AT HOME WITH...Michelle Reid

The tenant movement stands on the verge of a major breakthrough in matters of involvement and TPAS has been at the forefront of advocating a greater say for tenants. Chief executive Michelle Reid talks to Mark Cantrell about this critical time for the movement

By her own admission, M ichelle Reid is a “realistic optimist”. The chief executive of TP AS has plenty of reasons to be both, given these uncertain times, but she is a determined advocate of tenant empowerment and remains positive about the prospects.

”I think we are on the verge of a major breakthrough,” Reid said, but she is under no illusions about the challenges and the uncertainties facing the sector.

She has been at the helm for just over a year, having taken up the post after her predecessor moved over to the Tenant Services Authority (TSA), and it has been a hectic time for Reid, as with the organisation she leads, with her work taking her the length and breadth of the country to talk with tenants and providers.

The industry has been gearing itself up for the TSA’s new regulatory regime that aims to radically shift the relationship between tenant and landlord by bringing them into the regulating process and otherwise reinforce the principles of tenant involvement. The aim is effectively to encourage best practice to become industry standard practice. And TPAS has been a major contributor to the process.

“It’s been a very busy time to come into TPAS because there has been the consultation around the new regulatory framework, then there has been the implementation and launch of the new National Tenant Voice, so there’s been a whole range of incredibly exciting but also very challenging questions to answer,” Reid said.

“Resident-led self-regulation is a big title but what it actually means is that residents are at the heart of the services that they are paying for. There are lots of great providers out there who are doing really good partnership work with their tenants and you can see a real positive impact on the business. [Then] there are providers who you just know haven’t yet grasped it. S o one of the key challenges is demonstrating the positive impact that involving tenants can have on the business.”

These days, given the recession and the dawning era of cutbacks, such measures are not to be sniffed at: tenants can prove to be a real ally in the quest for efficiency savings. An example Reid is fond of citing illustrates the point: just by working with tenants on a small part of its procurement process, Sheffield Homes was able to save £1 million that could be ploughed back into services.

“Tenants understand value for money just as well, if not better than anyone else, and they can be a really huge help to providers,” Reid said. “Tenants want information and tenants want to be able to have some kind of part in the decision-making process – and tenants can help providers set their priorities.”

After all the hard work, however, the recession, the dawning age of cutbacks, and the change of Government may yet cast 11th-hour doubts over the realisation of tenants’ ambitions to be involved in shaping their landlord’s services. At the time of speaking to Reid, the industry was still awaiting to learn the likely fate of quangos such as the TSA and the HCA and more widely its spending and policy priorities for housing. So there is an element of waiting with ‘baited breath’ to find out how this revolution in tenant empowerment may yet fare. For Reid, however, whatever happens next, it is not a case of sitting back passively to ‘watch this space’ but to lobby and make the case to fill that space.

“We are in an absolutely crucial moment in the history of the tenant movement,” Reid said. “The challenge now, for everybody, is that we have this great burst of momentum, we have this new Government – who I hope will be as committed to that momentum – and we have now got these new rules for social housing.”

Reid has had a varied career, but she is steeped in the culture of social housing, having started her working life as a housing officer in Moss Side, Manchester, for the city council. A far cry from her academic pursuits – she studied drama at university – but one might say it helped all the same, if indirectly. “I think I have used that every day of my working life,” she said.

Following her work as a housing officer, Reid moved on to work in the field of supported housing, working with a variety of vulnerable groups such as the homeless, people coming off drugs and alcohol, and young people. For a time she worked as an independent consultant, helping organisations to re-organise themselves, but also to implement the Supporting People programme when it first started. For the seven years prior to joining TPAS, Reid worked with the specialist charity the George House Trust, working with men, women and children in the North West who are living with HIV.

If there is one binding thread to this varied career, it is a working life spent advocating and working with underrepresented groups to help them find their voice – and encourage those voices to be heard. But there’s another thread to Reid’s dedication to inclusion that’s a little closer to home, as it were.

“I was born into social housing,” Reid said. “I was brought up on a council estate in Northumberland. I’ve been a housing association tenant. I’ve been a co-op tenant. I ’m not a tenant now but it’s something that is very close to my heart. The future of social housing has to be protected because there will always be a need for social housing in this country.”