The housing inspectorate's framework for assessing excellence in housing management
Comments from the Association of Chartered Certified
Accountants
May 2001
Our main areas of concern relate to Appendix 2 of the paper and revolve around two main issues as follows.
Staff involvement
The proposed framework addresses tenant participation however it neglects to highlight employee participation, when employees have a crucial part to play in delivering an excellent service. A recent ACCA survey revealed that pressures for change, with unrealistic time scales and a lack of adequate implementation and training guidance, have contributed to low staff morale throughout the public sector; low staff morale is not conducive to achieving excellence in housing management.
The Modernising Government White Paper recognises that good staff morale is critical to business success, especially when trying to bring about cultural change and to encourage innovative ways of responding to challenge: "we want staff at all levels to contribute to and evaluate policies and services and to put forward ideas about how they might be improved". It is our view that the inspectorate should be asking questions concerning staff development and performance measurement through appraisal systems by way of an example.
Equal opportunities
We believe also that the paper underplays equal opportunity issues when it states: "we recognise that some organisations may not have large ethnic minority populations in their local communities". The concept of equal opportunities covers many aspects, each of which are of equal importance and hence need to be addressed alongside the special needs of ethnic minorities. Equal opportunities apply in the recruitment and development of staff, tenant allocations from waiting lists and how visitors, creditors and other work related partners are treated.
It is our view that a sound equal opportunity policy, which addresses both the general and special needs of tenants (current, past and prospective) and other stakeholders is fundamental to achieving excellence in housing management.