A sector body is planning to call for more active consumer regulation of arm’s-length management organisation (ALMO) services following the sentencing of an ALMO over a balcony collapse.
According to Inside Housing:
Blackpool Coastal Housing was two weeks ago ordered to pay £77,000 in costs after a second-floor balcony collapsed in May 2012. Residents had first started to complain about the safety of the structure seven years ago.
Chloe Fletcher, policy director for the National Federation for ALMOs (NFA), said she believed the incident could have been prevented had there been a body in place to more actively regulate consumer complaints.
Ms Fletcher said: ‘Due to the number of complaints, I would have hoped that, if there had been an active regulatory body, [then] the Blackpool Coastal Housing failings would have been picked up in the inspection process.’
She added that the need for a regulatory body is ‘definitely something that is being discussed in the sector’. She said the NFA could lobby for such an organisation after 2015, if the political landscape changes after the next election.
More about the Blackpool Coastal Housing balcony collapse…
24 April: ALMO in balcony collapse case faces heavy fine
The Audit Commission actively provided consumer regulation of ALMOs up until 2010, carrying out regular inspections to ensure services met a high standard before they could access Decent Homes funding. However, the body was scrapped by the coalition in 2010.
At present, although the Homes and Communities Agency is responsible for ALMO consumer regulation, the procedures make it difficult to get an intervention. Consumer complaints need to meet a rarely exceeded ‘serious detriment’ test to establish the threat of harm.
Ms Fletcher added the sector needs incentives for excellence standards and that the ‘carrot and stick’ approach, which was previously provided by the Audit Commission, worked well in the past.
Alison Inman, one of the board of directors of the Tenant Participation Advisory Service, said that some form of regulatory inspection would ‘shine a light on’ failings similar to those of Blackpool Coastal Housing, in particular how they failed to listen to their tenants.
She said: ‘It’s dangerous that there’s not some form of active inspection, as this case has proven.’
Tracey Lees, chief executive for the ALMO Barnet Group, said that calling for a regulatory body implies that ALMOs staff cannot think for themselves.
‘We can think for ourselves and we don’t need an organisation to give us a blueprint to tell us what good/excellent service looks like.’