At present the winner of the contract to finance, build and maintain the houses in north London will automatically take charge of the estate for the 25-to-30-year span of the PPP deal.
The wording of the Stonebridge trust contract will now be altered to ensure that residents can vote over whom they install as landlord once the trust is disbanded in six years.
Stonebridge Housing Action Trust chief executive Ian McDermott said he was committed to giving Stonebridge residents an open choice in their new landlords and would change the terms of the PPP contract to ensure that residents were given the choice.
He said it was very likely that if the trust had carried on with the original PPP contract, residents would have had their landlord forced upon them.
He said: "We could have ended up picking a consortium to build and maintain homes that became a landlord by default. Tenants made it clear they were unhappy with this, and the contract has been changed accordingly."
McDermott said the changes had been well received by residents.
A consortium could have become landlord by default
Ian McDermott, chief executive, Stonebridge Housing Action Trust
In addition to giving residents some control over who is selected as landlord the trust also takes the view that the rewording may encourage the first phase contractor to raise its game so that residents vote to install it as their longer-term landlord.
The trust also hopes it will encourage more housing associations to put in bids for the long-term maintenance and management of the of the project.
McDermott said: "Probably the only housing associations that would have been interested in becoming landlords would be those already involved in the bidding for the contract." He said other housing associations would have been unlikely to express any interest as the contract did not provide scope for them to do any housing management: their only job would have been managing a contract. "That's unlikely to have been very attractive," he added.
The trust originally advertised for a consortium to raise an extra £50m of finance, in addition to government funding, to design and build the remainder of the development. The consortium would then have gone on to carry out the property maintenance and housing management of the estate for a 25- to-30-year period.
But in August it was revealed that the development was to be delayed for two months.
Teams led by contractors Carillion, Countryside Properties, Galliford Hodgson and Willmott Dixon were believed to be among six consortiums that were vying for inclusion on a shortlist of three, under the original plans.
