This article first appeared in the Municipal Journal, 18 January 2024

COUNCILS get to propose and dispose – that is democracy. But some of the comments we’ve heard in recent times as council landlords decide to close their arms-length housing management organisations – ALMOs – have persuaded us that we need to make a stand for our members and their parent councils.

A particularly provoking catalyst was a headline drawn from a councillor’s quote [Municipal Journal, 19 October 2023] suggesting that the era of the ALMO has ‘drawn to close’. As our members will protest, rumours of our model’s demise are greatly exaggerated. But remarks like these also suggest a new generation of councillors and their executive officers who apparently have little understanding of what an ALMO actually is, what it does and how it does it. They certainly need to know that recent data analysis shows ALMO management of council homes significantly outperforms direct management on many measures, including value for money.

We’ve been offering our members consistent support and encouragement over the last five years, making sure they get to grips with the demands that a swathe of new legislation and regulation now places on all social landlords. During this process, ALMO management has been described by no less an authority than the Regulator for Social Housing as ‘well placed’ to deliver that compliance.

It’s worth remembering that ALMOs did not come into being simply, as suggested by the councillor quoted in that Municipal Journal article, ‘to enable greater access to Government funding’. The funding only went to councils willing to radically improve how they treated tenants. Creating an ALMO was the first step towards fully engaging tenants in decisions about their homes. Before Decent Homes funding was handed over, new ALMOs had to demonstrate – to the satisfaction of an independent Audit Commission – that they had indeed improved their housing management, maintenance services and communication with tenants.

Every ALMO is already, by definition, ‘in house’.

Whenever we hear talk of ‘bringing our stock management back in house’, we know that someone has forgotten that every ALMO is – by definition – already ‘in house’. An ALMO is wholly owned by its parent council. There should be no need to bring housing ‘back under council control’ – that is exactly where an ALMO should already be if the parent local authority is delivering on its end of the partnership.

So what exactly is the point of an ALMO? Then and now, the answer restates the principles on which recent social housing reform has very firmly focused since the dreadful events at the Grenfell Tower. An ALMO beds local authority housing management firmly onto the twin foundations of an expert, specialist and tenant-focused staff, and input from tenants whose views are heard and acted on.

Tenant voice comes built into the ALMO blueprint – which also keeps publicly purchased and maintained assets in public ownership and under democratic oversight; keeps management local and makes sure decisions are informed by first-hand understanding of a community’s specific needs; and very often is able to feed that valuable knowledge into a council’s wider strategic objectives and offer an entry point for well-targeted, value-for-money services.

And, as DLUHC phrased it when the Social Housing White Paper Professionalisation Review was launched 18 months ago: “[This review] will drive up standards by making sure social housing staff are better equipped to support tenants, deal effectively with complaints, and make sure homes are good quality.” Social housing managers should be specialists. They must understand their stock, their communities, and the technical and ethical demands of their work. In other words, this isn’t a job for generic local government staff who might shift from one service to another at a moment’s notice.

Hard data shows ALMO management scores significantly higher than direct council housing management at the median point.

ALMO boards were perhaps the most radical disruption of the old-style, paternalistic ‘be grateful for what you’re given’ culture that once permeated post-war council housing departments. The much-vaunted promise of the 2018 Social Housing White Paper was that “government will ensure residents in social housing are safe, listened to, live in good quality homes, and have access to redress when things go wrong”. Most ALMOs have councillors and expert independent members on their boards, but many also appoint residents. All support and encourage some form of genuine tenant scrutiny or engagement that feeds residents’ views into governance, systems and services.

And most tellingly, we now have hard data from the first six months of the new compulsory Tenant Satisfaction Measures surveys that shows ALMO management scores significantly higher than direct so-called ‘in house’ management of council homes on all measures. Additional analysis for this study, conducted by independent data and insight specialists Housemark, confirms that this higher performance does not cost more – and is often cheaper. Better performance for less money. Why would a model that delivers this be ‘drawing to a close’?

The NFA has members whose councils are signing five- and ten-year extensions to their ALMO agreements. For them, long-term planning informed by tenant input is possible in a way that will not evaporate with every twist and turn in the electoral cycle. This is, in fact, a model whose time has come. And NFA members are more than happy to share how they deliver this high-performance, value for money approach to compliance and tenant voice that has already impressed the Regulator.