The ALMO structure of not only council oversight but also board governance requires them to demonstrate to both council and board each year that they deliver value for money, operate efficiently and provide good quality customer service – and I have had the opportunity to attend some of these meetings myself.

Given this inbuilt, internal drive for the ALMO model to succeed, it didn’t surprise me to find that their performance against all 22 TSMs to the half-year point at September 2023 was favourable when compared to that of local authorities.

For instance, the median overall satisfaction for ALMOs is currently 76%, which compares to a local authority median of 65%. Satisfaction with repairs is at 79% and agreement that the landlord treats tenants with fairness and respect is 79%. We know that for the last five years, tenants’ satisfaction with all types of landlord has been declining. All the pressures being felt in most areas of the economy – rising costs, staff shortages, less cash flow – are playing a role in this, and where scores of 85% were once the norm, satisfaction of 72% is now the sector-wide median for all landlords. For ALMOs this means that, though tenant satisfaction was considerably higher five years ago, tenant perception of their performance is still sitting comfortably among the better performers.

Even when adjusting for methodology and geographical variables, the average ALMO outperformed the average local authority by five percentage points.

We also know that variables such as survey methodology and geography can impact satisfaction scores. In the headline scores reported by local authorities there is an element of context and methodology pulling down scores. For example, while both local authority and ALMO peer groups include large urban areas, the local authority peer group had a higher concentration of large city councils and London Boroughs. Local authorities were also twice as likely to collect some of their survey responses online (which carries a negative survey bias). However, even when adjusting for these variables, the average ALMO outperformed the average local authority by five percentage points.

ALMO operational efficiency also gets a good showing in the results, with 91% of non-emergency repairs completed by ALMOs within target time, 88% of stage one complaints responded to within target time, and a median non-decency proportion of 0.48%.

Given that Decent Homes funding was a key incentive offered by the government in the early 2000s to persuade local authorities to set up a specialist housing ALMO and make considerable improvements to the fabric of their homes, it is always interesting to look at non-decency figures in the council housing sector.

Typically, due to the nature of the stock – given the history of council house building over the four post-war decades – local authorities and ALMOs have higher proportions of non-decency when compared to housing associations. However, ALMOs’ non-decency rate of 0.48% compares very favourably to local authorities with their median non-decency rate of 5.62%. And this is despite all the delays to improvement programmes triggered by the pandemic restrictions and recent labour and material shortages.

Where local authorities close ALMOs, housing management settles into that less favourable cost and performance pattern of stock-retained local authorities.

And we can also see good evidence that the model represents VFM when compared to their local authority counterparts. Costs have increased for the whole sector; however, in ALMO-managed stock, the cost per property outputs are generally lower than the median for local authorities. Meanwhile, the ALMO level of expenditure still represents a healthy investment in existing stock and front-line services.

The trend appears to be for councils to close down their ALMOs and return the management of their homes to a council department. At their peak, when central government funding and policy favoured them, more than 70 local authorities had ALMOs. Now there are around 20, and a variety of reasons for closure of the rest have been given by their parent councils – and VFM is often among them.

So it’s worth noting the story the data tells about the period during which an ALMO is closed and housing management returns to the generic local authority line-up of services. Housemark data shows a fluctuation in costs during that transition, in overheads and in housing management functions, and this is largely driven by higher than usual staff turnover in these areas during the disruption. The data also suggests performance against call wait times, re-let times and satisfaction are likely to decrease.

And finally, when the transition is complete, former ALMOs settle into that less favourable cost and performance pattern that is in line with stock-retained local authorities.