Tenant Services Authority Governance Standards

Last Thursday I had a trip to Birmingham to become better educated on the likely contents of the Tenant Services Authority’s new governance standard.

Now whilst this may sound both like a bit of a dry topic and a mouthful to say, it is in my view at least an important part in ensuring that the management of ‘housing bodies’ is done to the highest standard and to ensure the best level of services to local residents whether that is for the very large housing bodies such as some of the inner city housing bodies to those a bit smaller like our own High Peak Community Housing.

Essentially ‘governance’ is about how decisions are made within the company and the process to reach them and it will a strand within the areas that will be regulated and monitored by the new tenant services authority.

In terms of what it means locally, some of the issues are about refining some of the work done at current to give greater emphasis on the views of tenants and it will also amongst a range of other issues see the introduction of tenant inspectors, which will see specially trained tenants reviewing in far greater details than before issues like repairs.

In terms of the event today it was about increasing knowledge of what the standards will be and what changes housing bodies need to look at to meet and where possible exceed the new standards which will be released by the TSA in greater detail in the next few weeks.

Locally I know various aspects of this are been worked on and it will be interesting to see other the forthcoming weeks and months what issues we need to consider further to both meet and beat the requirements.