I was invited to a meeting with the Housing Minister, Grant Shapps. It was a strange affair. Around 30 Chief Executives of housing associations in the room, the Housing Minister enters and talks broadly about openness and transparency. He’s clearly not very well prepared and his arguments are not ordered well. As a result, he doesn’t achieve his objective of persuading those present to step up their efforts to put more information online – especially all spend over £500.

The audience is underwhelmed and sceptical. The questions are technical and practical. How does publicising spend over £500 make us more accountable? Where’s the evidence that publicising this information has any effect? And crassly from one leading chief executive, “Minister, why don’t you just tell us to do it? We’re used to receiving inappropriate edicts from central government and getting on with it.”

At Herefordshire Housing we’re leading by example. The technical questions just aren’t relevant. We are confident about our decision making, we welcome debate and challenge. For us, this is the wrong argument, a side show from the business of housing people and supporting people. You’ll find it all on our website with a dedicated page so that it’s easy to access. Just click this link. And if anybody has any thoughts or queries on the information it contains, contact me.

Appears in Policy