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Housing Corporation (Delegation) etc. Bill

The board has to consider a series of things that it did not expect to consider under the previous understanding. It will be able to operate differently as a result of the Bill. It is not a sensible use of board members’ time if they have to make every single statutory decision. Board members must decide the most appropriate use of their time and which decisions should sensibly be delegated to committees, sub-committees or officers. That is a matter for them. It hampers their ability to do their job if the board has to run through every decision. Of course there are obligations with respect to the time that members put into doing the job, but if they have to take decisions that are not a sensible use of their time, they do not have the time to put into other aspects of the Housing Corporation’s work that might benefit more from their input and experience. Subsections (2), (3) and (4) address the historic decisions taken by the Housing Corporation and consequently by housing associations and lenders. Subsection (2) gives the corporation and Housing for Wales a retrospective power of delegation to any of its members, committees, sub-committees or employees. That is intended to ensure that statutory decisions already taken are not invalid just because they were delegated by the board on the presumption that it had an implied power to do so. The provision will remove any doubt about the validity of such decisions on the grounds that they were not taken by the board itself, and essentially restores what was assumed to be the status quo. Although it is retrospective, the provision does not have any of the undesirable elements generally associated with retrospective legislation. No rights are affected by it and no parties are left worse off. It returns us to the position that everyone thought we were in until the end of last year. It is likely that without the retrospective provision, there would not be complete legal certainty about decisions, and the chances of parties being left worse off would be greater.