Stewart Smyth

Accounting and Social Movements: an exploration of critical accounting praxis

Abstract A central tenet of critical accounting research maintains the need to challenge and change existing social relations; moving towards a more emancipated and equitable social order. The question of how critical accounting research upholds this principle has been intermittently discussed. This paper aims to engage with, and further, this discussion by contributing to research linking accounting information to social movements.

The Privatisation of Council Housing: Stock transfer and the struggle for accountable housing

A central element in the privatization of council housing has been the development of stock transfer policy. A variety of perspectives on this process have been explored including the impact on accountability relations; however, the tenants’ experience is almost completely absent from this literature. The paper develops a case study that draws on the experience of the tenants involved in a stock transfer. In the process stock transfers, and related accountability relations, are shown to be contested with tenant-led campaigns challenging this neoliberal inspired policy. The case study illustrates the power and financial resource asymmetries in transfer campaigns with a range of anti-democratic tactics employed by those pursuing the transfer. On the basis of a critique of neoliberalism, the stock transfer process is seen as an attack on the previous democratic control of council housing, which is replaced with ‘governance by experts and elites’ and private sector inspired corporate governance forms of accountability. Thus the paper seeks to answer two questions; how democratic is the transfer process and what are the long-term implications for democratic accountability in the social housing sector.

Maintaining market principles: Government auditors, PPP equity sales and hegemony

Abstract The UKs government auditors, the National Audit Office (NAO), play a central role in the accountability relations surrounding government expenditure. Commonly portrayed as being independent, they carry out performance audits assessing value for money. To date, the emerging market for PPP equity transactions has attracted little attention. This paper explores that emerging market through a Gramscian framework utilising the concepts of ‘common sense’ and ‘good sense’, focusing on a dialogical analysis of a NAO report on the topic.

Public accountability: reforms and resistance in social housing

ABSTRACT The paper illustrates and discusses the changing nature of public accountability relations in public services that are transferred to a mutual organization. The paper contributes to the literature that studies resistance to the neo-liberal restructuring process, highlighting civil society campaigns as important actors. A social housing case study in Britain is developed, combining a critical realist and dialogical influenced analysis. The case study identifies the role of private finance, illustrating tensions between democratic-styled and NGO-styled public accountability relations. A conclusion that housing mutuals are in danger of being apologia for private capitalism is established.

Debate: Interventions and contradictions— recent government social housing policy

© 2017 CIPFA armies—at any rate, small platoons—of civil servants and local government officials are beavering away at a new rates system, endeavouring to balance needs and incentives without stifling either. But doing so amidst funding crises (and Brexit negotiations) may increase risk aversion and ‘path dependency’, tempting government to adopt quick fixes, and local councils to concentrate on fighting for their slice of a shrinking pie. The pre-election Industrial Strategy green paper admitted that ‘Britain is one of the most centralized countries in the world, but this has not led to places being uniformly prosperous’ (Department of Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, 2017). Almost simultaneously, the Inclusive Growth Commission argued that an economy that genuinely ‘works for everyone’ requires local place-based strategies built on strong, devolved political leadership and public services (Inclusive Growth Commission, 2017). Meanwhile, the London Finance Commission has reiterated its analysis of the way centralization applies to local government funding: where London has (limited) ability to raise council tax and a mayoral business rate supplement, New York raises 65% of its resources from a range of property, sales and income taxes (LFC, 2017, p. 40). The position is no better in other English regions. But the LFC also cites OECD evidence that fiscal decentralization reduces the gap in economic performance between regions within a country (ibid., p. 43). Is it possible that centralism and inequality are not coincidental? That the way both to reduce inequality and increase the overall resource base might be to provide local government with real powers—and real incentives—to raise the tax their communities need? The problem isn’t just muddle, and not just the rattle of Aneurin Bevan’s famous bedpan in the corridors of Whitehall: it’s that bloated, over-developed centralism cuts off the solutions to the very problems it creates. Incentivizing devolution—allowing local government to grow the resources pie in ways that reduce rather than increase inequality, and don’t therefore collapse at the first whiff of funding crisis grapeshot—will require bold government, and bolder—louder—local councils.

Embedding financialization: a policy review of the English Affordable Homes Programme

Abstract Decent, affordable housing continues to be a major concern for policy-makers, providers and society at large. This paper contributes to the debate over the future of social housing in England by reviewing the Affordable Homes Programme (AHP). The AHP (2011–2015) saw the level of grant funding reduced dramatically; with the shortfall to be filled from housing associations own resources, increased rents and borrowing. To understand the implications of the AHP, this paper utilizes the concept of financialization. Financialization is a multifaceted process that seeks to explain the increased role and power of the financial markets in society. Specifically, the paper shows that the AHP leads to increased debt levels in the social housing sector, is predicated on short-termism and accumulation by dispossession. Finally, by employing financialization the paper also addresses debates about the nature of housing policy and how it can best be conceptualized.