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Have managed to extract some information on what Yvonne Hutchinson said at the National Housing Federation conference in Birmingham yesterday.
As was reported yesterday, Yvonne is a tenant of a housing association and she lives in Bradford. In addition, she is on the board of the Hounsing Corporation.
Her talk to delegates explained how her tenant group, the Ripleyville Tenants' Association spearheaded a major regeneration programme on the Ripleyville Estate.
But while Yvonne's work on the regeneration should definately not go un noticed, it was what she said about "best value" that caused the most impact!
She suggested that the average Housing Officer's view of tenants might well be as "the deprived and the depraived"! And she said that there were still a lot of people in housing who are really allarmed at giving residents control ... and actually giving tenants budgets is even worse!
Yvonne perhaps summed up the views of most tenants ... "What's the use of grand plans and strategies when you can't even get the garden fence mended," she said?
It was fortunate for the relative few people in Hall Five (there were more empty seats than taken ones) that Yvonne made it through her 20 minute talk. She had a throat infection - and you could tell that the voice might well give out.
She soldiered on, highlighting the fact that tenant satisfaction surveys might not be the answer - what do theyt reall show, she asked? And she admitted that tenant involvement is very hard to sustain - and both landlords and Government needed to realise this.
Also speaking at the "Compacts, Consumers or Control: The Agenda for Tenants" session was Robina Goodlad, the professor of Housing and Urban Studies at University of Glasgow.
She said that there was "nothing new in tenant dis-satisfaction". And she went on to suggest that research showed that tenants wanted to be listened to.
The professor pointed out that in Birmingham there was a structure devised whereby tenants can formally take the council to task and require the council to improve.
Robina Goodland also asked two questions as food for thought. Under the Tenant Compact, will local authorities be able to get away with it in their annual report and will it be possible for them to escape detection?
She ended by saying there was a rush to develop formal structures. "May be somethin informal would be better," she suggested?
Our chairman admitted that he "never thought to take his small cassette recorder" yesterday. Had he had done so, there would have been a verbatum report of the "speaches" of both ladies!
Alas, the conference organisers had no "texts" to offer.
So if either of the two ladies read this and would like their words published here, then get in tough. We think that what was said by both is relevant to all tenants (local authority, housing association or other social landlord) and deserves a wider audience.