Deputy prime minister John Prescott's white paper, issued last week, proposes to revitalise the English regions by allowing them to set up regional assemblies with wide-ranging strategic powers where voters back this in a referendum.
Where this happened, the corporation would be stripped of its investment arm, which this year allocated more than £1.1bn in approved development programme funds across the country.
Last year, it split its work between investment and regulation divisions. It could be left with just the latter function.
According to the white paper, "an elected assembly will take a strategic lead on housing issues, thereby assuming the role currently undertaken by the [regional] government office and the strategic and resource allocation roles of the local office of the Housing Corporation".
The idea has led to speculation about the corporation's long-term future, and what would happen to the investment programme under an assembly that was not specifically concerned with housing.
One senior local authority housing figure said the corporation might be forced to find a new role or justify its existence.
He said: "I think there are a lot of question marks over the Housing Corporation as a whole. I still believe it needs to exist – there has to be a body to regulate housing associations – but it may have to look to a new role."
A former senior corporation official said: "If you break up the corporation how do you rejoin the issue of allocation with the regulatory function?"
Anthony Mayer, the former corporation chief executive who now heads the Greater London Authority, England's first regional government, said he was "surprised" by the "curious" announcement.
He said: "With a regulation record second to none I hope the corporation's record speaks for itself when people come to take decisions about its future."
James Tickell, deputy chief executive of the National Housing Federation said: "Clearly, it's possible that the corporation could lose its investment function to the regional agencies at some point.
"The federation would not oppose this but will be pressing for any new arrangements to be at least as effective a set of delivery mechanisms as the ones that currently exist."
A corporation spokeswoman said: "The function of public bodies changes over the years and the Housing Corporation has proved itself as a reliable agency, able to adapt to new tasks for successive governments for nearly 40 years."
Source
Housing Today
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