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The government made the preparation of housing strategies a statutory duty in September 2003's Local Government Act. But its guidance on how to produce one is nearly two years old (see "Confusion reigns", right). Things are even worse for those housing departments that have taken up the government's offer to concentrate solely on local strategy by transferring their stock.

The strategy must set out everything the post-transfer housing department intends to do to balance the local market, including its work on the private sector, homelessness, special needs and social exclusion. Pulling together all the pieces of the puzzle is a mammoth task, yet the ODPM's transfer guide is conspicuously light on how the retained responsibilities should be managed 鈥� a potential stumbling block at a time when new processes are being put in place and skilled staff have left with the stock.

"There's a paradox between the voluminous information on technical valuations and other transfer policy issues and the leanness of guidance on strategy," says David Thompson, the ex-director of housing at Birmingham council, now on secondment to the Local Government Association. "There are only two or three paragraphs on it in the transfer guidance, which is as thick as a telephone book."

Extra instruction was supposed to be published with the 2003 transfer book in March but was put back to the end of last year. It finally appeared on the ODPM's website last Wednesday, advising councils on whether or not to contract out delivery of their statutory housing functions 鈥� allocations, homelessness and housing advice.

Until then, transferring councils have had to muddle through and hope they'll pass muster in the "fit for purpose" assessment. "We didn't feel there was any guidance at the time," says Paul Seward, housing manager at Horsham council in Sussex, which transferred in December 2000. "We did employ consultants to help with the stock transfer, and the actual process went very well.

"But when the RSL was set up, there was a strategic problem in their relationship with us. They felt like they were no longer accountable and started to behave more like a letting agency refusing allocations." Horsham's problems are behind it now and it submitted a revised draft in March, but Seward would have welcomed more specific guidance when it took the transfer plunge.

Transfer negotiations are unlikely to throw any light on the question of how a council can meet housing needs. "The process gets taken over," says Patrick Odling-Smee, head of housing at North Hertfordshire council, which transferred in March last year. "When we signed the agreement there must have been 50 people in the room: lawyers for both sides, funders, funders' legal advisers, consultants. Consultants from the big accounting firms know about stock valuations, business plans, investment, but they don't have experience of how you meet housing needs post-transfer, and it's important to get that right. We weren't getting advice or options. There's a gap in the market."

If the agreement isn't negotiated right, the council's ability to meet its statutory duties can be severely compromised. Odling-Smee gives the example of a recent transfer in Essex, where the RSL agreed to make 75% of its voids available to the council. It fulfilled the terms of the agreement by handing over sheltered housing places 鈥� not much use for reducing the number of families living in B&Bs.

North Hertfordshire's strategy was judged "fit for purpose" in December, and when the ODPM's advice was published last week, Odling-Smee was gratified to find it backed North Hertfordshire's approach of keeping the homelessness, housing advice and housing register services in-house. Others have had to discover this the hard way.

Colin Macdonald, housing services manager at South Somerset District Council, says it will bring its homelessness service back in-house when the initial five-year contract with South Somerset Homes comes up for renewal this year.

Macdonald says this is a common move among councils that do not hold onto the homelessness service at transfer but find the contracted-out service less than satisfactory. "I know of only two examples where they put it out to tender afterwards. In most cases it's brought back in-house," he says.

Phil Spooner, head of services for regeneration and housing at Sunderland City Council, is also dismayed by the lack of government support since it transferred 38,000 homes in 2001. With fewer than 20 people in the housing department and no housing revenue account, Spooner says Sunderland finds it hard taking part in the annual scrum for funding against much bigger departments. Without longer-term funding guaranteed, Spooner says it is difficult to put the strategy into practice.

"We're trying to link up with government, but attention is focused elsewhere," he says. "We've said, 'we can be your showcase for what you can do after transfer', address the city's supported housing needs and hit the private sector. If you want to make people deliver your agenda, shouldn't you celebrate those that do?"

Spooner has spoken to the Government Office for the North-east about getting long-term ODPM funding to implement the council's proposals to tackle homelessness and poor housing in the private sector, but says all its efforts are concentrated on meeting the agenda handed down from central government. "We're not talking about pathfinder levels 鈥� just a few million a year for five years."

But Spooner says his entreaties are falling on deaf ears. Like many of his fellow housing directors, he must carry on doing the best he can with scant help from above. "It would just be a bit handy if the government had a joined-up approach post-transfer," he says. "You're never going to solve everything, but we could have been so close."