2nd opinion: Your community needs you

If you work in a housing district office you know that housing is only part of the job. Much of it is connected with repairs and letting but, increasingly, time is taken up with being the front door to the public sector as a whole. Your job is to make neighbourhoods liveable; that means everything that affects the quality of life.

Do you work in the capital programme section of a council or registered social landlord? For years you will have worked with local residents to look at long-term redevelopment and you will have dealt with programmes on a multi-agency, multi-disciplinary basis.

Well, other people have now begun to recognise the importance of these two approaches and they are entering mainstream government policy. The Neighbourhood Regeneration Unit is strongly encouraging the development of holistic, resident-led programmes. The links between capital spend and ongoing neighbourhood management are becoming more readily understood.

Yet we are are told that one of the obstacles to this is a shortage of staff with the right qualifications and approach. I hear the scratch, scratch, of consultants sharpening their clipboards, but I don't think they are needed. All the expertise is already out there, it's just not being used.

Housing professionals need to be much more outward-looking in talking up and demonstrating their skills. Often, housing managers and programmers see their work in an introverted sense and do not push their case in the corporate centre of decision-making bodies. Just look at how few local authority chief executives come from a housing background. Crucially, many of the professional housing qualifications now seem out of date in the changed environment of multifaceted working. I know that the Chartered Insitute of Housing is actively seeking to embrace this new agenda.

Tenants and residents groups who have successfully "run the course" should be involved much more in the process of building the capacity of up-and-coming groups tackling major issues for the first time. Much of the approach to resident involvement by the public sector is patronising in the extreme. Which do you think is the most likely to have the greatest effect on "capacity" - courses from professionals or mentoring and support from tried and trusted community groups?

In Liverpool, all our housing capital programme staff are now part of the regeneration portfolio. They work with colleagues in the holistic regeneration of neighbourhoods and take the lead in the physical programming aspects of the work. A team has been created which will manage the Dingle area. The housing teams of CDS and the council have been merged so that one team will manage all stock.

Other RSLs have joined in with a choice-based lettings scheme which we will be extending in July to create a multidisciplinary team in which INclude, a subsidiary of CDS, will manage a team of people from a variety of backgrounds who will effectively take most of the neighbourhood management decisions. We are working with a range of highly competent community based groups to establish a mentoring process to assist groups inside and outside the city.

So I end with a challenge. Housing professionals must be far more assertive in the changing professional and political landscapes. The communities you have traditionally served need you to play a leading roles, not bit parts, in management and regeneration.

Will you?