15th May 2009
By Neil Merrick
Council-owned housing companies must not be blamed for the failings of their parent authority, the new watchdog for social landlords has been warned.
The Tenant Services Authority, which has regulated housing associations for the past five months, is due to oversee other providers of affordable housing from next April.
Gwyneth Taylor, policy officer of the National Federation of Almos, said arm’s-length management organisations feared they could be criticised because of actions by their council.
She said that if the TSA found that the housing service was not acceptable, it would have to review ‘to what extent it was the fault of the Almo, or a corporate failure’.
The TSA will start consulting over the regulatory framework in the next few months.
The National Housing Federation, which represents RSLs, agrees that other providers should be covered by the same rules.
John Bryant, policy leader at the NHF, said: ‘We entirely accept that it’s not possible to have an absolutely uniform system across the whole domain, but differences should be on an exceptional basis.’
