12. Tenant scrutiny Effective scrutiny Centre for Public Scrutiny Drives improvement in services Carried out by “independent governors” who own and lead the scrutiny role Enables the voice and concerns of the public Provides “critical friend” challenge to policy makers
This is based on the standard TSA presentation Have taken out some of the references to the passage of legislation and economic regulation Have put in more slides on consumer regulation and a move to more local solutions
Summary of the main changes – most of which are explained more later TSA continues as regulator to April 2012 Functions transferred to HCA in 2012, but some aspects of regulation will remain Standards will stay and will remain as the backbone for the new framework BUT – no proactive work on consumer regulation Fewer national targets and much less national performance measurement The regulator will only intervene on the consumer side on serious risks and serious detriment
On current progress we expect Royal assent in early Autumn which means formal consultation on the new standards (with the exception of the tenancy standard which we’ve recently consulted on) from around October We will take informal sounding before then The Bill covers the review of regulation and it might also be worth mentioning it also covers the possibility for providers to introduce flexible tenancies and a move to affordable rents based on 80% market rents Also cover greater flexibility for local authorities to decide on their allocation policies including the use of the private sector to discharge their homelessness obligations and to set out eligibility for registration on waiting lists which could involve a residency qualification – ie people will have had to live in the borough for a set time
The new involvement and empowerment standard will encourage the development of tenant panels – but not require them The Localism Bill currently sees complaints pass through a democratic filter, dealt with by local councillor, MP or tenant panel before passing to the ombudsman The local govt ombudsman will not deal with housing cases, instead these will all be passed to the housing ombudsman The regulator will intervene only where there is “serious failure” or “serious detriment” this will be partly laid down in the localism bill, but to help work out how this look in practice, we will work with others to define what this actually means Plans for local offers should have been in place by October 2010, with the offers themselves in place by April this year. Offers should have been thoroughly consulted locally, and the requirement for local offers will stay after 2012
Much of what the regulator currently does will either move to locally arrangements, or existing local arrangements will be strengthened. This is consistent with the governments wish to move to localism, with local priorities and local accountability The involvement and empowerment standard will be strengthened to take account of this – including that tenant panels should be considered locally, and that requirements for training and capacity building and for local scrutiny are strengthened There will be routes for referrals to the regulator, including from recognised groups, and the regaultor will be required to judge these against the serious detriment test and report back on the action taken (or not taken) All this mean the majority of discussion will be local – between tenant and provider rather than provdier-regulator, with more freedoms to explore local ways of doing things
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