Call that efficient?

I wholeheartedly agree with my colleague Ian Munro [group chief executive, New Charter Housing Trust Group] that performance-related data about the sector should be available for public consumption, though I do not think as he does that the aim should be to “name and shame” the weaker-performing associations.

But in my view the recent publication of the Performance Management Validation pilot really goes to the heart of more fundamental issues across the sector.

Coast & Country Housing is one of the new-wave large-scale voluntary stock transfers, created in July 2002, and a new “player” in the sector. It is interesting to hear the arguments about the new indicator in the efficiency debate when, in actual fact, a starting point must surely be the need to have a robust and honest performance management system in place in the first instance.

The results of the validation exercise were not good, in that out of 14 indicators, it appears that the average compliance was about five or six, hardly a figure to inspire confidence as a forerunner to the debate on adequacy of the proposed new indicator.

Coast & Country came first in the national validation pilot (sorry Ian, we were actually joint first with you until we got one of our indicators amended from “Compliant” to “Fully Compliant”), and 16th in the efficiency rating.

Clearly an excellent achievement, but the fact is that next year we will be lucky if we are in the top 150 – because the way the indicator is calculated is fundamentally flawed.

It is the large-spending LSVT organisations in particular who stand to lose out because of this. Analysing their efficiency in the early stages post-transfer is not going to be representative of how they will perform in subsequent years.

They will spend less in this initial period, while still bedding down, because it takes time to get investment plans and staffing structures up and running.

On balance, I would prefer my first position in the validation exercise – because at least then I can be comforted by the fact that I know that our figures are an accurate reflection of our performance.