Councils get to propose and dispose – that is democracy. But some of the recent comments we have heard as council landlords decide to close their arm’s-length housing management organisations (ALMOs) have persuaded us we need to make a stand for our National Federation of ALMOs (NFA) members and their parent councils.
A particularly provoking catalyst was a headline drawn from a councillor’s quote from The MJ, 19 October 2023 suggesting the era of the ALMO has ‘drawn to a close’.
As our members will protest, rumours of our model’s demise are greatly exaggerated. But remarks like these also suggest a new generation of councillors and their executive officers who apparently have little understanding of what an ALMO is, what it does and how it does it.
They need to know recent data analysis shows ALMO management of council homes significantly outperforms direct management on many measures, including value for money.
We have been offering our members consistent support and encouragement over the last five years, making sure they get to grips with the demands that a swathe of new legislation and regulation now places on all social landlords. During this process, ALMO management has been described by no less an authority than the Regulator for Social Housing as ‘well placed’ to deliver that compliance.
It is worth remembering that ALMOs did not come into being simply, as suggested by the councillor quoted in the article in The MJ: ‘To enable greater access to Government funding’. The funding only went to councils willing to radically improve how they treated tenants. Creating an ALMO was the first step towards fully engaging tenants in decisions about their homes.
Before Decent Homes funding was handed over, new ALMOs had to demonstrate – to the satisfaction of an independent Audit Commission – that they had indeed improved their housing management, maintenance services and communication with tenants.
Whenever we hear talk of ‘bringing our stock management back in-house’, we know someone has forgotten that every ALMO is by definition already ‘in-house’.
An ALMO is wholly owned by its parent council. There should be no need to bring housing ‘back under council control’ – that is exactly where an ALMO should already be if the parent local authority is delivering on its end of the partnership.
So what exactly is the point of an ALMO? The answer restates the principles on which recent social housing reform has firmly focused since the events at Grenfell Tower.
An ALMO beds local authority housing management firmly on to the twin foundations of an expert, specialist and tenant-focused staff, and input from tenants whose views are heard and acted on.
Tenant voice are built into the blueprint – which also keeps publicly purchased and maintained assets in public ownership and under democratic oversight. It also keeps management local and makes sure decisions are informed by first-hand understanding of a community’s specific needs. Often it is able to feed that valuable knowledge into a council’s wider strategic objectives and offer an entry point for well-targeted, value-for-money services.
As the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities phrased it when the Social Housing White Paper Professionalisation Review was launched 18 months ago: ‘[This review] will drive up standards by making sure social housing staff are better equipped to support tenants, deal effectively with complaints, and make sure homes are good quality.’
Social housing managers should be specialists. They must understand their stock, communities and the technical and ethical demands of their work. In other words, this is not a job for generic local government staff who might shift from one service to another at a moment’s notice.
ALMO boards were perhaps the most radical disruptors of the old-style, paternalistic ‘be grateful for what you’re given’ culture that once permeated post-war council housing departments.
The much-vaunted promise of the 2018 Social Housing White Paper was that: ‘Government will ensure residents in social housing are safe, listened to, live in good quality homes and have access to redress when things go wrong’.
Most ALMOs have councillors and expert independent members on their boards, but many also appoint residents. All support and encourage some form of genuine tenant scrutiny or engagement that feeds residents’ views into governance, systems and services.
We now have hard data from the first six months of the new compulsory Tenant Satisfaction Measures surveys that show ALMO management scores significantly higher than direct, so-called, ‘in-house’ management of council homes on all measures.
Additional analysis for this study, conducted by independent data and insight specialists Housemark, confirms this higher performance does not cost more – and is often cheaper. Better performance for less money. Why would a model that delivers this be ‘drawing to a close’?
The NFA has members whose councils are signing five- and 10-year extensions to their ALMO agreements. For them, long-term planning informed by tenant input is possible in a way that will not evaporate with every twist and turn in the electoral cycle. This is, in fact, a model whose time has come. And NFA members are more than happy to share how they deliver this high-performance, value for money approach to compliance and tenant voice that has already impressed the regulator.
Mike Ainsley is NFA board chair, and Eamon McGoldrick is NFA managing director
The NFA thanks its tenant advisory panel co-chairs, Bob MacDonald (Derby Homes) and April Halpin (Solihull Community Housing), for their review of and comments on this article
