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...

Violent Abuse of Housing Staff is “shameful”

This week’s Inside Housing highlights the daily (at least) attacks on public housing officers up and down the country. A freedom of information request of Councils and ALMOs (by the Tories for heaven sake!) showed that nearly 1200 housing staff were attacked between 2006 and 2008. Over one per day.

I think that everyone will accept that this is in fact a massive under reporting of the problem. No Housing associations were surveyed and many organisations actively discourage staff from reporting attacks.

There is also a very sensible proposal that the Audit Commission and the TSA should take responsibility for ensuring housing organisations properly assess risks and take appropriate preventative action which is welcomed.

I’ll bang on again about my argument that there is a common interest between staff and residents on these issues. Housing organisations that fail to look after their staff properly will also be the ones that fail to provide decent services to their residents. Staff are most at risk when trying to protect residents from violence or harassment.

Next month on Tuesday 28 April it is Workers Memorial Day. This is not only a time to remember those who were killed while at work or died prematurely of industrial diseases such as asbestosis but it is also a health & safety campaigning day. UNISON will be organising events to mark this day up and down the country.

Why not set aside a small part of that Tuesday to checking your risk assessments are up-to-date and personal safety control measures are in place and being followed? Remember – housing staff are at risk - it is not a matter of “if” but “when”.

Obama to Cap Executive Pay?

If true “happy times”. Tom P has posted here on a report in the New York Times that President Obama is going to impose a cap of “only” $500,000 on the total salary of CEO’s whose companies receive large amounts of bail out money.

Good news! I assume that the same will happen here? Since surely we want to make our own markets “competitive” with the US?

This is still an absolutely huge amount of money for one person to “earn”.

Maybe this should a realistic earning ceiling for all companies? This should only be for exceptional performance. Ordinary shareholders (pension trustees and insurance policy holders) must be allowed to vote on CEO maximum remuneration packages.

This could result in a fairer and more equal society. The real end of history?

This is a 97.5% reduction I think for some (from $20 million). It is also roughly what the top CEO’s of British housing associations get (£327,000). A rethink here will also be in order?

TSA - is there anyone listening?

Housing matters

Some stuff I’ve nicked from the latest editions of Inside Housing. Last week it reported here that the new regulator the TSA is to probe the increasing salaries of housing association CEO’s. Have they become a self fulfilling prophecy? About time too. See here.

While here they report that many Housing association executives are not taking their bonuses due to the economic downturn. hmm? Good – leadership at last?

Why do so many MP’s hate us? (Or something like that). Barbara Thorndick, the Chair of Place Shapers Group says here that Housing associations are “the good guys”. She is introducing a report the group had commissioned that concluded that HA’s need to improve their reputation among MPs (and I would say among many Councillors and Assembly members!). I must admit that I have come across a number of MPs who have no time whatsoever for “dreadful” Housing associations – not just the “usual suspects” either.

Here we have the news that six HA’s on the TSA “at risk list”. Whose CEO, Peter Marsh , said there were four “presenting factors” – stand alone interest rate swaps, only 6 months bank funding, write downs on land banks and wrong assumptions about shared ownership sales. No doubt that some of these six will be suffering from all four factors.

The maddest story of all time must be here about Home housing group sacking a sheltered warden who may have saved a dying resident with an non-procedural “out of hours” visit. An employment tribunal found she had been unfairly dismissed and should have been congratulated not sacked. Think about it – if HA’s treat staff in such a “totally irrational” way then how do they treat their residents? Resident associations and housing unions ought to work together more closely.

Saddest story here is that landlords are freezing recruitment and cutting jobs due to economic downturn. This is bonkers that we are laying off specialist development staff when we have an absolute housing crisis and an economy that needs reflating. Hello? what’s happened to joined up thinking?