The ARCH Executive Board and ARCH Tenant Group will hold special
meetings in October to consider and agree the ARCH response to the
Social Housing Green Paper and in the
meantime, we will be writing to all ARCH member councils to ask for
their help in shaping the ARCH response to the Social Housing Green
Paper, which must be submitted by 6 November.
With that letter, we will be setting out an initial reaction to
the issues raised in the Green Paper following a discussion at the
ARCH Board meeting on 10 September.
We are asking ARCH member councils for their reaction to the
line we have taken on each of the main issues and to the proposed
answers to the 48 specific questions for consultation.
There are several issues where we would be particularly grateful
to receive information from member councils on current practice.
These relate to:
- Local Decent Homes Plus standards (Questions 3 and 4) - where
authorities have already adopted local standards we would be
grateful to have details, including costs where possible;
- Complaints procedures and use of mediation (Questions 5-11) -
details of local complaints procedures and mediation where
used;
- Performance reporting and tenant scrutiny (Questions 15 and 20)
- details of local arrangements for accountability to tenants
- Tenant involvement in service delivery, selection of
contractors and design of new homes (Questions 26, 27 and 44)
We would also particularly like to hear the views of member
councils with extensive experience with Tenant Management
Organisations (on Questions 24 and 35) and leasehold management (on
Question 28).
We are seeking responses from ARCH member councils by 8 October,
to allow time to feed your views into the ARCH Executive Board and
ARCH Tenant Group as well as incorporating them into our final
response to the Green Paper.
We would encourage all ARCH member councils to respond, to
ensure that the ARCH response to the Green Paper reflects the
consensus views of our members.
There will also be an opportunity for tenants to learn more
about the Green Paper directly from senior officials at the
Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government when they
speak at the ARCH Tenant Conference on 18 September
and the ARCH Tenant Group will be discussing the Green Paper in
detail at a special meeting of the Tenant Group, to be held on 15
October.