To provide decent homes, we need decent neighbourhoods

But, despite the decent homes standard, there doesn't seem to be the same emphasis on existing housing stock. Although there are many good examples of asset management strategies, improvement programmes, regeneration approaches and effective engagement with local communities, they are not that widespread.

The standard itself is at least an honourable attempt to define a decent home. This is progress, but I'm sure it will need reviewing: inadvertently, we may be building obsolescence into our stock by not keeping pace with our customers' aspirations.

However, what worries me most is that many asset management strategies seem to concentrate purely on the home, not on the neighbourhood.

There are many examples of perfectly good housing that fail in their market function, not because of their intrinsic quality, but because people's perceptions of and requirements for their neighbourhoods are not being met.

It is now received wisdom that focusing on the wider regeneration of existing stock is sensible in any asset management strategy. Sharing experiences and approaches to achieve this would be a step forward.

However, the key elements that create a good neighbourhood are diverse. Work to define indicators that identify progress in improving neighbourhoods should become a regular feature of asset management strategies. With pressure on the sector to do so many different things, we might be forgiven for not identifying yet another target, but this work is crucial.

There also needs to be a focus on what sort of neighbourhood the local community and potential customers want. The most immediate issue here is the degree to which existing social housing should be made more diverse. The Joseph Rowntree programme of selling alternate vacancies on estates is one way to do this.

An attack on problems identified by local people can be more cost-effective and provide better results than capital-intensive improvement schemes

Other alternatives include identifying areas within estates, demolishing, then replacing the homes with more varied tenure patterns. Some areas may require a complete intervention strategy.

Clearly, this requires involvement with local communities: perhaps those currently living in multi-tenure terraced housing with poor infrastructure can participate in the relocation of the existing community into new, better quality neighbourhoods.

Multi-tenure building is clearly important. It is entirely understandable that existing communities have a range of short- and long-term concerns that need to be addressed. They are likely to want to maintain the community links and networks that have evolved over many years.

A coordinated attack on the problems identified by local people can actually be more cost-effective and provide better results than capital-intensive improvement schemes. Obviously, in many areas, a combination of both will be required.

Ensuring people live in good neighbourhoods means tackling economic and social problems as well as physical regeneration, building alliances with those with expertise in these areas, possibly with access to additional funding streams. Alternatively, housing providers may have to tackle the problems directly themselves.

There are clear cost and skills issues here. Some organisations in our sector are recruiting economic development staff or working with other agencies to provide services and extra choices for local people. More needs to be done on this front.