Come on, come on, let's work together

The thing is, I have a foot in both camps. On the one hand I'm a councillor, so I know a lot about housing associations. They are the people who took our stock because successive governments hated local democracy. They can only run things because they get far more money than we do for management allowances. They cherry-pick the best tenants and pay their managers and executives far more than we could ever do.

On the other hand, I'm also the chair of a subsidiary of an RSL, so I know a lot about councils and councillors. It was obvious why they weren't allowed to keep their stock – they were incompetent. They invested in the wrong stuff and made all their decisions on dogmatic rather than practical grounds … to say nothing of councillors.

Am I confused? A little. Am I accurately portraying what the different sections of the social housing movement think about each other? Not quite. Nevertheless, in many parts of the country there is rivalry between the two wings of social housing.

You can see how this could arise. Certainly, many local authorities still see themselves as producers and link their democratic role too closely with that of service provider. Certainly many housing associations have adopted a supercilious attitude to councils and don't recognise the importance of the local mandate and the strategic role of the council in providing housing and other services.

Let peace break out between RSLs and councils – but agreement and harmony between North and South? There’s a challenge …

It is vitally important that all social housing providers work together. Local authorities are better at some things than RSLs and vice versa. There are certainly some problems that need joint activity: antisocial behaviour must be tackled comprehensively by housing providers and other agencies if we are not simply to move problem families around rather than solve their problems; joint lettings strategies would mean that, instead of seeking just to let our own stock, tenants could be given the best choice available to meet their needs – if we did that, we could increase community stability and reduce churning. We should also work together on demolition proposals. Some RSL balance sheets are put under threat by the levels of demolition required both in housing market renewal areas in the North and in other areas of low demand. Cooperation would also help in neighbourhood management. Only if a critical mass of housing providers is achieved can one association, or in some cases the council, take adequate responsibility for the environmental and people issues generated by the new neighbourhood agenda.

Relationships need to develop at all four of these levels and there is a lot of good practice in the North-west that could be replicated. Here the RSLs, local authorities, Housing Corporation and Government Office meet inside the North-west housing executive. They look at regional issues, define one regional housing strategy with sub-regional components and then jointly work up delivery options. At sub-regional level, the councils and RSLs meet and jointly plan within the New Heartlands market renewal partnership. At city level, the council and housing associations meet through the Strategic Housing Partnership that is part of the Local Strategic Partnership. At neighbourhood level, a number of RSLs are beginning to take on the role of neighbourhood managers delivering services for other housing associations as well as the council.

So councils and social landlords can work together – indeed, they are doing so increasingly in the North-east, Yorkshire and Humberside as well as the North-west. So let peace break out between RSLs and councils.