Scottish Monitoring Group on Housing and Homelessness

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Andrew Fraser picks out some relevant parts of Communities Scotland’s recent monitoring report on Glasgow Housing Association, then leaves you to make up your own mind what they might mean ...

“It seems as if second stage transfer is being killed and buried. With hindsight, it looks like that may have been intention right from the start. Here are the relevant quotes from the Community Scotland report on the GHA:”

4.2 Resolution of the SST issue is core to GHA developing a coherent longer-term business strategy. A clear future direction for GHA will be fundamental to drive improvements across the organisation that will tackle the range of weaknesses we have found.

4.3 Clearly the future of GHA can involve transfers of ownership, but all parties need to move away from a rigid understanding of how this can happen, and accept that GHA will have a landlord role in the medium to longer term. Stakeholders should also consider the potential strategic advantages in a city-wide organisation of GHA’s scale and with its scope of activities. All options should be considered – possibly including some early smaller scale regeneration transfers and radically restructuring GHA. Future large-scale transfers of houses to existing or new organisations can be an option, but only in the longer term. Critically, all potential options should be thoroughly assessed for value for money and must take account of tenants’ views and the wider housing and regeneration priorities for the city.

4.4 Moving away from current positions could provide the impetus for a shift in the relationships between GHA and the LHOs. Better working relationships are essential for better outcomes for GHA’s tenants and the broader housing network in the city. This will be challenging for all parties, particularly GHA and community based housing association (CBHA) LHOs: GHA will need to think about different methods of transfers in different situations, but only where tenants want this and where it makes sense for GHA’s business; LHOs and CBHAs will need to look at whether asset ownership is always necessary and what their future relationship with GHA should be; and Scottish Ministers and the Council will want to reconsider the Glasgow transfer and housing policy objectives.

a) GHA should initiate and lead a fundamental review of its purpose and onward business strategy. This review should include considering the future of SST. In doing this, it must better understand the views of its tenants and build on the level of engagement they have had in decisions about their homes and communities. It must involve other stakeholders.

b) Once it has determined its longer term business strategy, GHA should comprehensively review its governance arrangements to ensure that they support the organisation’s emerging direction and future business strategy.