By Alistair McIntosh, HQN CEO

The gloves are off. Previous meetings of the House of Commons inquiry into the regulation of social housing have resembled fireside chats. Yesterday, that all changed. Daniel Hewitt from ITV, accompanied by a tenant from Manchester and one from London, excoriated standards across social housing.

How do we put this right?

1.    Get the right leaders
By law, every landlord must produce an annual report. You can immediately tell from reading these whether the landlord wants to do the job or not. If there’s an uninterested or boastful annual report, it’s time for a cull.

2.    Attack the root causes
Many of us see lots of problems with new homes. Bring your development teams to heel. Don’t let them run the show.

3.    Respect the frontline
The people in call centres and in the vans know what’s going on. They’re the most important players you have. Cherish them and listen to them. When the frontline gives up on the landlord, the tenants will follow suit. Give the frontline the training and tools they need to do the job.

4.    Solutions not processes
Fix a complaint, don’t go through a myriad of stages. Senior people need to get stuck in and write the letters. Then turn their attention to making sure the problem doesn’t arise somewhere else. Cut out any meetings that distract managers.

5.    Sharpen your customer reflexes
There’s no perfect or easy path to getting things right for residents. We see resident board members, board members who are experts on customer care elsewhere, and all manner of panels and surveys. A word to the wise: the dogs in the street know when you’re being serious or tokenistic. Younger and more diverse board leaders will help you break any bad habits and move into the future tense. And make sure that someone like Kwajo is patrolling your stock.

6.    End the addiction to pointless consultation
We already know what standards are acceptable. Please, God, spare me yet another round of meetings on the repairs service! Just get on and deliver.

7.    Yes, we do need a police force
Any industry needs an intimidating regulator to sort out the recidivists. So, put one in place quickly. But regulators must be incredibly careful about using merger as the go-to solution. Some of our larger landlords aren’t doing so well on customer care, are they? Future mergers must sign up to a binding quality improvement programme.

8.    Money does matter
Of course, the big deal right now is to improve attitudes. But landlords are facing rising costs while tenants are seeing bills soaring everywhere. There are no good choices unless we put housing on a stable financial footing. This time around please let’s opt for grants, not another push for speculative sales.