Housing Management, Consumers and Citizens

Liz Caincross, David Clapham, Robina Goodlad

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780415070669
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134911509
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Public Affairs & Administration
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Tenant participation has grown substantially over the last decade, following government legislation, advice from professional bodies and development agencies, and promotion by all major political parties. On few housing issues is there such concensus. Yet, in practice, it is obvious that participation can mean very different things in different contexts. This book explains why this is the case, and examines the growth of participation in the context of changes in the role of local authorities and their relationship with their electorates. These issues are examined in the first part of the book, which sets the context for exploring the roles of housing managers, councillors, tenants and tenant's associations in the second part. The book argues that the rise in arrangements for tenant participation masks considerable differences in the role played by tenants in different areas. These differences raise questions about the nature of power in the tenant-landlord relationship and more generally in the relationship between local government, citizens and consumers. These issues are examined in the final, third, part of the book.

Part I
THE CONTEXT

1

INTRODUCTION
The changing face of housing and local government

The subject of this book is the relationship between council tenants, housing managers and councillors. In particular, the focus is on the growing use of arrangements for tenants to participate in the management of the houses in which they live and the extent to which this empowers them. However, these arrangements cannot be viewed in isolation from the general situation of council housing. Reductions in the scale of council housing and changes in the way it is managed will, to a greater or lesser extent, influence the relationship between the parties involved in it. Councillors and housing managers who wish to retain council housing may feel more ready to listen to the demands of tenants, or they may be more likely to seek to build alliances with council tenants.

At the same time the management of council housing has been (and still is in most cases) a major activity of district and metropolitan councils. Therefore, it has to be seen in the context of general changes in local government. The last fifteen years have been a period of considerable upheaval for local government and many of the changes it has experienced have had a direct or indirect impact on council housing. Many of these changes have been the result of central government policy towards local government in recent years. It is, therefore, impossible to discuss council housing without first looking at wider changes in local government and its relationship with the centre.

The aim of this chapter is to set the scene for what follows by outlining the major trends in local government and in council housing which are likely to affect the landlord—tenant relationship. It looks first at general changes in local government, focusing particularly on relations with central government. This is followed by a review of changes in council housing which tend to be closely relatedto and mirror more general changes. In the next section one of these changes, the growth of arrangements for tenant participation, is examined in more detail. The relationship of councillors, housing managers and tenants through tenant participation has to be viewed against the background outlined here. Finally, the chapter outlines the rest of the book.

CHANGING LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Since 1975 local government has faced attacks on its legitimacy and attempts to reshape its role which were in sharp contrast to the steady growth in its operations in the thirty years from 1945. When Crosland (then Secretary of State for the Environment) announced that ‘the party was over’ in 1975 he ushered in a period of instability in local government which has lasted over twenty years and shows few signs of ending.

The main changes to occur have been: consistent attempts by central government to limit local authority expenditure; the restructuring of local government through reorganisation and fragmentation into a number of different agencies often unaccountable to the local electorate; the privatisation of some local government assets and services; growing commercialism in the management of local government services; and greater involvement of users in the provision of services. Running through these changes has been an increasing central government involvement in areas (such as the school curriculum and rent-setting) which have traditionally been the province of local government.

The changes reflect the constant tension between central and local government which has characterised the period and reached its most dramatic manifestation in the anti-rate-capping campaigns of 1984 and 1985 and the abolition of the Greater London Council (GLC). To characterise this tension as a conflict purely between Conservative central government and ‘radical’ Labour local authorities is misleading. The relationship between local and central government is a complex one and tensions have emerged between local authorities of all political hues and central government, extending beyond disputes about spending into conflicts about the nature and management of local government itself. Here we examine the major trends under five headings, starting with public spending by local authorities.

Limiting local government expenditure

Attempts by central government to restrain local government expenditure have been a constant feature since the middle 1970s. The early Labour cuts were achieved by what Stoker calls ‘a mix of discussion, compromise and conflict’ (1991, p. 12). The tone changed after 1979 when central government reduced the proportion of local authority income obtained through central grants. In 1980 a new system of central government support was introduced in England and Wales, with a block grant based on centrally determined assessments of what was needed to be spent (grant-related expenditure assessments or GRE for short). This was followed in 1981 by a system of targets and penalties to penalise local authorities who were held by central government to be overspending. When some local authorities responded by increasing the rates, central government responded by introducing ‘rate-capping’. Under the 1984 Rates Act the Secretary of State for the Environment had the power to limit the rates of named authorities in England, a power which was regularly used. This was followed in 1988 by the Local Government Finance Act which introduced the Community Charge and a new system of targets and penalties. After widespread opposition to the Community Charge or ‘poll tax’ this in turn was abolished and the Council Tax was introduced after the 1992 general election.

The many different attempts by central government to control local government expenditure have largely been due to the failure to restrain revenue expenditures. Despite central government controls, the revenue expenditure of local authorities has increased in real terms. However, the measures have been far more successful in reducing local authorities’ capital expenditure which has been cut substantially. As we shall see later, capital expenditure on housing was one of the main areas to be cut. The government’s lack of success in restraining revenue expenditure highlights the fact that local authorities did not passively accept central government restrictions. Legal challenges and political campaigns were maintained although they achieved only limited success (Lansley, Goss and Wolmar, 1989). Perhaps more successful was the resort to ‘creative accounting’ measures. These included the build-up of revenue balances to regulate expenditure between years; the sale of assets to generate income for capital expenditure; rescheduling existing debt; capitalising expenditure such as repairs and modernisation of council property previously considered as revenue expenditure; deferredpurchase schemes; and ‘lease and lease back’ schemes where council property was leased to another body (usually controlled by the council) in return for a lump sum usually raised from private investors. ‘Creative accounting’ became an uncertain game in which the government moved to close loopholes after a few innovative councils had exploited them. Nevertheless, the difficulty of controlling revenue expenditure through direct financial mechanisms caused central government to adopt other measures such as the restructuring of urban government, our second major change in local government.

Restructuring of local government

Restructuring has taken two main forms: the reorganisation of local government itself and the growing fragmentation of urban government through the creation of other bodies. Reorganisation of local government since 1979 started with the abolition of the Greater London Council and the six metropolitan county councils in 1985. Since then, local government reorganisation has been constantly on the agenda. In England a Local Government Commission was established to bring about evolutionary change by creating unitary authorities and abolishing some of the more unpopular counties created in the 1974 reorganisation in England and Wales. In Wales and Scotland, there has been a continuing concern with the structure of local government in relation to debates about devolution and independence, and in both countries unitary authorities have been created. Therefore, throughout Britain, local councils have had the spectre of reorganisation hanging over them.

Perhaps more importantly, central government has increasingly sought to bypass local authorities by the creation of, or support for, a plethora of other agencies—what Stoker (1991) has characterised as the acceleration in the growth of non-elected local government. The motivation of central government has been to reduce the role of local authorities and to channel funds through agencies which are more directly accountable at the central level and consequently less accountable to local political forces.

However, the trend towards non-elected local government has been reinforced by many local authorities themselves who have sought to involve users directly in service provision and to encourage innovation through the creation of arms-length agencies. Stoker (1991) uses a sixfold classification to cover the wide range of organisations involved. These are central government ‘arms-length’ agencies (suchas urban development corporations, training and enterprise councils, the Housing Corporation); local authority implementation agencies (such as enterprise boards and co-operative development agencies); public-private partnerships (Housing Action Trusts, enterprise agencies); user organisations (such as housing co-operatives, opted-out schools); intergovernment forums (examples include the Glasgow Eastern Area Renewal project, and the South East Regional Planning Conference); and finally joint boards which are different from the above in that they have a legal entity in their own right (examples are the boards set up after the abolition of the GLC and the metropolitan counties in 1986).

The increasing number of such bodies has led to what can be viewed as a reversal of the Victorian trend towards the consolidation of local powers in local authorities. Rather, there has been an increasing fragmentation of powers into a large number of bodies, with different terms of reference and structures of accountability.

Privatisation of services and assets

Fragmentation has been encouraged also by the privatisation of local government assets and services, the third major trend in local government since 1979. Privatisation is a much used word but one which defies any precise definition. It is most popularly associated with the sale of local authority assets, most notably through the council tenants’ Right to Buy at what can be a substantial discount. As will be outlined in the next section, this and other measures have substantially reduced the amount of housing owned and managed by local authorities. Other privatisation measures include the sale of bus companies and English Water Boards. However, apart from the sale of council houses and other assets, the commercialisation of services has been the most important way of privatising local government services, and this is considered separately.

The commercialisation of services

The most important example of commercialisation is compulsory competitive tendering (CCT). This has forced local authorities to put some of their activities (such as housing management, refuse collection or catering) out to competitive tender and to compete with private companies. The extent of competition and successful private sector bids has varied by service and area of the country. In practice, inhouse workers have won many of the contracts with only 20 to 30 per cent going to private companies. Nevertheless, in order to win the contracts inhouse workers have been forced in many cases to accept changed working practices, reductions in wages and conditions and sometimes redundancies. Therefore, the impact of CCT has been substantial in forcing on local authorities and their workers the ethos of competition, in creating incentives and a momentum towards a more commercial orientation and in fragmenting departments into ‘client’ and ‘contractor’ sections.

A commercial orientation has existed in a number of authorities for some time, but CCT has had a wide impact on authorities which previously had a more traditional public service approach. In some of these authorities, CCT has resulted in the development of a more consumer-oriented approach to service provision, providing staff with the impetus to borrow private sector language, techniques and values. At first, CCT was largely confined to blue collar local government services where the service is relatively easily defined.

However, since the early 1990s white collar services were increasingly targeted and housing management was one of the first. In 1993 pilot projects for CCT in housing management were set up in England and through a phased implementation process most local housing authorities in Britain will have been forced to go through the process by the end of the decade.

One impact of CCT has been to create within local authorities an organisational split between the purchasers (those formulating tendering briefs and monitoring the service provided) and the providers of services. In many cases the providers have been ‘hivedoff’ to relatively autonomous ‘arms-length’ agencies. A clear example of the purchaser and provider split is the community care provisions of the National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990. Social services authorities act as assessors of the community care needs of individuals and families and care managers ensure that appropriate care is provided. However, the care is provided by different parts of the organisations and by private or voluntary agencies. The government has made no secret of its preference for voluntary and private agencies and incentives are built in to ensure that they are used. It is expected that a similar purchaser/provider split may well develop in housing authorities with the introduction of CCT.

Growing role of service users

The final change affecting local government to be outlined here is the growing role of consumers. Provision of local authority services is increasingly being devolved to user groups, either by local authorities themselves or through mechanisms devised by central government. An example of the latter is the provision to allow parents to vote for their school to opt out of local authority control. The running of schools is placed in the hands of a board elected by parents who have substantial powers over the day-to-day running of the school and receive their funds directly from a central government agency. For those schools which remain under local authority control the government introduced measures in the 1988 Education Reform Act to encourage open enrolment in accordance with parental preference. All larger schools in England and Wales have a system of devolved budgets and are run by local governing bodies. In addition, schools have been forced to provide performance information for parents. At the same time as parental influence has been strengthened, central government has imposed a National Curriculum in all state-funded schools and a national system of testing of all pupils at certain ages. T...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• List of tables and figure
• Preface
• Part I The context
• Part II The actors
• Part III The outcomes
• References
• Index