Holyrood and housing

The report published yesterday on Glasgow Housing Association (GHA) by Communities Scotland, the social housing regulator, is disappointing on several fronts. For GHA itself, the regulator's assessment of performance in the first four years of its existence does not amount to a ringing endorsement. There are four ratings and GHA managed only the third grade, C, equating to a fair performance. Given the role GHA was expected to play in transforming Glasgow's crumbling public housing stock - improving quality of life and opening the door on opportunity in the city's deprived areas in the process - the assessment is unsatisfactory.

This does not necessarily mean GHA has been a failure and should be abolished. As Karen Watt, a senior figure in Communities Scotland, explained yesterday, many thousands of tenants have better homes as a result of the stock transfer (the biggest in western Europe) from the city council and have taken the opportunity to influence decisions that affect them and the areas where they live. Even criticism in the report that GHA has a poor and worsening rent collection rate has to be put in perspective. The scale of the challenge on this front is illustrated by two facts: only 15% of tenant households have someone in work while 68% of tenants are on full or partial housing benefit.

The campaign to win the ballot on stock transfer was based on providing tenants with better life chances by giving them a full say in the type of homes they wanted to live in, with the Treasury writing off Glasgow's near-£1bn housing debt freeing up GHA to refurbish and rebuild. Significant improvements to the stock have been made but progress has been limited on devolving decision-making to local level. Figures show that GHA continues to own some 90% of the houses inherited from the city council. Yet so-called second stage transfer (SST) - the process by which local housing associations would become landlords in their own right and take ownership of the stock in their area - was made fundamental to the success or otherwise of the exercise. Little has been achieved on that score, as the figures confirm, and tenants who voted for stock transfer have been left frustrated by the lack of progress. SST is like the leak in the roof that will not be fixed.

It has hobbled GHA, which now has its third chief executive since 2003. The language is careful, but the report appears to endorse the case made by GHA for funding to deliver SST by concluding that the process, as originallly envisaged, is not possible under existing financial arrangements. There is implicit criticism of the previous Scottish executives, not just on funding SST but on framing a strategy to make it work. But is it fair to call on GHA to review its purpose and long-term role when, as matters stand, its job is to deliver SST and manage itself out of existence as a consequence? Or does the SNP government have a different plan? If so, what is it and what are the funding implications?

The first two Holyrood administrations did not cover themselves in glory over housing stock transfer, handing GHA what has become the poisoned chalice of SST in the process. The failure of ministers to take responsibility at the funding and strategic levels helps explain many of the criticisms in yesterday's report. Can the SNP administration do any better? Is it clearer and bolder in its goals on affordable housing? If stock transfer is to succeed in Glasgow and elsewhere, it had better be.