Now it’s up to tenants

Published: 10th December, 2010

• AT the last full council meeting there was much banter as to whose mistakes have led to the cuts. The reality is that bankers were only acting as company law requires, attempting to maximise the return to shareholders. The banks crashed because government had loosened their regulation.

What does matter is to tailor the correct governance, inspection and regulation regime, and we should keep this in mind when the future of our tenanted housing is being considered. To think that the interests of secure tenants, leasehold tenants, their landlord and their landlord’s managing agent are identical would be naive. All interest groups, by definition, have different interests and the ability to recognise them is fundamental to an understanding of politics.

Company directors are bound by law to further the interest of their shareholders and this includes tenant directors of companies such as Homes for Islington, which manages most of Islington’s council housing and whose sole shareholder is the council, not its tenants.

To date that interest has been served by achieving the maximum Audit Commission star rating so as to attract government-supported borrowing but the interests of secure tenants cannot be simply summarised as the need to see their landlord’s managing agents spend more money.

The Audit Commission is being wound up by government and consequently there will be no more independent inspection of social housing. In future, tenants will have to rely on what inspection they can do for themselves if their landlords are to be held to account.

The next full council is to consider the Tenant Services Authority Local Regulation Offer and this should make specific provision for consultation on housing strategy, housing management structure, tenant inspections and tenant-led regulation.

These may not be the topics tenants bring to their councillors’ surgeries but they are the systemic issues that lie behind those that they do.
Chris Graham
Tollington Park, N4