I was with a former transfer client the other day – an association that took over a local authority's housing some years ago.
They reported on the somewhat startling findings of a survey: that about half of their tenants still think they are with the council!

I have been pondering this. It certainly cannot be the case in this instance that the tenants have seen no difference; this is a first-rate landlord, forward-looking and efficient. The assumption has to be that tenants feel as secure with their post-transfer landlord as they did with the council.

Board members and officers will be striving to "make a difference" but I doubt if anyone will have been seriously disappointed by the survey results – although they will have produced a wry smile or two.

But the results do have implications for stock transfer generally. They certainly give the lie to scaremongering from anti-transfer campaigners. We have all been bored or outraged by claims that stock transfer is analogous to jumping over the proverbial cliff. Not so: at least in one area, and I am sure that there are many others. Tenants are enjoying a very soft landing indeed, cushioned by a massive surge of investment in their homes. Perhaps the truth is that there is no cliff at all?

A few thousand tenants certainly seem to think so.

Source

Housing Today

Postscript

Ian Doolittle is head of public sector at law firm Trowers & Hamlins. idoolittle@trowers.com