WIREDGOV

Housing Minister John Healey today announced that for the first time all 8 million tenants in public housing will have the right to clear standards of service from their landlord. Mr Healey said that from 1 April next year, tenants in council or housing association homes will have these standards protected by a tough, responsive regulator, the Tenant Services Authority.

For tenants this could mean getting involved in agreeing with their landlords target response times for routine repairs, the right to choose a convenient time to have work done or priorities for neighbourhood improvements.

The Government has driven up standards and services in public housing over the past twelve years and through the Decent Homes Programme, over 700,000 new kitchens, 525,000 new bathrooms and over 1 million new central heating systems have been fitted to homes.

John Healey wants to see that improvement in public homes maintained and will direct the TSA to set national housing standards that all tenants can expect.

This is part of a programme of proposals across government that are protecting and guaranteeing the government's public service improvements of the last 12 years as new rights for citizens. For example, the NHS Constitution, which was launched in January this year, sets out patients' rights to NHS services and safeguards the NHS for the future, and the September Guarantee ensures the offer of a place in education or training to young people completing compulsory education.

John Healey said:

"We have driven up standards in public housing over the past twelve years. Thanks to the Decent Homes Programme and over £33 billion investment many tenants' homes have been made decent and I want these homes to remain that way.

"But I want to go further so I plan to legislate before Christmas to ensure that all tenants - whether they are in local authority or housing association homes - will know the service they can expect from their landlord."

The TSA has brought forward draft national standards based on what tenants say matters most to them; including repairs, maintenance, and anti-social behaviour. Examples of the standards include:

• Landlords must provide a maintenance service that gets repairs and improvements right, consistent with standards agreed with their tenants.
• Landlords must work to prevent and tackle anti-social behaviour in the neighbourhoods where they own homes.
• Landlords must give tenants opportunities to be involved in the management of their homes.

In addition tenants and landlords will agree local priorities that will become their own standards of what they can expect. These local standards should include details of how tenants can be involved in scrutinising performance and what happens if local standards are not met.

The TSA is already piloting this local approach in a number of areas - specific examples include:

• Hanover Housing Association, a national provider of retirement accommodation, is reviewing its repairs process and will agree service standards with their tenants, which will enable them, estate by estate, to agree call out times that meet their needs, prioritise urgent repairs and select their preferred contractors.
• East Midlands Housing Association and Foundation Housing Association are developing local standards for anti-social behaviour and security, ensuring that the standards address local priorities. The pilot will set targets for tenant priorities such as litter, vandalism and graffiti, noise nuisance, neighbour disputes and harassment.
• Hastoe Housing Association and Six Town Housing are piloting a standard on mitigation of climate change to ensure tenants benefit from better energy and water efficiency in their homes and lower fuel bills.
• The London Borough of Hounslow and six housing associations are working together with tenants living on six estates to set standards for improving community safety and community cohesion. These might include better coordinated approaches to dealing with litter and fly-tipping, improving street lighting on estates and improving the design and maintenance of footpaths. 
  

TSA Chief Executive Peter Marsh said:

"We welcome the Government today confirming that our powers will be extended and the standards we're developing for landlords will apply to local authorities as well as housing associations from April next year - meaning that regardless of which social housing provider they rent from, all tenants will receive a similar standard of service in the future.

"We're also pleased that the Government has set out its directions to the TSA covering tenant empowerment, the quality of homes, and future rent levels for housing associations - three areas central to tenants' concerns, and issues which the TSA is responsible for setting standards for landlords. Our statutory consultation setting out our proposed standards, which covers these areas along with others such as anti-social behaviour, allocations, customer service and financial viability, will be published later this week."

Where national standards are not met, TSA will work with landlords and tenants to improve performance. Where necessary, the TSA will be able to use new enforcement powers to ensure that tenants get a good service. These can include issuing enforcement notices or even transferring the management of properties to another provider. In addition, housing associations can face fines or be forced to pay compensation to their tenants.

Notes to editors

1. The Housing Minister John Healey is today directing the TSA on the standards it must set for all social housing tenants on quality of accommodation and tenant involvement, and for RSL tenants, on rents for 2010/11.

2. Concurrently, we are publishing a summary of responses to the Section 114 Order consultation. This Order, which will be published before Christmas, will extend Tsar's regulatory powers to the Local Authority sector from 1 April 2010.

The extension of the TSA's powers to all public housing tenants comes on the back of a year of success for the new body:

• The quality of TSA regulation helps to support lending on more favourable terms to housing associations, to the value of around £500m per year. This contributes to the delivery of new affordable homes.
• TSA has worked intensively with landlords and lenders to ensure that the housing association sector remains on a sound financial footing through the economic downturn, protecting tenants and public investment. The sector continues to be attractive to lenders, with £7.1bn of new facilities agreed between April 2008 and March 2009.
• Backed by a new £7.5m Challenge Fund, TSA is working with Government to encourage greater use of Family Intervention Projects, which provide support to families causing anti-social behaviour in their local community

The new regulatory framework will build on the considerable improvements that have been made by Government and by individual landlords. It will ensure that - for the first time - all social tenants can expect clear standards of service from their landlord, backed up by regulatory action when needed.

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