Dismantle GHA

The wrangling over the GHA's repair contract is but another chapter in the life of the UK's most dysfunctional social landlord.

I can give you another one. The Scottish Government has rightly put £35m into the Mortgage to Rent Scheme so that homeowners facing homelessness can become a secure tenant with a housing association. Yet the GHA won't participate in this scheme. It uses obfuscation to explain why it can't participate, why it cannot proceed to second stage transfer, why it cannot build the number of new homes it said it would.

Never-ending excuses from an organisation with never-ending public subsidy. These failures prejudice ordinary citizens. We have a client in Govan who may become homeless because other housing associations are unable to purchase her home due to GHA communal repair issues - but if the GHA worked with the Scottish Government's Mortgage to Rent Scheme they could become her landlord.

It's heartening to see the Scottish Government and Glasgow City Council now at one on the need to dismantle the GHA. However, calls for the Housing Regulator to investigate the GHA are misplaced. Regulator civil servants have been complicit in the cover up of GHA failures and bad practice. If the Scottish Government does not take urgent steps now I believe the GHA could become Scotland's mini-Enron.

Those steps must surely include the appointment of an independent inspection team, including forensic accountants and well respected housing association directors. The task would be to examine the GHA's management failures, identify financial waste, and report on a strategy to dismantle the GHA and deliver on community ownership. The Scottish Ministers have power under section 69 of the 2001 Housing (Scotland) Act to do this. And after any independent inspection they could appoint a manager to deliver on the agreed strategy.

Glasgow cannot afford to get this wrong.