星空传媒

Local authority housing departments have been inspected by the Audit Commission's Housing Inspectorate for three years, and if their experience is anything to go by, RSLs are in for a shock.

One metropolitan housing director says: "If RSLs are worried about the Audit Commission being tougher than the Housing Corporation, then it's not before time 鈥� they're a soft touch in comparison." A recent commission inspection of his department involved a two-week visit by seven inspectors, 13 focus groups and extensive one-to-one meetings with staff from front-line managers to directors.

Since the commission was announced as housing's new single inspector in September, RSLs have been at best wary, at worst fearful. The wariness is due to doubts that an organisation that specialises in the inspection of public bodies will be sensitive to housing associations and the fear is a reaction to the commission's reputation of being tougher than the Housing Corporation.

The latter is because, ultimately, the commission's star ratings affect investment 鈥� inspection results feed into housing investment programme ratings, these affect comprehensive performance assessment that can bring extra cash and borrowing freedoms as proposed under the Local Government Bill. As well as inspections under best value and CPA, the commission can be sent in by the government or the authority's external auditors within days if if there are concerns about certain services.

The corporation, meanwhile, only introduced inspections last April and its verdicts are presented in terms of "satisfactory" or "good" and out of 34 inspections, 30 were judged good or satisfactory. RSLs have often had up to 18 months' notice of a visit and although officially the corporation's judgements are used to "inform" funding, there is less of a direct impact on grant allocation. Perhaps in attempt to gain credibility in this area, the Housing Corporation last week introduced its "traffic light" rating system, sparking fears that the two organisations would operate overlapping and competing regimes.

  Most RSLs recognise external assessment is important, but the fear is that teams of Audit Commission inspectors will operate a "hit and run" approach with little regard for staff and tenants' morale. Angela Lockwood, housing services director at Endeavour Housing Association in Stockton-on-Tees, thinks the commission will be a very different beast from the Housing Corporation. "[The corporation] had a nice, friendly approach and understood our staff's anxieties about inspections," she says.

She also worries that the commission will have a "one size fits all" approach to inspections and that it will not understand the diversity of housing associations and the need to be pragmatic and flexible when dealing with them. "We're quite different to local authorities," she says. "We are driven by regulations rather than statute, we adopt very different routes to achieve our goals and we work across several local authorities."

But there is only one difference in the new regime that really matters, says Alistair McIntosh, director of consultant Housing Quality Network, which helps both local authorities and RSLs prepare for inspections. "The judgement made by the Audit Commission is unequivocal. It's an all-important star rating, whereas if you read a corporation report it's difficult to work out what the judgement actually is." The star system will for the first time place housing associations in a league table with clearly-defined premier and first divisions.

Critics of the Audit Commission's new role blame the decision on behind-the-scenes political manoeuvring. They claim the Treasury forced the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister to go for a single inspectorate in exchange for more money in the July 2002 spending review. The Housing Corporation's own inspection regime is only a year old and housing chiefs have a valid point when they complain that this is yet another new organisation they will have to get to grips with in a short time. Nick Imber, chief executive of Aldwyck Housing Association, says: "It's a pity we're going to have to learn another new set of rules."

However the move is not universally condemned. Barbara Thorndick, chief executive of West Kent Housing Association, welcomes a single yardstick for housing.

The Audit Commission will be a tough cookie, but that鈥檚 not something we should fear 

Barbara Thorndick, chief executive, west kent housing association

"Of course, we expect that the Audit Commission will be a tough cookie, but that's not something we should fear," she says.

"We ought to be able to stand up and be counted against local authorities and no one should be able to say that associations have a softer option."

West Kent is one of a number of associations that has employed a consultant to carry out a simulated inspection before the real inspectors arrive. Under the new inspection regime, smaller associations may also be forced to hire consultants for "dummy" pre-inspections, or at the very least spend time gearing themselves up by preparing briefing documents, briefing staff and doing dry-run interviews with tenants.

One indication of the Audit Commission's different approach to inspections is its intention to turn around reports within 12 weeks. Currently it is not unusual for the Housing Corporation to take six months to publish its findings, partly as a result of its willingness to engage in discussion with housing associations over draft reports. The commission, on the other hand, is unlikely to be kind to associations who might feel they have been misunderstood by the inspectors.

The publication last month of the Housing Corporation's report on Irwell Valley Housing Association came a full seven months after the actual inspection. Chief executive Tom Manion puts the delay down to the corporation's inability to distinguish between the subjective comments (often based on petty grievances) of staff and tenants and the real issues. Manion is actually looking forward to the Audit Commission taking over, but says he will judge its effectiveness on the credibility of the people carrying out inspections, and in particular their ability to be "scientific, rather than subjective".

Under the new regime, it is inevitable that inspections and the pre-inspection preparation will become more expensive and extensive. With the star system hanging over them, and the ultimate sanction of a government hit squad, there is a lot more at stake. RSLs are already suffering from what Manion describes as "regulation fatigue". To make the burden of paperwork worse, housing chiefs are currently trying to get their heads around the corporation's traffic lights. Sceptics in the sector view this as a last-ditch attempt by the corporation to claw back some of its influence after losing the inspection role to the Audit Commission, while others, such as Aldwyck's Nick Imber, dismiss it as "not terribly exciting and a watered-down version of what happens already".

Jim Coulter, chief executive of the National Housing Federation, has already warned that the separation of inspection and regulation risks duplication of effort. But with the drafting of a protocol to guide the future relationship between the organisations, he is confident that the two systems will complement each other rather than compete.

In the first year of commission inspections, Coulter thinks that associations are unlikely to notice many changes: "I don't think 1 April will see a revolution," he says. Likewise, the commission itself is emphasising that the changeover will be gradual.

In practical terms, on 31 March, the Housing Corporation's inspectors will simply pack their bags and move from their office near Oxford Street down the road to Westminster. But later this year, once staff have been absorbed into the commission, a discussion will follow on how the inspection methodology should change. At this point, Coulter assures associations, there will be a consultation with plenty of debate about the correct approach to inspections.