Hi Maria - thanks for your comments. I'm sorry if some of the detail of the report didn't come across sufficiently clearly to you at the event - always a challenge when you need to start later than planned because of the queues that afternoon and need to dash through the presentations in order to give time for questions. But, even so, I'm not sure I recognise many of your criticisms from the report - indeed quite a lot of what you call for is in there. I'd like to address your main concerns so that readers aren't confused by some parts of your comments.r/>r/>The report is pretty clear in calling for deregulation in exchange for community control. At no point does it suggest any additional regulatory burdens - in fact it suggests areas where they should be scrappedr/>r/>It explicitly calls for consideration of the extension of the right to manager/>r/>It highlights the value of smaller scale delivery closer to communities and suggests that should happen more (and points out that there doesn't appear to be much evidence of efficiencies of scale on the management side above a fairly low threshold)r/>r/>It points out the deficiencies of current board arrangements and calls for community-based share ownership.r/>r/>The report does make the distinction between community shareholders and boards, which is I think an important one -they perform different functions.r/>r/>I could go on, but will limit myself to noting your comments on Matrix -who were generous enough to sponsor the project. As you may be aware, a number of members of the Matrix group are hugely active in promoting community based approaches to housing delivery - one of the reasons they offered their support. For example, the Accord Group has as one of its members Redditch Cooperative Homes, and provides support to a large number of very small coops as part of its mainstream business; WATMOS is an association made up of tenant management organisations in Walsall; Trent & Dove have significant tenant representation on their board; Trident are pioneering social audits of their work; Ashram have a dynamic and growing portfolio of social enterprises within their business.r/>r/>In relation to your suggested link - I'd agree that there is value in revisiting issues like tenants choice to see whether they have value or relevance, particularly where new circumstances might make them more viable than they were the first time around. There is always a need to balance outcomes here, and ensure that community as well as competition are embraced by any reform of that sort. But that wasn't the focus of this week's report.r/>

Good to see the Matrix Partnership showing their true colours and funding a right wing think tank.

Council housing was (and, where it remains, still is) community housing under democratic local control. The Tories set out to destroy council housing, instead promoting housing associations as, in effect, publicly-subsidised private housing companies. New Labour shamefully, if unsurprisingly, continued to force what became inaccurately known as “large scale voluntary transfer”. r/>r/>If ResPublica is genuinely committed to local democracy, rather than some fuzzy shrink-the-state notion of “community”, then it should be demanding the return of housing association stock to local authority ownership and a mass council housing building programme. Where’s the money going to come from? The “social mortgage” model that built five million mainly good quality homes is self financing. My authority’s housing revenue account has been making a multi-million pound contribution to the treasury each year for the past decade and a half - even after the cost of tenants’ housing benefit has been taken out.r/>r/>Back when councils built houses (and had other significant powers such as the ability to raise revenue), local election turn-out was routinely above 60%. Now there's no reason for people to vote. The “localism” espoused by Pickles and others has nothing to do with this kind of democratic decision making. Politicians instead want woolly, ill-defined notions of “community” because it’s a way of giving their mates (sorry, “community leaders”) a disproportionate and usually unrepresentative voice in local affairs. r/>r/>We also need to get away from thinking about “social” housing as housing for the poor. The market simply can’t provide decent housing for the majority of people on ordinary wages – a fact now dawning on 50-something beneficiaries of the house price inflation “money for nothing” years as their kids face a future in a succession of short-term, abominable value, private lets. r/>

I was very excited about attending this event and I wondered whether the so called radical Red Tory could possibly more radical than Margaret Thatcher in her early housing policies. Could ResPublica be suggesting "right to buy", "right to manage" or "pick a landlord" for housing association tenants? NOr/>r/>At the launch event I was confounded by the suggestion that the de-regulation programme of the previous Labour government, which included the abolition of both the Housing Corporation and its many hundreds of circulars, was a step too far and what was needed most was more regulation!r/>r/>Produced by Matrix Housing Partnership, the umbrella group of large housing associations operating in the Midlands, the pamphlet is also inaccurate indicating that is has been poorly researched. "Whilst most housing associations on their boards ...There is no equivalent to an independent shareholder interest, holding boards to account." Most small housing associations do have community shareholders and there are over 1,000 operating in the heart of their communities.r/>r/>Nearly all housing associations are Registered Provident Societies. Most small housing associations have community shareholder members who appoint the board and can remove board members but the same is not true of large housing associations. r/>r/>Following the requirements of the Stalinesque bureacracy of the now abolished Housing Corporation on model rules, large housing associations generally have rules that limit their shareholders to members of their board, and they in turn appoint new board members. Because of their huge size most housing association tenants are tenants of landlords that own thousands of properties. Is it any wonder that tenants feel their housing association landlords are remote?r/>r/>What is the Solution: Invent something so complicated it needs 45 pages of tiny print to be described? ERR Why not change the rules to impose a minimum number of community shareholders who can easily outnumber the board? TOO EASYr/>r/>See link to article on "pick a landlord" debate from google books - http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=9UzLAEoCBUwC&pg=PA4&lpg=PA4&dq=pick a landlord thatcher&source=bl&ots=cndzC8Q4C4&sig=9O27UaSgExuqKJ3blnu6w27nCf8&hl=en&ei=KgTLTdHRNNKGhQe0i_WoAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&sqi=2&ved=0CF8Q6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=pick a landlord thatcher&f=falser/>r/>