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Housing and Regeneration Bill

I am grateful to the Minister for that last point and I certainly look forward to her propositions for what lies behind the amendment. Somewhere in the middle there she lost me, however. Maybe I can help her, or her officials, a little on what I intend here and what I do not. This is not about individual landlord/tenant issues. It is about general mismanagement—she used the term ““systemic””—by the social housing provider that needs to be drawn to the attention of the regulator. The Minister rightly points out that Cave says that all sorts of evidence will be coming in to the regulator and he will have to make up his mind what he does and does not pursue. There will need to be systems for that and how the evidence will be presented, and that will be communicated back down the line to tenants and their organisations. However, that is a somewhat passive way to treat tenants and their organisations. I thought that the regulator and the spirit of Cave wanted to encourage the active engagement of tenants in improving the quality of social housing provision and thus to provide an ability for them to initiate action. Tenants would not simply provide evidence of which the regulator may or may not take account or that would allow it to make up its mind on whether to intervene or not in areas where they perceived bad mismanagement, but there would be a formal system whereby tenants can put the problem on the regulator’s desk. This would not constrain the regulator in what it could do about the situation, but it would have to respond one way or the other and indicate what it was going to do. There would be no constraint on the judgment of the regulator as to what is important or otherwise, or on the remedy or intervention, but it would mean that there would be an active role for tenants in their organisations. I was trying to help the Government and the regulator in the area of designation. There are many organisations which purport to speak for tenants both locally and nationally, and just because a bit of headed notepaper arrives in the regulator’s office, it does not necessarily mean that it is from an organisation that is any sense representative. There are two criteria: national organisations with which the Government, the regulator and the new agency will engage—a relatively short list that could be regarded as a designated list—and, at the local level, housing providers themselves who recognise serious residents’ or tenants’ organisations within their estate or management block. There is a relatively easy way of doing this which does not have to be too formal. I do not regard it as bureaucratic or overly centralised. It is intended to limit the organisations that make use of it to those bodies which are judged to be truly representative. I thank all noble Lords who have supported the principle of the amendment. I anticipated there would be some drafting problems but the principle has received widespread support. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Best, that people who live on social landlord estates also ought to have rights. Earlier I moved an amendment in rather broader terms to that effect. This is an area in which, without making regulation general in a way to which the noble Baroness objected previously, we could at least enable people to raise issues of management when they live on an estate that is managed by a social provider. You would not necessarily have to give them more general rights or extend the regulator’s remit as far as my earlier amendment sought. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Best, for his suggestion and I hope that my noble friend and the department will take it on board. However, I take heart from the fact that she is going to reconsider the matter and bring something forward. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.