What Now for ALMOs?

The NFA has warmly welcomed the government’s step change from focusing on decent homes to sustainable communities. It not only makes sense, but reflects ALMOs’ own aspirations for working with residents within our local communities.

The decent homes programme has been a remarkable success, dramatically improving the lives of many tenants.
While it is essential that resources continue to be made available to bring the remainder of the social housing stock up to the decent homes standard, it has to be acknowledged that this only addresses part of the problem.

We need to ensure that tenants enjoy not only better conditions within their homes but that they live in communities that are safe, accessible and enhance their life chances. The recently announced changes to legislation enabling ALMOs to apply directly for anti-social behaviour orders are just one example of how ALMOs can make a real difference to the residents on council estates.

At a housing summit meeting in January, Tony Blair spoke about the broader policy review across the whole of government, which is considering how the state can take a more strategic role and put structures in place to enable local people to make local decisions. He stated that ALMOs provide a potential model for future development. As tenant led organisations that have proved their ability to both improve service performance and deliver major programmes on time and within budget, as well as having transformed and reinvented the way in which council housing is delivered, ALMOs are well placed to contribute to the government’s policy agenda.

Today, 64 ALMOs are now managing and improving close to one million council homes in 59 local authorities and over 100,000 homes have achieved the decent homes standard through their work. But it’s not just the bricks and mortar results that support this success; although ALMO authorities currently make up only 21 per cent of local housing authorities in England, they are producing 68 per cent of housing efficiency gains.

ALMOs deliver high quality services and value for money. Their local focus means they are embedded in, and have an understanding of, their community as they only work in one local authority area. ALMOs engage in innovations that go beyond just the management and maintenance of the stock and that are designed to enhance the lives of all those living in their neighbourhoods.

ALMOs deliver on a wide range of other government objectives: increased tenant empowerment; a high profile on anti-social behaviour issues; working with young people and in schools; providing apprenticeship and training opportunities; reducing the demands on the health service by providing warm, secure homes - these are all initiatives which help reduce the burden on other parts of government.

However, in order to deliver on national and local policy agendas it is essential that ALMOs are given longer term stability and financial freedoms. Its simply not possible to build new homes or manage existing assets effectively on short term, five year contracts while being subject to an erratic annual subsidy system. The NFA wants the government to implement financial freedoms for high performing ALMOs as soon as possible and the Housing Corporation, to allow ALMOs to access social housing grant on a par with housing associations.

The popularity of the ALMO option has placed pressure on a programme that has to compete with other government priorities. It is vital that the government honours its decent homes commitments to tenants and that authorities still waiting to hear the outcome of their round 6 bids are told whether or not they have been successful.

For some ALMOs and local authorities, proposals to reprofile the programme beyond the original decent homes target date of 2010 are sensible.

However, it is essential for government to give a strong message to residents that all will receive the decent homes works, even if some may need to wait longer than originally envisaged.

The Secretary of State Ruth Kelly has told the NFA that ALMOs are doing a superb job and can do a lot more in the future. We look forward to engaging with our residents and our local authorities to see how we can best help
meet both their aspirations and the government’s broader policy objectives.