The performance of social landlords in Great Britain: what do we know and what does it show?

Abstract

This paper examines the evidence concerning the performance of landlords within and between the two social housing sectors in Great Britain. It considers both the measured performance of landlords in the two sectors and the factors that appear to influence that performance. In doing so it discusses some of the broad issues involved in performance measurement in social housing before reviewing some of the previous work in the field that throws light on the factors that might be expected to influence landlords' effectiveness in the delivery of social housing services. The results of a limited empirical exercise that attempts to explain differences in measured performance of social landlords in England are then presented and interpreted. The paper concludes by reflecting on the implications of performance and of current approaches to performance measurement for social landlords.