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This paper arises from findings which emerged during the preparation of the Good Practice Guide to Maintenance Cost Forecasting. This Guide was commissioned by the Housing Corporation to assist Registered Social Landlords forecast the future maintenance costs of their stocks. It became apparent during the work that client experiences of stock condition surveys had been far from satisfactory. The surveys had often been carried out by professional surveyors and yet many had fundamental weaknesses in their specification, execution and use of data. The level of dissatisfaction expressed, coupled with recent evidence regarding the quality of domestic building surveys, should give cause for concern to the surveying profession. The paper identifies some causes of this dissatisfaction and suggests lessons that can be drawn from the experience. Further investigation is recommended into this crucial area of practice.

Highlights the increasing emphasis on customers and service quality in the new public sector. Emphasises the bias towards hard, easily quantifiable data and a focus on external customers in the measurement of service quality. Explores relationships through which grants for social housing are bid for and allocated and the programme managed. Reviews measures of quality in relation to understanding such service relationships. Offers the Service Template Process within a process consultancy framework as an alternative. Findings emphasise the importance of partnership between the Housing Corporation, Local Authorities and Registered Social Landlords (Housing Associations) in ensuring quality in the funding of social housing and the need for longer time scales for joint planning activity. The suitability of the process to help highlight issues critical to a service relationship is also discussed.

The recent publication Framework for Performance Assessment for RSLs working with Managing Agents (Housing Corporation, 2000a) contains new guidance for registered social landlords on monitoring service quality where managing agents operate supported housing schemes. This article outlines the recommended framework and examines how it might fare in the Supporting People environment that will operate from 2003.

The way that the housing association sector organises itself is changing rapidly. Housing associations ‐ registered social landlords (RSLs) ‐ are individually registered by the Housing Corporation. Their performance is monitored at the level of individual organisations. But threequarters of all RSL homes are now part of a formal ‘group’ of two or more organisations. Subsidiaries for care services are part of this pattern, and this report also looks at two examples where they have been floated off as separate organisations.

Households account for 27 per cent of the UK's total CO₂ emissions therefore addressing housing energy efficiency has become a priority. Low-zero carbon technologies (LZCTs) for both new-build and the existing housing stock are one mechanism to reduce CO₂. A gap in previous research into the subject was identified – the ongoing maintenance or “Asset Management” of LZCTs. This is important, inefficient or ineffective Asset Management may have a negative impact on the sustainability of energy efficient housing stock from a number of perspectives, including physical, social and economic. This paper aims to discuss these issues.

The research presents a sector based study of the English social housing sector with seven individual organisations (known as “Registered Social Landlords”) represented by senior Asset Management practitioners, providing the units of analysis. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to evaluate the past, current and future ability of the sector to successfully maintain LZCTs. The interviews were coded and a theme/sub-theme building process undertaken.

The interview analysis yielded three main themes (Asset Management Planning, Maintenance Skills and Occupier Impacts) and 12 sub-themes. Some of these confirmed findings from the literature review but others had not been previously located including inter-departmental conflicts and occupiers taking responsibility for maintenance.

A paucity of previous work specifically relating to Asset Management and LZCTs in the social housing sector was found. The findings should therefore be of interest to a wide range of stakeholders including registered providers, asset managers, surveyors, developers and policy makers.

This article evaluates the role that social housing tenure plays in crime reduction through the work of Churchwood's Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership (CDRP). It provides evidence of offender and victim populations concentrated in social housing neighbourhoods (estates), and argues for social housing providers to take a more active role within community safety in this borough. Anti‐social behaviour, it is argued, has primacy over crime in the arena of social housing.

The purpose of this paper is to present the current drive for 3 million new homes by 2020. The delivery of this number of homes is a challenge for the house building industry and its associated stakeholders such as local authorities, registered social landlords (RSLs) and others. One mechanism proposed to ensure delivery is the use of modern methods of construction (MMC). There are, however, several problems with this premise including the legacy of non‐traditional housing formats employed in the past, demand side suspicion of MMC, and a lack of capacity on the supply side. The paper concentrates on the implications of MMC in the RSL sector – particularly the potential impacts of MMC on asset management (long‐term maintenance) of RSL housing stock.

A literature review and interviews with key RSL personnel are used to inform the discussion contained in this paper.

Seven overall themes emerged from the research, pointing to the main issues that need to be addressed if MMC housing is to be successfully employed in the RSL sector, while also ensuring that asset management is able to carry out its long term maintenance programmes in an effective and efficient manner.

Little previous research has been located on the subject of MMC and its specific impacts on RSL asset management operations. The research should therefore be of interest to a broad range of people, including asset managers and surveyors, developers, planners, and local, regional and national policy makers.

Extra care housing enables older people to remain in their ‘own home’, while providing appropriate housing and access to health and social care services that are responsive to their needs. This type of provision is very much in line with the government policy of fostering people's sense of control and independence, and is a priority area for expansion. We explored the current levels of development and expansion of extra care housing in terms of the numbers of schemes and places and factors that contributed to and were problematic in its development.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the factors relating to the implementation of a new procurement initiative that affect performance and value for money (VFM). The study is based on a four-year research project carried out on behalf of the Scottish Government to monitor and evaluate the performance and efficiency of a bulk procurement vehicle for social housing.

The researchers had a brief to monitor and evaluate the implementation of the procurement process and its influence on cost and efficiency targets. The study employed a mixed method approach with annual rounds of qualitative and quantitative data collection from project stakeholders including the contractors, consultants, clients and sponsor. Confidential semi-structured interviews were conducted on conclusion of the project to gauge views on how well the procurement process worked from the various perspectives and to reflect on the influence of the process on VFM.

The procurement programme failed to achieve the capital cost and efficiency savings targets quantified at the outset and on this measure alone VFM was not demonstrated, although there were a number of reported benefits. A major factor was the extent of process and behavioural change required from the project team and, although a procurement consultant was engaged to facilitate this, the theoretical benefits of “best practice” were not realized. The picture was further complicated by rapidly changing economic conditions experienced, and debate about the robustness of original cost savings targets.

The findings and conclusions are of relevance and interest to clients and construction organisations undergoing change through adopting novel procurement processes.

The empirical nature of the study provides a comprehensive evidence base for the performance of a collaborative procurement programme and an understanding of the potential difficulties in attaining the theoretical benefits of procurement innovation.

Construction, demolition, refurbishment and material supply processes are responsible for a significant amount of waste; whilst estimates vary, the UK Government uses the figure of 70 million tonnes. The construction industry accounts for some 17 per cent of the total waste produced in the UK. How much of this is produced by refurbishment activities in the registered social landlord (RSL) sector is unknown, but there is little doubt that refurbishing housing offers opportunities for significant waste generation. RSL housing is maintained and refurbished by a number of triggers when a dwelling is left vacant after a tenant departs. Such a property is known as a “Void”. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the type of maintenance works undertaken to properties in the RSL sector and consider the potential for the application of lean thinking to those maintenance processes.

A literature review and interviews with RSL maintenance personnel are used to inform the discussion contained in this paper.

The main conclusion from this paper is that properties located in estates and built post‐1980 are those most likely to benefit from lean principles.

The RSL sector is changing from pseudo local government concerns to “social businesses”; therefore, the opportunity to apply lessons learned in other business sectors to the maintenance of RSLs' main assets (i.e. their properties) should be of interest to the sector as a whole.