Going Dutch – self-regulation and the problems of housing associations in the Netherlands

The Conservatives’ plans for social housing will re-open the debate over regulation: if the TSA is abolished, many in housing associations (and certainly the National Housing Federation) will advocate self-regulation on the Dutch model. Meanwhile the housing associations in the Netherlands are having some problems.

Last week it was reported that Dutch housing associations had posted an average loss of €1.2m - the first time the sector has failed to make a profit in well over a decade. This will put under strain the sectors own arrangements to rescue troubled associations. While the financial problems may be largely outside the control of the associations, the self-rescue and the self-regulation arrangements tend to support each other.

Catchup - the Conservatives and regulation of social housing

Life has been busy - mostly working with organisations in the overlap of the public, charitable and education sectors. This month I will try to reserve more time for this blog.

This weekend I have been catching up on last month's issues of Public Finance. It was disappointing to see that the Conservatives appear to be planning to re-arrange the regulatory landscape for English social housing as part of the crusade against quangos. If the Tenants Services Authority is doomed, there will have to be a new regulatory regime otherwise lenders will be wary of lending to housing associations - or, if they do, it will be at higher margins.

Post-16 education changes: things can only get better?

This week’s Public Finance reports that the Learning and Skills Council’s chief executive has warned of something close to chaos as the quango is dismembered – part becoming the Young Peoples’ Learning Agency and part the Skills Funding Agency.

Geoffrey Russell writes in the LSC’s annual report: ‘As the transition progresses over the next year, there are significant risks that the LSC will not be able to meet its objectives, staff morale will be affected and systems of internal control will break down.’

Those of us who have worked with colleges for several years will remember the dislocation caused when the Further Education Funding Council and forty-plus Training and Enterprise Councils were put together less than a decade ago – pulling organisations apart is even more disruptive than putting them together.

The histories of the FEFC, TECs and LSC suggest that the SFA and YPLA will share the same fate.

If the Conservatives enter government next year, the next upheaval may come even sooner. David Cameron’s rhetoric about a bonfire of quangoes chimes with noises from his party about resurrecting the FEFC – re-creating a funding body with a narrower remit than its successors and removing from local authorities their new funding role in 16-18 education.

We’ll have to watch this space.