Stars in his eyes

How did Camden Council become the first local authority to achieve a three-star Audit Commission rating for housing management? Director of housing Neil Litherland says: "The inspectors' report said we had a 'strongly embedded performance-management culture' – that's what gets you two stars. But the X-factor is going beyond the business of being a good landlord, by dealing with issues on the estates."

The issues on some of Camden's estates are pretty tough stuff to deal with: drugs and drug-related crime, race and hate crime, nuisance neighbours and vandalism. The housing management service responded with ASBAG – the Antisocial Behaviour Action Group – which supported Litherland's staff in drugs patrols, joint working with police, schools and youth services, and transforming housing managers into early-warning systems to highlight problems. In the process, Camden has became the most successful local authority in the country at securing antisocial behaviour orders – 15 to date.

"It's part and parcel of being a good landlord or local authority," says Litherland. "It's about gathering evidence – from neighbours, from the professional witnesses we sometimes use, from CCTV cameras – then targeting a small number of perpetrators with ASBOs. It gives the community a sense that there's a way of fighting back." But the tough approach is balanced by softer interventions, such as play and activities schemes, or litter and graffiti campaigns. "Talk to residents, and the first issue to come up is community safety. It's about dealing with the things that undermine people's lives."

The sentiments could have come straight from prime minister Tony Blair's own hymn-sheet. In a recent Observer article, Blair claimed a new battleground for Labour in promoting the "stability and order in our communities that is fundamental to our project for change". In other words, giving people the confidence to walk out of their own homes in safety builds the confidence to improve learning and earning opportunities. The Queen's Speech followed up the message with an antisocial behaviour bill.

The new national policy is likely to be shaped by a unit of experts disseminating best practice across local authorities, police forces, education departments. This has been influenced by Camden's ASBAG. Its head, Ian Walker, was invited to Number 10 two weeks ago to brief Blair's advisers. "It's a big issue in London boroughs, and Litherland prioritised it before the prime minister," says Michael Irvine, interim director of housing at the Association of London Government.

Litherland, a keen flag-waver for local authority autonomy, would evidently be delighted with an endorsement that highlights how local initiatives can direct national policy because when he's asked about how a UK-wide antisocial behaviour strategy might work, his answer has a tone that shows he isn't fully in tune with Number 10. "National politicians often get the first X X half right, but then try to translate that into a detailed prescriptive approach that can't accommodate different issues in different parts of the country. We'll see what happens," he says flatly.

The mistranslation between Whitehall's innovative ideas and over-prescriptive local implementation is a theme to which Litherland returns several times. The decent homes standards, he says, "read like they're based on a semi-detached property in Middle England; there isn't enough emphasis on lifts or central heating or environmental issues" while the path followed by the housing private finance initiative pathfinders is "extremely complicated and long-winded. They call it a pathfinder, but it's been fairly prescriptive."

False freedoms
In particular, he's sceptical about the false friends of central government's "freedoms and flexibilities". Leading local authorities such as Camden salivate at the prospect, but get nothing more substantial to chew on than soundbites and detailed guidance documents. The underlying irony is that the reward for Camden's double three-star rating (capital programmes got the gong earlier this year) is the "freedom and flexibility" to dismantle the delivery vehicle by setting up an arm's-length management organisation.

"Staff ask: why transfer on a TUPE basis when they've worked so hard to get us this far? Tenants ask: will we have the same caretaker and patch manager? The model is difficult to get across to people," Litherland says. Keen to attract investment, Camden is studying the ALMO route. But it's also keen to see if its double three-star status can help it blaze a trail in a new direction. "We wrote to Lord Rooker and said: 'As a double three-star council with support from tenants and residents, how about giving us the freedoms and flexibilities we need without the obligation of setting up an ALMO structure?'"

Litherland is anxious not to be seen as a thorn in the government's side. He says he's simply "asking [central government] to trust local government more, to let us get on with delivering their agenda". But he's clearly speaking with the frustration of someone who has spent seven years at Camden giving staff the initiative and the confidence to run with ideas only to see them in danger of being strangled by red tape and over-regulation.

The decent homes standards read like they’re based on a semi-detached house in Middle England. There isn’t enough emphasis on lifts, central heating or environmental issues

He arrived at Camden in 1995 to find a local authority with a siege mentality. "The attitude was 'government doesn't like us, we need to pull up the drawbridge and defend ourselves'." His task was to manage culture change, and encourage staff to look over the parapet. "Now, with housing very much a part of peoples' lives, and community safety such a huge issue, if we can make a difference there's a future for us," he says.

Another favourite theme is the idea that local authority housing could be entering a golden age, if only central government would trust it long enough to hand over the keys. As a Mancunian and lifelong Manchester City supporter, Litherland sees a parallel between his team's recent return to form and the fortunes of local authority housing. "A few years ago, we were told: 'know your place – stay in the Second Division'. But last week City beat United convincingly for the first time in 13 years, and there's an expectation housing is rising up the political agenda."

Litherland grew up making regular pilgrimages to the Main Road terraces with his father Bob, Labour MP for Manchester Central until 1997. In his 20s, Litherland junior had ambitions to enter Westminster, and entered a four-year stint as a councillor in Manchester in the mid-1980s with the intention of making it his political apprenticeship. However, he abandoned the plan after "getting his teeth into housing" and realising he could achieve more effective change on the executive side.

He won't be using Camden's three stars as a leg-up onto the Westminster stage, but he is still ambitious. When he notes that he is one of the longest-serving housing directors in London, it's with more restlessness than pride, and he certainly seems conscious that profiles shape perceptions in the outside world of potential employers: while being interviewed he regularly refers to his notes, vets the one-paragraph biography faxed in advance by his PA, and is wary of questions not directly related to housing.

Immediate challenges
Whatever his future career holds, for the time being Litherland has plenty of challenges as housing boss at the council with the country's statistically widest gap between richest and poorest wards.

He has 13,000 people on the borough's waiting list, compared to 27,000 tenancies, and 2000 in temporary accommodation; he struggles to squeeze 50% affordable housing out of developers who can always build a commercial scheme instead and loses 800 units a year through right to buy.

Litherland is keen to publicise the positive potential of the borough's first-round pathfinder PFI, a £50m deal to outsource the maintenance and management of five 22-storey tower blocks in Swiss Cottage.

As two bidders have dropped out, Camden has just agreed with the ODPM and Treasury to pursue a partnership arrangement with the remaining bidder, United House. "If there's a quicker, less expensive path, then maybe something good will come out of it," says Litherland. In fact, he is already hatching plans "to go back in 30 years' time to see how they're getting on".

But mostly, he is looking five years ahead, when he hopes local authority housing will be "back in the fold as a positive contributor". Although he is sceptical of Labour's plans to allow prudential borrowing, as announced in the Queen's Speech, he foresees departments "having the financial levers in their hands" to decide on priorities; enjoying similar financial freedoms to registered social landlords and similar opportunities to run other councils' stock in stock transfer-style deals, and having a more robust role in delivering new homes.