Tenant participation has developed in Britain as a result of two conflicting forces - on the one hand, the tenants movement with their belief in participatory democracy and empowerment - on the other hand, the government agenda of consumer choice, set within the context of a belief in the free market and the withdrawal of the welfare state.

These two models - collective empowerment or consumer involvement - have created the tenant participation structures and processes we see today. The consumer model has been advocated by both Conservative and Labour governments and has developed in a series of legislation.

The Housing Act 1988 Tenants Choice legislation introduced the idea that tenants could change their landlord if they were not satisfied with their performance. The Local Government Act 1994 brought in compulsory competitive tendering of housing management services which gave tenants their first collective rights to be consulted about standards of service, and to be involved in monitoring the housing manager's performance, in return for the loss of their rights to be consulted on changes to management.

In 1986 funding was provided by the government to enable tenants to set up their own management organisations: either Estate Management Boards or Tenant Management Co-ops. Tenants had been able to ask the council to allow them to set up tenant management co-ops since the 1975 Housing Act but this gave a boost to tenant management. By 1994 there were 74 established tenant management organisations and a further 88 in the planning stage. In April 1994 the government set out the Right to Manage making it much clearer how tenants can set up a tenant management organisation.

In 2000 New Labour brought in Tenant Participation Compacts and a Housing Inspectorate as part of the Best Value regime. The Inspectorate, which became part of the Audit Commission and currently polices both councils and housing associations, was charged with ensuring that "resident involvement", as it is now called, was delivered by housing organisations.

The Audit Commission imposes a consumer model of tenant participation on housing organisations. It's inspection framework does not value collective participation through tenants associations and federations and stresses market research methods such as focus groups. Landlords and housing organisations are encouraged to involve residents because it improves services and makes them more cost effective. The inspectors do not encourage empowerment.

This quote from Charles Cooper & Murray Hawtin's; "Housing, Community and Conflict" 1997 is a useful view on the way tenant participation has developed.

"Community involvement in housing projects can be understood in relation to the wider goals of reducing public expenditure and withdrawing state intervention in the provision of rented housing.

"Tenant participation practice in Britain has therefore become a fragmented version…It has become service oriented and concerned primarily with customer satisfaction and improving the housing service. Empowerment now means little more than tenants or communities having a say over parts of service delivery, which itself has become fragmented through privatisation, while basic social relationships and inequalities remain unchallenged"