How Aragon is Regulated
Aragon Housing Association is regulated by two organisations: The Tenant Services Authority and The Homes and Communities Agency. These two authorities replaced The Housing Corporation in December 2008.
Tenant Services Authority
This organisation represents the needs of tenants, ensuring they have a greater say in their community. It regulates social landlords using the framework originally set out by the Housing Corporation, to ensure tenants are treated fairly and their concerns are addressed. The Tenant Services Authority also regulates the financial practices of social landlords.
www.tenantservicesauthority.org
Homes and Communities Agency
The Homes and Communities Agency deals with land and regeneration, ensuring new homes are environmentally and socially sustainable. They are also responsible for the funding needed for this regeneration work, which includes better housing and community facilities. This work is based on the Government’s regeneration framework, ‘Transforming Places; Changing Lives’.
The Audit Commission
The Audit Commission is an independent public body responsible for ensuring that public money is spent economically, efficiently and effectively in the areas of local government, housing, health, criminal justice and rescue services.
Its mission is to be a driving force in the improvement of public services. The Audit Commission promotes good practice and helps those responsible for public services to achieve better outcomes for citizens, with a focus on those people who need public services most.
The Audit Commission also inspects public services and reports back to the public on the results. Through inspections of local services, it assesses their quality and cost effectiveness, and helps local authorities to continually improve
http://www.audit-commission.gov.uk
What is a KLOE?
Key Lines of Enquiry (KLOEs) are detailed questions that help to inform The Audit Commission’s inspection judgments. They are used by its inspection teams, but are also published to help audited and inspected bodies with their assessments. This method of assessing housing associations means they are all assessed in the same way.
The KLOEs that are relevant to housing are:
KLOE 1 – Prospects for improvement
KLOE 3 – Stock investment asset management (includes repairs and maintenance
KLOE 4 – Housing income management
KLOE 5 – Resident involvement
KLOE 6 – Tenancy and estate management
KLOE 7 – Allocations and lettings
KLOE 8 – Homelessness and housing needs (Local Authorities primarily)
KLOE 11 – Supported housing (including sheltered housing)
KLOE 12 – Management of leasehold and shared ownership housing and leasehold management, shared ownership and right to buy
KLOE 13 – Housing regeneration and neighbourhood renewal
KLOE 14 – Right to buy, right to acquire and home ownership services
KLOE 30 – Access and customer care in housing services
KLOE 31 – Diversity
KLOE 32 – Value for money
KLOEs 3 to 14 relate to operational services and are concerned with the detail of the specific service area being assessed or inspected. KLOEs 30, 31 and 32 are for overarching assessments of access, diversity and value for money, although these elements are also included in the operational KLOEs.
KLOEs are reviewed by The Audit Commission on a regular basis. When organisations are inspected they are required to provide documented evidence to support compliance with each of the KLOEs. If an organisation is unable to do this, it will have a negative impact on their rating. Therefore it is important that Aragon logs documents as ‘evidence’ for each KLOE.
For more information, please contact Mandy Quarmby on 01767 685851 or visit the website below:
http://www.audit-commission.gov.uk/kloe/housingkloe.asp
