Going back (wards)

A blog update from Brendan Ryan 4/11/11

One of the reasons we chose to set up East Kent Housing as an ALMO was the impressive track record of these organisations in delivering both improvements in services and efficiencies.  It is sad to hear of the demise of both Islington Homes and Sheffield Homes, two organisations that have achieved much for their residents in a short period of time.

I am sure that there are many factors behind the decisions to return these services in house and it is no reflection on the performance or service quality of these organisations.  The costs and overheads of ALMOs is often cited as the reason from winding them up but these need to be measured against the considerable cost  savings that most ALMOs have made and the improvements in service quality that have been delivered.  Would these improvements have been achieved without the ALMOs?  The evidence suggests they wouldn’t.

We all need to be mindful of keeping the overheads of management and governance to a minimum. We are certainly trying to do this in East Kent Housing and our recent changes to our staffing arrangements have kept a very lean back office structure while increasing resources at the coal face where it matters to our tenants.

 As someone who has spent my working life managing social housing in various forms, I think that the emergence of ALMOs has been one of the most refreshing developments in the last decade. They have set new standards for housing management and have challenged other service providers to up their game.  I hope that ALMOs continue to be at the cutting edge of service delivery in the housing sector and that East Kent Housing is able to make its own contribution to  raising standards to a new level.

Brendan Ryan

Chief Executive

Contact East Kent Housing

Back to Brendan's Blog