How to rate your local Housing Associations?

This is interesting (to me anyway) The regulator “Tenant Services Authority” (TSA) has set up a new web site that enables you to find out how well your local housing associations are doing and compare with others in the area.

The TSA think that this will be of interests to tenants, Councillors and Housing Association boards and will help drive up housing management standards. I think that staff and trade unionists will also find it useful as well since I firmly believe that the best performing housing associations that get the highest satisfaction from their residents will also tend to be the most decent to their staff. There are the usual cavorts about how accurate some of the data used is and how up to-date. Importantly it appears that large Housing Associations don’t have to (but can choose to) take part and local Council housing stock is not included - which seems a bit odd?

The Tories appear to want to get rid of the TSA and even the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) - which is one of their most barmy ideas since the sector’s past £160 billion of loans was dependant on an effective national government regulator. Lenders will be very nervous of any abolition and this will make future development more expensive and much riskier. Still, we are talking here about free market rules extremist Tories so...