Shapps rails at housing associations over failure to publish expenditure details

The Housing Minister has labelled the housing association sector as “outdated and out of touch” for failing to provide greater detail on how they spend public money.

In a letter to David Orr, chief executive of the National Housing Association, Grant Shapps said he was disappointed that only one transparency offer had come forward from the G15 group and none at all from the NHF.

The minister claimed to have repeatedly urged housing associations to “keep pace with the government’s own actions on transparency and bring forward a robust voluntary offer on how best to increase transparency for the benefit of tenants and others”.

Shapps insisted that giving the public greater access to accounts and expenditure helped the taxpayer to scrutinise activities and challenge public bodies to find greater efficiencies.

“I firmly believe that all bodies – be they public or private – that receive significant amounts of public funding should be more transparent and more open to scrutiny,” he wrote.

“As well as being right in principle, there are also significant benefits to greater transparency, including improved efficiency and better-informed scrutiny by tenants. This makes sound economic and business sense – it is a good discipline to consider how expenditure decisions will be perceived by customers and the wider public.”

In the letter, the minister said he was keen for the housing association sector to bring forward a comprehensive offer on transparency as soon as possible.

“This is particularly important given the forthcoming consultation on freedom of information, which, if implemented, will bring housing associations into the FOI regime,” he added, later warning that the "clock is ticking".

Shapps urged housing associations to follow the lead of the Home Group, which has voluntarily published details of all its spending over £500.