Significant levels of additional capital investment should not only deliver decent homes (repaired, improved and properly maintained into the future), they can also provide real training and employment opportunities.
Communities can be transformed by radical physical restructuring schemes that replace obsolete stock with new homes people actually want to live in – as part of mixed-tenure neighbourhoods with shops, healthy living centres, and safe play areas. Lives really can be changed through capacity building, education opportunities, healthy homes and safe environments.
And transfers can also transform both services and organisations. Done well they provide a real opportunity to re-engineer services on best practice lines, to properly resource them on the basis of new thinking and flexible approaches – focusing on local determination and delivery and on ensuring value for money.
Organisations can be given a broader base of tenant and community empowerment – more representative and inclusive – using flexible structures and group arrangements that provide local independence nurtured by a supportive 'parent'.
Employees can work in 'can-do' cultures – using effective, long-term resource planning to say 'yes' more often – and local authorities can realise the true potential of grasping the strategic enabling role into the future.
At the Community Housing Task Force we believe transfers, done well, really can transform. We are determined they will deliver decent homes and better services, not just in relation to affordable rents, preserved rights and responsibilities, but also on a broader set of government agendas.
We will therefore be working with our clients to make sure proposals also: deliver enhanced levels of tenant and community empowerment; tackle regeneration and inclusion issues; meet the needs of black and ethnic minority communities; create effective social businesses; and promote the strategic role of local authorities post-transfer.
It is outcomes, not processes, that count.
Achieving these outcomes is absolutely crucial to the success of the transfer programme but, for those involved in developing proposals, it can be hard to remain focused on what the transfer was actually designed to deliver in the first place – better homes and services for tenants.
It could be argued that transfers are becoming too 'processy'. Proposals are too similar, not reflecting the individual needs and priorities of local people, not widely enough owned either by their communities or by the employees within the successor landlords. Some argue that they are not joined-up with other broader initiatives, not making the best use of partners – and somewhat adversarial in nature.
At the CHTF we therefore also care about improving the process by which transfers are delivered. This means encouraging inclusiveness and real ownership of proposals (for example, through the election of tenants to shadow boards which are established at the start rather than at the end of the process); it means developing and sharing best practice, identifying a role for established partners and ensuring that local authorities see their transfer as one element of their broader corporate strategy.
Paramount in all of this is the quality and accessibility of the independent advice and support offered to tenants by independent tenant advisers, but it is equally important to challenge misinformation. What transfers primarily need are informed clients: tenants, councillors and officers.
The aim of focusing on improving the transfer product and process should be that proposals are designed by local people to meet their needs and priorities.
Tenant reactions to offer documents should not be a surprise to anyone – they should reflect months of on-the-ground work aimed at developing a locally responsive package of promises. They should be about rents, rights, investment levels, service performance and empowerment mechanisms.
Research consistently shows that most such promises are either kept or are exceeded. Indeed, a recent National Housing Federation survey indicated high levels of tenant satisfaction with large-scale voluntary transfer landlords. But we cannot afford to be complacent.
A number of organisations (including post-transfer local authorities) need to care that promises are honoured. But we should also be aiming to create strong successor RSLs, landlords whom tenants trust to respond to ever-changing circumstances and priorities.
Making sure transfers deliver is not easy, but it is possible. The task force has been established within the Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions to provide hands-on support and advice to councils, successor RSLs (whether new or existing) and tenants involved in developing transfer proposals.
Our aim is to work with our clients across the country: we do not promote transfers where these are not wanted, but we make transfer proposals the best they can be where they are being considered or developed.
Working closely with our DTLR and government office colleagues, the Housing Corporation and the federation, we will be promoting the idea that transfers can and should transform – delivering decent homes and excellent services to empowered local people from all communities.
Source
Housing Today
Postscript
Sarah Webb is leader of the Community Housing Task Force. To contact CHTF advisors, tel: 020 7944 3000 or email:chtf@dtlr.gsi.gov.uk
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