Evaluation of administration and management of the Right to Manage Grants system

The Housing Corporation have commissioned IRIS Consulting to carry out an evaluation of the administrative arrangements for making grants under the Right To Manage element of its Tenant Empowerment Programme (TEP). The TEP (previously known as section 16 grant) was established to support the Government's objective to increase the effectiveness of housing management and improve the quality of life for residents on council authority housing estates.

The consultants will assess:

• Ways of streamlining the administration and management of the RTM grants
• Whether the principles of the bidding model in use for the Innovation & Good Practice programme are appropriate and transferable to the RTM grants
• The arrangements for the administration, payment and reporting and seek to develop a framework that enables streamlining while ensuring that the Housing Corporation is still able to monitor, control and account properly for the public funds involved.

In conducting this initial review the consultants will be consulting a range of internal and external stakeholders. The project is due to be completed by the end of July 2006. The results of the external evaluation will inform proposals on which the Housing Corporation plan to carry out formal consultations with interested parties in early autumn 2006.

• John Harvey - project director
• Wendy Reardon-Smith
• David Sands
• James Shaw.

Any person or organisation that wishes to make views known to the consultants should contact John Harvey at the address below:

John Harvey, project director
IRIS Consulting, 4 Ganton Street,
Soho, London, W1F 7QL
Tel: 020 7 287 0822
e-mail: johnharvey@irisconsulting.co.uk