Roy Irwin, chief inspector of housing at the Audit Commission, told the National Housing Federation's chief executives' conference last Friday that the commission had been working on "area profiling and a quality of life index".
He said: "Unless you know what it is that makes people want to live in an area, you are unlikely to be able to work out why people do or don't want to live where you operate."
Irwin said his priority for the new regime would be making better use of data. This is in line with a call from Housing Corporation chairman Peter Dixon, who said the impression that associations were a "cosy corner" had to be scotched. He gave a broad hint that housing association league tables would be used to drive up management performance.
Irwin said: "We'd like to work with the Housing Corporation and ODPM to ensure the data we are collecting is useful and relevant. If data is found to be useless then we should get rid of it. The present situation is patchy – if we get a 50% improvement that would be great."
n Housing associations should get "more fully involved" with the New Deal for Communities schemes and local strategic partnerships, according to the director general of the ODPM's neighbourhood renewal unit, Joe Montgomery.
He said only 7% of associations were involved in the local strategic partnerships and "you have to do more" if they and the NHF's In Business for Neighbourhoods campaign were to succeed.
Source
Housing Today
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