Section: Social Landlords
New Housing and Regeneration Agency
The Government announced its proposals for a new agency - Communities England - to boost regeneration and housing delivery.
Communities England will bring together the functions of the Housing Corporation with those of English Partnerships and a range of work carried out by Communities and Local Government, including decent homes, housing market renewal, housing growth and urban regeneration.
Senior executives from the Housing Corporation, English Partnerships and the Department will form a transition team headed by Baroness Ford, working with the Government to plan for the proposed new organisation. During the transition period, individual agencies will continue to deliver their existing programmes.
Communities England will apparently aim to cut red tape and combine national scope with local effectiveness. It has a key objective to deliver more affordable housing and opportunities for people to gain a foot on the housing ladder. Working closely with local authorities, it is assigned the tasks of helping unlock more land for development, transforming failing estates and successfully creating places where people choose to live and stay.
The Housing and Regeneration Review was launched in April 2006 to assess the institutional structures for housing and regeneration delivery carried out by the Housing Corporation and English Partnerships.
Response to Cave Review on Regulation
The Housing Corporation set out a radical vision of a new regulatory system for social housing in England, based around a new relationship between housing providers and consumers.
In its response to the Cave Review of Social Housing Regulation, published on its website, the Corporation calls for:
A re-definition of the core purposes of a social housing provider, to reflect wider community needs, interests and concerns.
All social housing tenants to have the same tenancy rights, service level expectations and access to performance information, regardless of their social landlord.
A simplified registration system, open to both housing associations and other private sector providers.
Simplified and reduced regulatory requirements, with greater use of self-certification.
New rights for residents, including increased access to information on landlord performance, resident scrutiny committees, compensation for poor performance, and a new collective right to change housing manager.
Stronger powers of intervention when things go wrong.
In addition, the Corporation calls for:
A new ability for local authorities to hold social landlords to account in relation to local concerns such as neighbourhood management and anti-social behaviour.
A new inspection framework, with larger providers commissioning their own externally validated inspections, including resident led inspection, rather than relying on periodic statutory inspection.
A new explicit statutory role for the regulator to deliver efficiency and control rents.
Incentives for registered bodies to endow residents' groups with assets to develop community ownership and services.
The Corporation explicitly rejects calls for a system built mainly on self-regulation, as insufficient to protect resident and tax-payer interests. However, it outlines an expanded role for self-certification of performance within the new regulatory framework.
© Copyright 1996 - 2008 UK Housing Ltd. Housing Monthly Diary
Issue: March 2007 Reporting on Jan-Feb 2007
- Antisocial Behaviour & Nuisance
- Heating & Energy Efficiency
- Homelessness & Asylum Seekers
- Housing & Estate Management
- Housing Benefit & Council Tax
- Housing Provision
- Private Sector
- Repairs & Improvements
- Right to Buy
- Social Landlords
- Travellers and Gypsies
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