Housing and Regeneration Bill

moved Amendment No. 101: 101: After Clause 123, insert the following new Clause— ““Accountability of providers (1) Every registered provider shall prepare a statement showing how it will account to residents for the performance of its functions in relation to social housing. (2) The statement shall be published in printed or electronic form and a copy supplied to the regulator.”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, the question of tenant empowerment must in the end depend on tenants having sufficient accurate information on which to base their opinions. We have tabled these two amendments to ensure that tenants are properly supplied with information by their housing providers. Amendment No. 101, which deals with the accountability of providers, inserts a new clause to require every registered provider to prepare a statement showing how it will account to residents for the performance of its functions. Amendment No. 129 returns to the regulator accrediting social housing providers, and states: "““Any accreditation scheme shall require each accredited person to ... prepare a statement showing how it will account to residents””." Those two amendments are very simple and straightforward, but the whole debate that we have had on the previous group is to do with a large part of the purpose of the Bill, which is giving tenants power over their environment. As providers are landlords funded partly through the public sector and partly through the private sector, we must ensure that they account properly to their tenants for what they are doing and why they are doing it. If we are to give tenants power to complain about their landlords to a regulator who might, in certain circumstances, choose to change that landlord, we must ensure that any movement by tenants corporately is supported adequately by accurate and precise information about what is going on. The amendments would facilitate that process; I beg to move.