The defining issue

Can you define housing management? You can't? Don't worry, you're in good company. The government asked Arthur Andersen to do it for them. As Housing Today revealed last week, the answer was that an unambiguous definition cannot be reached.

So if there isn't an answer, maybe we're asking the wrong question. Why not just accept that housing management will vary between landlords and estates, with its nature depending on what local circumstances demand. It is this flexibility which gives the capacity to meet the needs and aspirations of residents.

These are words from the report of the Social Exclusion Unit's Policy Action Team published last week. They may sound like common sense, but in fact imply big changes - both in the work of housing managers and in the government's approach to housing management.

The Action Team tried to establish how housing management can be an agent of social inclusion on Britain's most stressed and marginalised estates.

The report emphasises that you cannot prescribe good housing management. Getting it right won't just vary from one landlord to the next, it could well mean different management approaches on diverse estates with different needs in the same area. The more marginalised an estate has become, the more complex and demanding this management task will be.

The individual housing manager becomes pivotal. They will need to be on the ground to develop approaches which suit the tenants and their locality, and to act as the catalyst and facilitator of initiatives which are in the remit of other agencies. Above all they will need to have the will to get things done. None of this delivers social inclusion on its own, but forms a necessary part of the package.

This is why the report refuses to set down recommendations and models of management. Its action plan is enabling - enabling the local process to flourish.

There are several strands to this. The status of housing management needs an enormous boost - it's been playing third fiddle for too long. Making it local also needs money, training to enhance the role of managers, improved information flow and networking, links with other providers and guarantees that it will be truly inclusive - particularly for black and ethnic minority communities. For all this, there is a need for far more sophisticated methods to evaluate success - Best Value, tenant compacts and the Housing Inspectorate are going to be tools here.

And this is where government thinking has really got to move on. Until now housing management has usually been seen as a fixed set of tasks that can be quantified and costed. Local authority housing management allowances have been cut by over 10 per cent in four years - on the assumption that all authorities should carry out these fixed tasks more efficiently.

But there is no fixed list of tasks. Such simple judgements cannot be made. It is not yet clear how far the government accepts this. There is still a current of opinion that equates the cost of management with performance - the cheaper you do it, the better you are. But even Arthur Andersen, the scion of performance indicators, has concluded this isn't the case with housing.

The Action Team report accepts that housing management needs more money. It asks the government to consider lifting the freeze on council housing management allowances. It also suggests ways of helping housing associations lever more money into their management functions.

But it goes further. If the range and complexity of the management task grows as an estate becomes more marginalised, the cost will also grow. The report suggests allowances should reflect this increased cost in areas of high stress. It echoes Arthur Andersen's recommendation that socio-economic factors should be taken into account when setting relative levels of management allowance. This makes it all the more important that landlords are accountable for the way they use their resources - but crude cost comparisons will be increasingly unhelpful.

Both reports are welcome contributions to what seems to be an emerging consensus - it is only to be hoped that government will take note. If so, housing management is set to play a significant part in a national strategy for neighbourhood renewal.