Shapps: 'TSA is toast but much slimmer HCA will stay'

Housing Minister Grant Shapps confirmed today that the Tenant Services Authority would be scrapped but a 'much slimmer' Homes and Communities Agency would stay.

Speaking to housing journalists ahead of his key note speech at the Chartered Institute of Housing Conference in Harrogate, Mr Shapps said the two main functions of the TSA - landlord regulation and financial regulation - would 'go somewhere else'.

"The TSA is toast, how clearer can I put it?" he said. "This is an organisation that has wasted a scandalous amount of money on massive marketing programmes and lobbying government ministers. That's just not acceptable in the current climate."

Mr Shapps said he didn't blame the TSA's staff for its perceived failures but said the quango should never have come into existence in the first place.

"Ultimately this is about reducing costs and the TSA is a quango too far. The staff there have some important skills that I'm sure we can look to utilise but unfortunately there will be some redundancies. Of course, this isn't going to happen over night. There's a proper legislative process to follow and it will give time for people at the TSA to sort out their futures."

According to Mr Shapps, the new slimline Homes and Communities Agency could pick up some of the functions of the TSA, but said he wanted the HCA to focus simply on delivering homes.

In terms of regulating the social housing sector, Mr Shapps said the framework of standards drawn up by the TSA would be retained but he intended to introduce a local approach to dealing with tenant complaints.

"We want to provide a real localism approach to giving tenants more power to make a difference to their lives, we're completely reversing top-down politics, it's bottom up from now on," he said.

"The people side of regulation could just been done so much better. We have got effective democratic standards set up in this country which are able to deal with this."

In the first instance, he said, tenants would be encouraged to sepak direct to their landlord but if the matter was not resolved they should then seek the help of their local councillor, MP or tenant panel. As a last resort tenants would be pointed in the direction of the Housing Ombudsman, Mr Shapps added.

The role of councils is key to the Government's localism approach to housing, Mr Shapps acknowledged, saying they would have a major role to play in helping to deliver the thousands of new homes he has pledged to build.

While funding will be tight, Mr Shapps said he was hopeful the council tax incentive scheme and a 'radically transformed' planning system would provide the momentum required to get more homes built.

"The penny is starting to drop with councils that there is far more to gain by approving new housing schemes than blocking them," he explained.

Mr Shapps said he had enjoyed talking to housing professionals durng his stay in Harrogate and the people he had met had been quite positive 'inspite of the economic crisis'.

"I wanted to come here to take the temperature of the sector. This is the biggest housing conference and I felt it was extremely important to be here."