Tenants Services Authority The January 2010 meeting of Camden Fed was visited by Mr. Adrian Peacock from the Tenant Services Authority (TSA) who spoke on the new regulatory regime that will commence in April 2010.

Mr Peacock gave an overview on why the TSA has been set up. The organisation resulted from the Cave Review that examined the way housing worked as a ‘market’. The Cave Review came to the conclusion that housing operated in an imperfect market in which there was an imbalance of power to the disadvantage of tenants. It was felt necessary that tenants needed further protection through intervention and debate centred upon how to produce frameworks to protect tenants and guarantee the quality of service that followed from state investment. The outcome of this debate was the creation of the Tenants Services Authority in 2008 . The legislation also defined social housing for the first time. The TSA has inherited the regulatory aspect from the out-going Housing Corporation and is a non-departmental Government body acting as a consumer regulator and guardian of public investment.

The objective of the TSA is to bring all social housing into the same regulatory framework. The objectives can be summarised as:

1.                   Improving standards of service and delivery to tenants.

2.                   Promoting tenant involvement and empowerment.

3.                   Obtaining value for money.

4.                   Protecting public investment

5.                   Promoting the supply of social housing.

The TSA has sweeping powers to intervene with housing providers if need be but its approach is one of co-regulation as the TSA does not have significant resources to intervene heavily. The importance of tenants having ‘sign-off’ on proposals is recognised as is the need for more accountability in housing and less ‘red tape’. The TSA is establishing the principles of national standards which are outcome based and flexible. Part of this process places a duty upon social landlords to produce a compliance statement.

Mr Peacock placed the TSA within the wider European context. The British system was different to many other parts of Europe where wholesale de-socialisation has taken place. Mr Peacock thought that the TSA would do a credible job within the British system based on a mix of council-owned stock plus RSLs.