Council announces review of HAFFTRA
Friday December 30, 2011
Hammersmith & Fulham (H&F) Council has today announced the latest steps in its bid to boost resident involvement in housing management.
More than 17,000 homes returned to council control last April after H&F Homes (the ALMO) was replaced with a single housing and regeneration department. Following the move the Council identified improving resident involvement as a key priority and is looking at ways to residents a greater say in how their housing services are delivered.
In October 2011, the Council invited a leading expert, Phil Morgan, to carry out an independent review on how it, as a landlord, engages with tenants and leaseholders. This involved Mr Morgan speaking to a range of tenants and leaseholders, residents associations and other stakeholders on a draft resident involvement strategy that aims to include more residents in decisions and ensure that they have a greater ability to influence and monitor services.
The initial conculsion from the report are now known and recomends that the Council adopts much broader forms of engagement with residents over issues like repairs, contractor relations and housing services. He has also concluded that one of the ways to ensure that residents are at the heart of decision making is to change the way that the council works with the Hammersmith and Fulham Federation of Tenants and Residents Associations (HAFFTRA).
As a result, the Council has announced that it shall be terminating its current contract with HAFFTRA - the body that co-ordinates and manages the way that the Council engages and consults with council tenants, and instead work with the federation over the next three months to develop a new approach that will encourage more direct dialogue with tenants and leaseholders.
Tenants and leaseholders currently pay 25 pence a week to the council which then passes the levy, which amounts to a total of £160,000, to HAFFTRA. Mr Morgan believes that this represents a poor value for money deal for residents.
Phil Morgan has reported back that “the current approach to resident involvement falls short of best practice. There is some resident involvement but not enough and more residents need to be involved. The emphasis on solely working through a federation, representing tenant and resident associations, is now almost universally disregarded as a suitable way of involving residents. The arrangements for the relationship with HAFFTRA on the Tenants Levy are outdated and no longer fit for purpose. There is no coverage of value for money for the levy.”
Cllr Andrew Johnson, cabinet member for housing, said: “Since the Council brought the housing service back in-house, we have been working hard to ensure that we have a truly responsive, efficient service that delivers value for money and places tenants and leaseholders at the core of everything we do. We brought Mr Morgan on board as a respected figure within social housing to undertake an indepentent review of how we engage with residents and encourage more direct dialogue with our residents to drive service improvements. Changing the way that we work with HAFFTRA is one of the ways of assisting us to achieve that aim."
HAFFTRA has been in existence for the last 23 years. The current arrangements are largely unchanged since HAFFTRA was introduced in 1992.
In order to achieve this, the council will consult with all tenants and leaseholders once again, with letters sent out imminently. The consultation will run from January 6 to 27.
Notes for editors:
Phil Morgan is a former Chief Executive of the Tenant Participation Advisory Service (TPAS) and Executive Director of Tenant Services at the Tenant Services Authority (TSA).
