Less red tape, more accountability TSA tells RSLs

Speaking at the Board Development Agency’s annual conference in Leeds, Tenant Services Authority (TSA) board member Jim Coulter urged social landlords to cut red tape and become more accountable.

“Over time there will be less red tape and hopefully more accountability,” Coulter said. Delegates were also told about the latest changes to the TSA’s co-regulatory framework that is set to be introduced on 1 April and explained how the process will work.

“It’s a move away from this is how we do it, to handing over to registered providers, who will say; this is how we deliver and they will report their delivery to tenants and to other stakeholders. The main focus will be the relationship between landlord and tenants,” he said.

Coulter also admitted to delegates that some of the initial framework for regulation needed to be changed and that the TSA had made adjustments as a result of feedback, adding:

“We have had feedback about clarity of language on our national standards and local standards. There are now a number of adjustments being made (to the proposed standards). What we have done in response to the feedback is no longer to call these national standards which seemed to be confusing, so they are now called TSA Standards. The Local Standards will no longer be called Local Standards but Local Offers. That’s where a greater clarity will kick in. There will also be changes in the timetable, for example when landlords are required to produce an annual report, which will now be the 1st October each year.”

Outlining the steps the TSA are going to take with poor performing housing organisations, Coulter said: “In 2010/11 there is going to be resourcing to investigate the poorest providers. We want to see poor performance driven up, rather than having a blanket approach to the sector overall.”

Yvonne Atkinson, director at the Board Development Agency, who was also speaking at the conference added: “Over the last year we have looked at the issue of new regulation and have felt that good governance is more important than ever during a recessionary phase.”

Coulter advised delegates that they would need to make sure their governance processes were in place saying: “We want to try to make sure that independent validation, audit and benchmarking are used to ensure that you validate what you do, so that the less intervention and interrogation there will be.”

He then went on to describe how accountability will work in practice, saying that he wanted tenants to be able to compare between different landlords.

“We want to make a move to more open information and make sure that the open information is what you use. We want to make sure the information is seen by people so people can make comparisons between different landlords,” he said. “Our task is to make a difference on behalf of social sector tenants. Every tenant matters is a very important clue in the change to what regulation is about.”