Inside Housing – Home – The Week in Housing: unlawful mutants and suppressing MMC risk

Good afternoon.
Data on tenant satisfaction measures (TSMs) will be a core pillar of the new consumer regulation regime, but how are social landlords capturing it? 
Our detailed research this week sheds the first light on what is the probably the largest single data collection exercise the sector has ever attempted. 
The findings, which relate to more than 200 social landlords – 116 housing associations and 87 councils – show whether the sector is using phone surveys, emails, in-person conversations or other methods; whether they will be using trackers or single surveys; and how many of their residents they are surveying.
All of this might feel like simple detail, but it is not. We know that these methods can have a major impact on the results, and the stats they produce will be a critical part of benchmarking the new regime. 
We also learned this week that the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) will run its own survey of tenants. This appears to be a benchmark to check the TSMs against. 
If, for example, a landlord scores 95% on its TSMs, but 32% in the regulator’s survey, they will have some tough questions to answer.
With TSMs come many other major new responsibilities, in an operating environment that has never been more complex for social landlords. In that light, it is instructive to learn the skills behind the boards and executive teams charged with steering organisations through it. Our new survey, which we believe to be the largest analysis of housing association governance and leadership in England, sheds some light
You can read it here, and it provides many insights into who is really running the sector. For example, a significant proportion of board membership from the largest associations is made up of people from financial or property industry backgrounds, with more than a quarter (27%) from these areas. 
In stark contrast, the lion’s share (30%) of board members in smaller associations have professional social housing experience.
In London this week, a council ordered a developer to demolish two blocks of flats in Woolwich after it made 26 changes to its approved plans without the authority’s permission.
Greenwich Council, which described the development as “mutant”, said that Comer Homes Group’s Mast Quay Phase II built-to-rent scheme was “unlawful because it is so substantially different” to the one given planning permission in 2012.
Comer Homes Group said it was “surprised and extremely disappointed by the decision” and will appeal it.
There was somewhat less surprise in the Inside Housing newsroom this week after we obtained an internal policy document from the Labour Party that revealed its commitment to restoring social housing as the second biggest tenure is now a “long-term aspiration”.
Labour’s watered-down commitment comes after a review of Homes England’s flagship Affordable Homes Programme revealed that fewer than a third of its completions target has been delivered so far.
Just 4% of that figure was for social rent.
The Greater London Authority (GLA) also found itself at the centre of a row between a council and a department store.
John Lewis believes it needs more grant funding from the GLA to meet its target of 35% affordable housing for its first build-to-rent development, but one Ealing councillor said “it feels like a big institution is trying to twist arms and bully through a scheme that could be far better”.



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