The Accreditation Network (ANUK)
11th Annual Conference Report

The conference theme was The Evolution of Private Rented Sector Accreditation: New realities and the Way Forward.

60 delegates attended the event held in Baden Powell House in London. The event was kindly sponsored by the Residential Landlords Association.

The delegate mix reflected part of the new realities with fewer delegates from local authorities but many more from educational establishments actively involved in raising standards through accreditation.

The presentations given by the speakers can be accessed by viewing this report in the News section and clicking their names indicated in italics.

Opening Address
Given by David d'Orton Gibson, the newly elected Chair of ANUK, who summarised the changing face of accreditation, reflecting the FE and HE links in the process of accreditation. He also drew attention to developments in Wales where the Welsh Assembly were looking to make basic accreditation mandatory for the whole country.

David stressed that he want to hear from those involved in accreditation about what was and is happening, what we do well and how we can help them make their schemes more effective - stressing that the network must exchange ideas and developments to keep the network vibrant.

David can be contacted at info@anuk.org.uk

How is Accreditation Developing? The Good the Bad and the Ugly
The first part of this session was given by Linda Selvey, Project Manager for DASH (Decent and Safe Homes). DASH was active in the East Midlands and through EMLAS (the East Midland Landlord Accreditation Scheme) they had 1,013 members with over 6,000 properties. The scheme had both a training module and property inspections (with 1,133 properties inspected).

Landlords valued accreditation with 66% of them agreeing that accreditation resulted in a better service being given to tenants.

Linda raised the importance of tenant engagement, the difficulties of agents accreditation and the challenge of reaching untouchable landlords who ought to join a scheme.

The second part of the session was given by Martin Blakey, Chief Executive of Unipol, Unipol accredited 165,000 bed spaces through the ANUK/Unipol Government Approved Codes for larger Student Developments, 16,500 bed spaces in Leeds, 10,100 in Nottingham (as part of the Unipol DASH Code) and just over 1,000 in Bradford. Unipol had also co-operated with Accommodation for Students to launch the afs Unipol National Code.

Martin stressed that it was important that schemes did what they said they would do. Sometimes accreditation schemer operators were vague about how their systems operated. Processes needed to be transparent in order to increase both consumer and landlord confidence. Martin's view was that consumers expected some aspect of property inspection if a landlord was accredited.

There was a danger that as resources became tight, then schemes dumbed down. There was also pressure for accreditation schemes to be self funding (with the inevitable reduction on verification and administration). There had been no successful example of a successful self funding accreditation scheme for landlords. Whilst landlords could be persuaded to pay some costs, all schemes needed some subsidy. The phase "better than nothing" was unlikely to be true.

Landlord Accreditation in Wales
Was explained by Anne Rowland, Landlord Accreditation Wales Scheme Manager. 22 Local Authorities now worked through this national scheme. Around 14% of homes in Wales were in the private rented sector and there were an estimated 29,312 landlords. 11 Councils now had additional licensing schemes.

Despite the scheme in Wales being a recognised success only 5.2% of landlords were members (1,850 members). The scheme is training based, using the ANUK Landlord Manual as the basis for that training. The scheme accredited agents as well as landlords and landlord engagement was maintained through a variety of newsletters and forums.

The Welsh Government intended to legislate further on the private rented sector and there was a proposal that accredited landlord status should be the basis for operating in Wales - watch this space.

There were two parallel sessions:

The University of Hertfordshire and Welwyn Hatfield Council Scheme
was explained by Diane Kendrick, Community Liaison and Support Officer and Geraldine Ward, Deputy Dean of Students, both at the University of Hertfordshire.

This was a new partnership scheme between the University and the Local authority, particularly notable for being launched by the current Housing Minster Grant Shapps in his own constituency. An interesting arrangement had been that a member of staff had been seconded from the University to the local authority to establish the scheme which aimed to raise standards and increase community engagement to a student community that formed about half of the population of Hatfield.

Alternative Models of management of Local Accreditation Schemes by the Residential Landlords Association (RLA)
was looked at by Tom Toumazou (ex-Chair of ANUK now speaking for the RLA) who examined both local and regional schemes. He highlighted the issues that local authority run schemes raised, being publicly funded with restraints on development and were often slow to modernise and contrasted this with industry run schemes in partnership with the authority. He explained the template that the RLA had devised to enable's partnership working on a  number of schemes.

Student Accreditation Schemes Moving from Local Authority to the Institution in Canterbury
was a session  given by Colum McGuire, Vice President (Welfare) and Hannah Wallington, Director of Marketing and Business Development of Kent Students' Union.

They explained the history of accreditation in Canterbury when a scheme was established by the local authority, involving all the educational institutions there. The view had been taken that the scheme needed greater promotion with a greater sense of commercial realism and in March 2011 the scheme had passed from the local authority to the students' union to be run. The scheme cost money to join but still receives a subsidy from the local authority and the council. 900 properties were covered by a scheme (consisting of both inspection and training), some 40% of the student market and growth was continuing.

The Accommodation for Students UK Wide Scheme for Student Accommodation
was the topic considered by Victoria Loverseed, Development Manager of Unipol and Simon Thompson, Managing Director of Accommodation for Students.

The scheme was established because of the need to have a quality kite mark that could be recognised from students looking at a web site that covered all student accommodation across the UK and was used by many international students - most of whom could not understand local accreditation badging.

The website attracted about 2.5 million students a year and had 30,000 landlords using it.

The scheme took established national standards and had set up a national inspection network  and was a mix of on line training and inspection, establishing the threshold for membership with reference to other schemes that the landlord may already be in. The scheme, after an initial period, aimed to be self financing. The fee covered a three year membership period.

There were two more Plenary Sessions.

Managing Agents and Accreditation
was a topic covered by Simon Kemp, National Codes Administrator at Unipol. Accrediting agents was a particularly fraught topic and Simon covered why it was necessary to try and accredit agents, how Unipol went about doing and the lessons learned.

After three years, and many changes, the scheme was now working well. Differences between agents and landlords were significant and it was necessary to sort out managing agents from let only agents. Once again, active engagement, coupled with rigorous verification, was important.

The London Badge - What is Being Proposed
was a session undertaken by Dave Princep, currently Chair of the existing London Landlord Accreditation Scheme (LLAS). He stressed the increasing growth of the private rented sector as a source of housing supply in London and looked at the current Mayor's Revised London Housing Strategy that pledges to introduce a single badge of accreditation for Landon's landlords, lettings and managing agents. The strategy also set a target for the number of accredited landlords in the capital to be 100,000 by 2016.

The badge would be training based (10 hours CPD was proposed) and could be obtained through a  variety of badge awarding bodies, overseen by an approval panel.

A number of issues were raised about the awarding bodies being commercially in competition and whether the criteria were suitable for certain of the larger suppliers. The target of 100,00 landlords also appeared arbitrary.

The scheme was still in development.

In Conclusion
Martin Blakey thanked delegates for their active participation and noted the main theme that had emerged was one of a transfer of responsibility for operating schemes from local authorities to educational institutions, industry led bodies and others. It was important that, in developing accreditation, suppliers did not become bogged down in who ran what. Local authorities, although pulling clear from non statutory duties, showed few signs of not wishing to continue controlling a process that they had frequently withdrawn from.

It was time for local authorities to decide whether they wished to be properly involved and engage with accreditation, and use it as a light touch tool in regulatory enforcement, or whether they just retrenched into statutory obligations. The next year would see how this process had resolved itself.

Post Conference Evaluation
Delegates are asked to rate a number of matters on a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being good and 5 being poor. On that basis the conference was rated as follows by delegates:

Whole event   1.9
Relevance   1.8
Venue    2.4
Location   2.1
Pre conference Administration 1.9
During the event administration 1.6

Speakers (in order of speaking)

Linda Selvey  1.9
Martin Blakey  1.9
Anne Rowland  2.3
Geraldine Ward  1.8
Tom Toumazou  2.6
Column McGuire 1.6
Victoria Loverseed 2.2
Simon Thompson 2.1
Simon Kemp  2.2
Dave Princep  2.3

11th Annual Conference of the Accreditation Network UK
Sponsored by the Residential Landlord Association
Tuesday 17th April 2012

The Evolution in Private Rented Sector Accreditation: New Realities and the Way Forward
The main national conference providing strategic oversight and networking opportunities for those involved in running, developing or thinking about accreditation and its role in improving housing and housing management

Tuesday 17th April 2012 - 9.45am to 4.20pm
Baden Powell House, 65-67 Queen's Gate, South Kensington, London, SW7 5JS 

Accreditation has been changing quickly. As the private rented sector moves into being a medium term mainstream housing supplier for those unable to buy their own homes (average age of first purchase being 36) there has never been a greater need for accreditation to highlight the good from the bad. At the same time, Local Authorities are under financial pressure and many are cutting back to fund only their statutory services and this has meant many accreditation schemes have been outsourced or closed.

In this era of new realities this one day conference seeks to cover some key themes and questions:

• Is accreditation able to deliver the quality mark that is required by consumers?
• Is it really feasible to develop a national scheme that has robustness and credibility?
• How does the plan to have a cross-London kite mark fit into the accreditation map?
• How can managing agents be included in accreditation?
• Is it possible to make a scheme self funding or is accreditation always going to require some subsidy?

These key questions will inform the agenda with experts and practitioners arguing different points of views, with case examples, to explore and chart the accreditation movements way forward.

The conference provides examples from developments throughout the UK: from well established schemes to those just setting up and from large schemes to smaller niche initiatives.

The day will provide plenty of opportunity for delegate involvement with a choice of workshops and provides an important and active forum for examining where accreditation is of most use and how can it be developed further to meet today's agenda.

Booking has now closed for this past event

To visit the RLA homepage, visit:
http://www.rla.org.uk/

Sponsored by the RLA