not perfection and that we would learn and improve from any mistakes we make. Finally, we knew that getting three stars was not the end of our hard work, but a milestone on a 'road to excellence' that will continue to drive us forward.
Much of our success was down to good preparation and knowing how far we were willing to go. Once we knew our inspection date, we put in place an Inspection Project Leader who was responsible for liaising with the Audit Commission, writing our self-assessment, gathering evidence and monitoring our action plan. Another key part of the Inspection Project Leader's role was to make sure that we had an effective communication strategy with staff, residents and stakeholders. It's so important that everyone understands their role in this process and is able to talk about areas that need improving.
From very early on it was crucial that we knew what excellence looked like, so we carried out a mock inspection with Housing Quality Network (HQN), to understand where we were on this scale. In addition, all staff were asked to benchmark our services against the Key Lines of Enquiry (KLOEs), so we knew what we did well and what we needed to do better. Finally, we checked ourselves against those already inspected to see what positive practice had been identified. We made sure that we were doing this too, where appropriate, first checking it was value for money (VFM) and in line with what our customers wanted and expected from us.
Although we had a Project Leader, there was no team that reported to her. It was the responsibility of all West Kent staff to make sure we provided the best services and put in place those actions identified - either through benchmarking with the KLOEs, results of our mock inspection, or as part of our business plan. The Inspection Project Leader's job was to monitor our progress against these actions and make sure we kept to the plan.
We felt that the inspection report gave an accurate view of the services that West Kent provides. We are focused on the needs of our residents and do our best to ensure that we meet their individual requirements. We were really pleased that the Audit Commission picked up that we:
The clear message from the Audit Commission was that as an organisation you have to be an all rounder, all your services must be excellent and any weaknesses need to be dealt with or it will affect your overall rating. It's also crucial to make sure that you involve your residents as much as possible. The KLOE on resident involvement is as important and overarching as those on Customer Care, VFM and Equalities.
We are really proud of the culture shared by staff at West Kent but it's difficult to get the feel of an organisation purely from a report. That's why we're delighted to receive such positive feedback from the open days we have been running following our three star result; that we have a real culture of providing excellent services. At West Kent we share a vision. You can't achieve excellent services without excellent staff and everyone here at West Kent is committed to providing the best customer services that involve our residents.
We aren't complacent here. Staff want to know how we can maintain our excellent services now that our inspection is over. In fact, how we can continually improve our services is the theme of our staff conference in September.
We have already put in place most of the recommendations made by the Audit Commission and the rest should be complete by October. We are in the process of reviewing all our performance indictors and service standards, to ensure that we are monitoring how we perform. We are also making sure we report these results back to our customers.
We are reviewing our service charges to ensure that they offer VFM. In addition to this, we are currently looking at the services our customers receive at their first point of contact, to see how we could improve here.
Equality is always high on our agenda and we are pleased that we are leading a project on Gypsies and Travellers, that has been funded through an Innovation and Good Practice grant.
Finally, we will continue to increase the number of tenants who want to be involved in the work we do - part of that ongoing journey on our road to excellence.
Sasha Harrison. Head of Housing (Communities), West Kent Housing Association