Abode Recruitment

A major funding body with similar powers to the Homes and Communities Agency was almost set up five years ago following a last-ditch attempt by the Housing Corporation to hang onto its inspection work, a new history of the corporation reveals.
Afraid that inspections were about to be snatched away by the Audit Commission, corporation bosses told the government in 2002 that they were willing to hand responsibility for investment in social housing over to English Partnerships – allowing the corporation to focus entirely on inspection and regulation.
But after the proposal was rejected by ministers, the commission took over the inspection of housing associations one year later.
News of the proposal, which remained secret until now, appears in Moving Homes, a history of the corporation by Alan Murie, professor of urban and regional studies at Birmingham University.
The book was commissioned by the corporation to mark its final days ahead of next week’s launch of the HCA and Tenant Services Authority.
Norman Perry, the corporation’s chief executive from 2000 to 2004, explained that both he and Baroness Dean, its chair at the time, felt that the corporation’s investment role was already ‘slipping away’ to English Partnerships.