For many months ANUK has been involved in discussions about what accreditation actually is and how it could be properly defined. Many were involved in this discussion and their input has been invaluable: the network working at its very best.

There are many kinds of accreditation, ranging from the successful skills based accreditation scheme run across London by the London Landlord Accreditation Scheme, to highly regulatory schemes with complex systems of assessment and verification, such as the National Codes for Larger Student Developments so any definition had to be sufficiently flexible to include different types of accreditation, but also be sufficiently robust to exclude accreditation  schemes that were little more than individual campaigns or mail shots. Nor was the definition intended to get in the way of the existing ANUK Model Accreditation Scheme which is widely used and amended to reflect local diversity.

The method of approach was to define four core values that all viable and property accreditation schemes should have. The following values were approved at the ANUK Executive meeting held on Thursday 29th November 2007 and ANUK (working in partnership with Unipol and the LGA) is now working on a set of systems to enable these core values to be simply audited by scheme operators.

The four core values of accreditation are:

The Declaration
Accreditation is about accountability: to be accountable there must be a voluntary declaration by the supplier or manager of the housing to a set of processes or standards (normally both). The declaration should be regular and normally should take place once every three years.

Verification
A scheme must verifying that those who sign up to meet standards are doing so. Time has shown that to maintain both consumer and landlord confidence there must be a regular and transparent process that checks on the standards being met, issues some form of report and where any shortcomings are identified, a landlord must agree to an improvement package. Whatever the verification process is, it must be public, realistic and achievable. A complaints system alone is not sufficient to ensure verification.

Continuing Improvement
Verification should not be simply about standards being met. The notion of continuing improvement sets the mental tone for accreditation: it is about doing better from a base standard and accepting that there is always room for improvement in management outputs.
 
Complaints
There must be a proper complaints process that should be simple, inclusive, transparent, rapid and known.