Am I the only person who follows the Housing Corporation's latest Performance Indicators for Housing Associations 2002 as keenly as the football results?

One of my many hobby horses has been the issue of what the "right" size is for a housing association?

Any organisation needs to be large enough to have financial security, to be able to spread costs and employ specialist staff, but if it gets too big other factors start to come into effect: poor communication, lack of control and much more paperwork.

Here comes my football results theory, based on the pseudo-scientific methodology of looking at the corporation's review of the performance indicators in six size categories plus large-scale voluntary stock transfers and assigning a mark, ranging from one for the best to seven for the worst, under each performance indicator heading. This leads to a total score for each category.

The results of the 2002 league are as follows:
1st 1501-5000 units
2nd LSVTs
3rd fewer than 750 units
Joint 4th 751-1500 units
Joint 4th 5001-7000 units
6th more than 10,000 units
7th 7001-10,000 units.

On this analysis, biggest certainly does not mean best, with the largest two size bands showing worst performance.

It is not surprising that LSVTs score well, with the management efficiency that comes from having stock concentrated in tight geographical areas.

Incidentally, Colne Housing fits neatly into the 1501-to-5000 size band – the top performers according to my theory – and we outperform our peers on the majority of the performance indicators.

Yours in hope that Ipswich Town FC can do as well next season.

Source

Housing Today

Postscript

Mark Powell Davies, chief executive, Colne Housing Society, Colchester