The Housing Corporation this week insisted its "regulation revolution" would stem the flow of supervision cases which show no sign of abating.
The agency revealed that by the end of the last financial year it was investigating 93 housing associations over serious concerns about their financial or management arrangements, around five per cent of the total. Of these, 26 were larger associations.

By the end of the year there were also 215 associations under observation of regional regulators, of which 67 were large.

Financial problems are particularly dogging the sector. Just 70 per cent of financial reviews for associations with more than 2,500 homes were deemed "satisfactory" by the year end, compared with 82 per cent the year before and 93 per cent in 1997/98.

The number of supervision cases for financial issues among the larger associations has risen from two in 1997/98 to 19 in 1999/00, the annual regulation report reveals.

The corporation admitted that "more needs to be done" to improve performance. Registration and supervision committee chairman Eric Armitage said: "Many RSLs are struggling with problems of low demand, anti-social behaviour, problems with housing benefit and a tighter fiscal regime. However, we will expect RSLs to have plans to tackle performance and to achieve improvements."