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I recently heard a depressing statistic. During the Second World War, for every three sailors on the sea, there was one administrator at the Admiralty. During the Falklands War, for every two sailors at sea, there was one administrator at the Admiralty. But during the second Gulf War, for every sailor on the sea, there were the same number of administrators.

For those working in Supporting People, the analogy is obvious. In the olden days, the voluntary sector provided support to vulnerable people in a haphazard, uncoordinated way. There was no regulation of who did the work or how.

No one would argue that we should recreate that world – or lose the huge injection of cash that came in to support vulnerable people with the new regulated environment. But we are fast creating an intolerable burden of regulation over the field of housing with support, and the more regulators there are, the more difficult it will be to dismantle this structure when the time comes to change the way in which Supporting People works.

Here's an example. In order to be able to provide services funded by Supporting People, a provider must be "accredited". There are five criteria: financial stability, employment practices, track record, administration and management policies. The Housing Corporation already examines much of this, and we were initially assured that three of the five were assumed to be present in all registered social landlords; it only remained for us to demonstrate sound employment practices and a good track record.

It was difficult to develop a national information pack to demonstrate a strong track record in what is essentially a local matter but, armed with what they had, our officers approached 15 councils in March, to ask them if they would be interested in accrediting us. Our staff asked what further information the council would need to perform this function and the answer, in most cases, was that they were too busy sorting out contracts and payments to worry about accreditation at that stage.

In one case, the reply was: "What's accreditation?"

Six months later, many councils feel ready to address the issue. Two have asked us to complete a detailed financial assessment, including references from our bank. When it was pointed out that this was carried out fairly thoroughly by the Housing Corporation, the council said it did not know the corporation and did not feel it could rely on its judgement.

So, we were a perfectly competent provider of services for the first six months of Supporting People but, suddenly, because someone has read the section on accreditation, we're a dodgy kind of organisation that needs its bank account examined.

Now, we have not one regulator (the Housing Corporation) but 178 councils all duplicating the work of each other.

When I got back from my summer holidays, I went to www.spkweb.org.uk for an update on what had been happening to Supporting People while I was away.

A couple of hours later, I had a pile of reading about an inch thick.

I wondered how many other association and council staff were wading through the same pile, struggling to interpret the details of a regime that tries, ultimately unsuccessfully, to capture the essence of what is a good support service.

This, at the end of the day, is the problem. You can count, measure, and weigh material possessions to know whether you have a good supply. You cannot do the same to a good service.