The first ALMOs were set up 20 years ago this year. Their core purpose was to improve council housing services by separating operational management from strategic council objectives so that good housing maintenance and practice came to the fore. The architects of this new approach foresaw that this could only be achieved if the tenant voice could be heard loud and clear, and so tenants were encouraged to take up positions on boards, scrutiny panels and tenants’ associations.

Two decades on, ALMOs are still valued partners for their parent local authorities because the model has been proven to work well where it is in touch with tenants’ views, as it was intended to be. The model will sit even more comfortably in the new regulatory world which is demanding landlords have in place a culture that puts tenants first.

The fundamentals of what it means to be a good social landlord are under the microscope. Emerging findings from the Grenfell Tower Public Inquiry, the Housing Ombudsman’s casebook and reviews from the Regulator of Social Housing may attract relatively little attention outside our sector; but recent media reports on the poor living conditions that some social housing residents still have to endure have certainly swung a spotlight onto whether landlords are handling complaints well or learning when things go wrong.

At its core, this is not about any one specific problem such as damp or a long wait to get a broken window replaced; it is about the fundamental relationship between landlord and tenants. Social housing landlords necessarily provide more than a service to tenants; they are providing homes and this means that their ‘customers’ are rarely in a position to take their custom elsewhere if they are unhappy with the service they receive.

The genuine involvement of tenants rebalances the power relationship and puts the customer first

The headline message from the new regulatory regime is that social housing landlords need to make sure their organisational culture takes account of this unique relationship.
Do staff respect tenants? Do they consistently keep in mind that the ‘properties’ and the ‘assets’ are people’s homes? Is it easy for tenants to make their voices heard – and do they have proof that the organisation listens and acts on what they say? Is tenant satisfaction accurately measured? Does tenant dissatisfaction drive improvement? And, importantly, do tenants trust their landlord to do the right thing, and to do what it says it will?

When the answer to all of these questions is ‘yes’, the genuine involvement of tenants rebalances the power relationship and puts the customer first, not the business. Genuine win-wins are hard to find – but this is one of them.

The focus shifts to building the social capital of their communities, empowering tenants to improve their life chances and to hold their landlord to account. And landlords, in turn know exactly where their priorities should lie.