What is the new TSA regulation?
Tenant Services Authority Standards and Local Offers
The Tenant Services Authority (TSA), which regulates housing associations, consulted residents during 2009 about the best way to ensure that landlords like Viridian deliver quality services.
As a result of this review, the TSA has published a new regulatory framework and wants all landlords to:
- agree with our residents how we will deliver services to meet six new standards (see What are the TSA Standards? section below)
- agree how these services should be provided ‘locally’.
- report to our residents in October each year on how we have worked with them to improve services and how we have listened to their priorities for improvement over the year
- agree with residents how we ‘co-regulate’ with them i.e. how residents are able to influence service improvement
What are the TSA Standards?
The new regulation includes six TSA standards covering: -
| Standard | Containing requirements relating to the following areas |
| 1.Tenant involvement and empowerment | Customer service, choice and complaints Involvement and empowerment Understanding and responding to diverse needs of tenants |
| 2.Home | Quality of accommodation Repairs and maintenance |
| 3.Tenancy | Allocations Rent Tenure |
| 4.Neighbourhood and community | Neighbourhood management Local area co-operation Anti-social behaviour |
| 5.Value for money | Value for money |
| 6.Governance and financial viability | Governance Financial viability |
We
will be talking to our residents about what these services mean to them, with a particular focus on ‘outcomes’ (the results of providing the service) rather than the actual service itself.
What are local offers?
This new regulation also requires us to work with our residents to figure out how best services should be provided locally. This will be done in two ways:
- Together, we will decide what ‘local’ means – this could be by region, local authority area or type of housing.
- We will also agree how services will be provided and tailored ‘locally’.
Local offers do not have to be in place until April 2011 which gives us time to consult fully with our residents over the coming months. To test local offers before being introduced by all housing providers, 39 organisations (called trailblazers) piloted this new approach and trialled local offers from April this year. Further information on the trailblazers can be found in the TSA report Going Local.
What does co-regulation mean?
This is the phrase used by the TSA meaning a joint approach to managing the delivery of services which puts residents in the driving seat. To achieve co-regulation, we will need to review the mechanisms we have in place to scrutinise how we plan to deliver services and meet the TSA standards and monitor the progress of local offers.
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