But it is hard to see how the corporation could survive in its present form, or possibly at all, if the grandiose plan ever comes to full fruition. Would this be good or not for social housing? However irritated they may sometimes get with the regulator, housing associations might do well to remember Belloc's advice, "always keep a hold of nurse for fear of finding something worse".
Last year the corporation divided itself into investment and regulation arms. The former seems set to vanish into the regional assemblies, which under the government's proposals would take over investment allocation for social housing.
The staff concerned would, presumably, transfer to the new bodies. But since ministers plan to introduce regional assemblies piecemeal as and when referenda are held, the corporation faces a steady shrinkage of its investment arm.
That would present difficulties in recruiting people to work in something in such obvious decline. The government says nothing directly in its proposals about the corporation's regulatory work. An immediate question arises though: shorn of investment, is there any point in keeping the corporation as a regulator alone?
Would this too fit more logically into the new regional bodies, since they would be allocating investment? It is hard to see how, for example, a regulator could freeze a development programme that it had not allocated.
There are two key issues. If, as is probable, the first regional assemblies are in the three northern regions, what happens to the rump of the corporation in the rest of England?And will the sector really be well served by having its investment, and possibly its regulation, under the control of bodies not dedicated to housing?
Housing associations that operate nationally could have the further misfortune of answering to nine investment bodies. How long before the campaign to preserve the corporation begins?
Source
Housing Today
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