Local Authority Tenants (Hansard, 11 March 1994)

§ Mrs. Lait
To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment when he expects to lay regulations to give force to the new right to manage for local authority tenants.

§ Sir George Young
I have today laid before Parliament the Housing (Right to Manage) Regulations 1994 which will come into force on 1 April. The regulations implement our citizens charter commitment to give local authority tenants' organisations a statutory right to manage their own homes.
Seventy-four tenant management organisations are already managing their own housing under the present voluntary arrangements, and reaping the benefits of greater cost control, local accountability and responsive services. The right to manage will put those benefits within the grasp of any properly constituted and representative tenants' organisation. I expect to see many more TMOs managing their housing over the next few years.

§ Mr. Clappison
To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what plans the Government have to require local authorities to provide better information on their housing management performance to tenants.

§ Sir George Young
I am pleased to announce that today the Department has issued to all local housing authorities a revised "Reports to Tenants Determination" together with an explanatory circular. This determination sets out the information that local authorities must provide to their tenants each year on their housing management performance. I am placing copies in the Library.
The publication of the new determination follows a review of the existing reports to tenants regime, in consultation with the local authority associations and others, in the light of recent research on the operation of the regime since the first reports were published in 1991. I hope that the new reports will be more relevant to tenants' needs. This citizens charter initiative will help tenants to judge how well their council is managing its housing stock on the basis of reports written in clear and simple language.
From 1994–95 authorities will be required to report on housing stock, allocations, management costs, rents and repairs. Authorities will be encouraged to set targets for their performance to set the required information on the broader context of their housing strategies, current and future, and to provide information broken down to estate level as far as possible.