The Housing Corporation has won a battle with the ODPM over allowing housing associations to assess their own performance in meeting efficiency targets.

The £792m in efficiency gains that associations must make by April 2008 will now be able to be measured using a model drawn up by the Chartered Institute of Housing and consultant HouseMark. A briefing paper on this is included as an insert in this week’s edition of Housing Today.

Mark Lupton, policy analyst at the CIH, said: “This is a very important decision as the danger was the corporation would have had to introduce additional regulation with extra forms for associations to fill in.â€

As yet there are no details on how councils will measure their efficiency performance when the programme begins on 1 April.