Put this on your schedule

The main proposals in the Housing Bill have been well discussed already. But in committee in the House of Commons, a new schedule has been added: schedule 8, which makes a range of small but important amendments to housing law as it relates to registered social landlords.

At the moment, when setting grant procedures – the circumstances in which grant is repaid and how it is paid – the Housing Corporation has to act "in accordance with such principles as it may from time to time determine". These words are being deleted from sections 18 and 20 of the 1996 Housing Act. This will mean the corporation has more freedom to make one-off grant arrangements for specific schemes – possibly a useful freedom, as the corporation works on making grants to developers and perhaps arm's-length management organisations too.

As all RSLs know, the corporation issues a great deal of guidance and advice. Some of this is statutory guidance under section 36 of the 1996 Housing Act. Although RSLs probably heed most of what the corporation says, if they ignore statutory guidance, the corporation may more easily use its statutory powers to intervene.

The current section 36 is surprisingly limited. The corporation's power is restricted to issuing guidance with respect to the management of housing accommodation by RSLs. It has no power to issue guidance about how RSLs manage themselves, as opposed to their housing.

New rules on statutory guidance
Schedule 8 adds a set of issues on which statutory guidance can be issued. These are:

• the governance of bodies that are registered social landlords
  
• the effective management of such bodies
  
• establishing and maintaining the financial viability of such bodies.

This will mean that, in future, the Housing Corporation's guidance on, for example, skills mixes on boards, the size of boards and how group structures are operated, could have the force of statutory guidance. There could be statutory guidance on board member training.

An amendment to paragraph 1 of schedule 1 of the 1996 Housing Act makes it clear that the parent in a group can make a gift to a subsidiary even if the subsidiary is a member or shareholder of the parent. Otherwise the strict view of paragraph 1(1)(a) is that such gifts are banned.

There are clearer and extended obligations to send both audited accounts and the auditor's report to the Housing Corporation.

In future, the corporation’s guidance on skills mixes on boards, the size of boards and the operation of group structures could have the force of statutory guidance

There are also detailed amendments to company and industrial and provident society legislation to ensure that if the corporation wants audited accounts from an RSL that, as a matter of company or industrial and provident society law would not have to provide them, the corporation has the power to require the appointment of an auditor.

Auditors can be made to disclose to the corporation any information they find in the course of an audit and that will not breach any duties they may owe the RSL.

It is rare for the corporation to use its statutory powers to institute inquiries into the affairs of an RSL. If it does, its powers – once the inquiry has reported – are much wider than usual and include ordering the removal of staff and insisting on property transfers to other RSLs. It is my impression that, in the past couple of years, the corporation has been more ready to use its statutory power to appoint to boards of RSLs.

The bill includes provisions to strengthen the powers of the person conducting an inquiry – will there be more of these in future?

There is a new power for the inquiry to compel people to attend and give evidence, and for evidence to be given on oath. It will be an offence to mislead an inquiry.

Data protection update
At Clause 185, there is a useful amendment to the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. Section 115 of that act enables organisations to give information to a list of bodies (local authorities, the police, health authorities) without being in breach of any other laws, for example the Data Protection Act 1998.

RSLs are not in the list and therefore whereas an RSL could give information to one of the listed organisations, they could not receive information back – something that one suspects was widely ignored. Clause 185 adds RSLs to the list so they can now safely give and receive information for the purposes of the Crime and Disorder Act.