This useful publication is being promoted by the Natonal Tenant Organisations and the Housing Diversity Network.

There is a worrying lack of consultation with tenants on mergers and changes in services due to the cuts being made – hopefully this will help a bit to show why tenants should be given an opportuity for their input

Form follows function – things to think about (residents) (1)

This is what Inside Housing had to say on the subject, reporting back on a discussion to raise awareness f the code and the merger issues

“Social landlords have used all kinds of reasons to explain their sudden enthusiasm for mergers. They have promised “greater economies of scale”, “operational efficiencies”, “extra development capacity” and “millions of pounds of savings” as a result of their unions.

In the context of the 1% annual social housing rent cut, pressure on the sector from ministers to be more efficient, and market volatility following the Brexit vote, mergers are increasingly being considered by landlords.

However, there is a growing feeling from some in the sector that one important group is being overlooked – tenants.

Excluded voice

This omission of tenants, along with a feeling that the code favours predatory organisations, has prompted a group of 12 landlords to undertake a project to come up with an alternative code – with tenant engagement at its heart.

The dozen organisations involved are, along with tenant engagement body Tpas, holding discussion groups with tenants about how they can get involved with mergers.

All of this is intended to generate ideas to feed into the alternative code, a draft of which is being drawn up by Housing Quality Network (HQN) and is expected to be published for consultation at the end of September.

As part of this project, on a hot summer’s day, Inside Housingattends a tenant roundtable in the relative cool of a small room in the heart of Westminster.

Six tenants from five housing associations are in attendance: Hyde, Soha Housing, Red Kite Community Housing, Raven Housing Trust and Cottsway Housing. Jenny Topham, chief executive of Tpas, is present as an observer, while the session is chaired by Abigail Davies, formerly assistant director of policy and practice at the Chartered Institute of Housing and now a self-employed consultant.

We kick off by talking about the tenants’ general feeling about mergers. Don Harrison, a tenant board member at 6,000-home Soha and retired banker, is critical of what he feels was an emphasis on the commercial benefit of the until-recently proposed 135,000-home tie-up between L&Q, Hyde and East Thames. “There was nothing in the [news] articles that mentioned tenants,” he says. “There were very good business reasons for it, but nothing about tenants.” L&Q and East Thames have stressed, however, that tenants have been involved.

Mr Harrison doubts the value of mergers. “We [Soha] can’t see any value in merging with anyone. We consider ourselves to be effective, financially viable and our key performance indicators show that’s what all our tenants think as well.”

But Mr Harrison’s scepticism is not matched by other tenants in the room, who can see advantages, including building homes to benefit future, as well as current, tenants.

Leyla Cabdalla, a tenant of Raven Housing Trust, which had considered a merger before its unnamed partner pulled out, says: “The positives are we would be a large organisation. The finances would be a bit stronger, so we could build a lot more than we can at the moment.”

Jan Durbridge, a tenant of Hyde Group, says tenants should understand the financial drivers for an organisation looking to merge. She says: “I think it is important for residents to know there are two sides to this. It is not just about your repairs: it’s thinking about why a company has to go down [that] route.”

She adds that larger, merged organisations could have more influence over government policy. “If you are bigger the government will come to you. You have much more of a voice.”

Pragmatism

Another reason to engage is pragmatism. Leslie Channon, one of the more vocal in the group and a tenant at Cottsway Housing, believes some organisations may be forced into merging if they are not using their assets to build. She says: “There is going to be a point where there is no more affordable land and you are not demonstrating to the HCA [Homes and Communities Agency] that you are building enough to fulfil your social purpose.”

It is early days, but the project is already showing that many tenants respond positively to discussions about mergers. The HQN’s online survey found only four in 10 tenants think associations are better off on their own. It is important to point out, however, that the sample is, at 319 responses, very small and has not been weighted to be representative.

So what fears do tenants have about mergers?

Perhaps the biggest concern is that their organisation will be taken over by an association which does not share its values, particularly on tenant engagement. Ms Channon says tenants will want to know “which culture is going to win out” if an organisation without much tenant involvement merges with one that has traditionally been more engaged.

There are also concerns mergers could lead to a less localised organisation with less responsive services. Mr Harrison says: “We don’t see any value in becoming part of a vast organisation where you may have to phone someone at the other end of the country.”

Furthermore, some organisations have stronger mechanisms to ensure accountability to tenants than others.

Nasreen Razaq, another Soha tenant, says, having attended seminars around the country, she has been “shocked” at the lack of tenant engagement. Mr Harrison tells the story of a tenant of another association, with weaker tenant engagement, praising their landlord for doing a repair within three months of it being reported. He says: “If it was any more than 12 days [at Soha] we would be kicking the arses of the contractors.”

So why are some landlords not engaging to the extent these tenants would like?

Again and again, the point is made that a culture of tenant involvement needs to come from the chief executive; the tenants speculate that some CEOs fear tenant involvement will slow things down too much, particularly if they are perceived as automatically hostile to merger plans.

Trusting tenants

Several of the roundtable attendees also stress the importance of tenants being trusted to be involved in merger plans from an early stage – rather than being consulted on when a plan has been all but finalised. Ms Cabdalla says the chief executive of her organisation talked to tenants about a potential merger before staff were informed, and were trusted to abide by a commercial confidentiality agreement.

A lack of regulatory pressure on landlords is also a concern. The Housing and Planning Act will remove the need for landlords to obtain consent for mergers from the HCA. Ms Davies says this will mean the HCA’s “cursory check” that tenants have been consulted will no longer apply.

The tenants talk about the need to demonstrate to landlords that involving them makes good business sense. Ms Channon says tenants can provide information to landlords about where they are over or under-delivering services so they can spend money more effectively. She adds: “If you have high customer satisfaction it makes business sense because you are spending less time dealing with complaints.” The conversation focuses on the need for better data and information to convince executives and boards that tenant involvement makes business sense.

Although the conversation does not move on to specific measures to include in the alternative merger code, some very clear themes emerge. These tenants are concerned that residents could be sidelined as the sector embarks on an unprecedented number of mergers.

Their message is that tenant involvement and engagement is not only the right thing to do, but can save landlords money and lead to better decisions. They want to get the message out that tenants will engage with merger proposals constructively rather than simply hold up discussions.

Whatever the eventual shape of the alternative code, tenants will be hoping that in a world of reduced regulation and greater financial and political pressure to merge, they will not be left out of the discussion.

The ombudsman’s annual report, shows the ombudsman received 15,984 complaints and enquiries in 2015/16, a slight decrease on the 16,337 received the previous year.

Here is the report:

housing-ombudsman-annual-report-2015-16

The figure appears to signal an end to spiralling complaints and enquiries, which surged 66% in two years between 2012/13 and 2014/15. This rise was fuelled by an increase in the ombudsman’s role to cover an extra 2.1m council tenants in 2013, and a scaling back of the English social housing regulator’s consumer role in 2012.

This briefing takes a look at anti-poverty programmes and initiatives, looking at the reasons why many tenants experience poverty, and why housing organisations are in an ideal position to tackle poverty within their communities. It also features a wide range of practical examples of anti-poverty initiatives from across the country.

Thanks CIH – very useful:

How to support anti-poverty initiatives

Universal credit is a new benefit which will combine and replace six existing benefits including housing benefit, as well as working and child tax credits and three out of work benefits; job seekers allowance, employment support allowance and income support. It is being introduced gradually over a period of several years.

This CIH guide is helpful to keep us up to date:

What you need to know about the rollout of UC

“Every education system around the world faces two major challenges: closing the stubborn achievement gaps between disadvantaged children and their wealthier peers, and ensuring that young people leave compulsory education with the knowledge, skills and characteristics they need in order to thrive in the modern world. Failure to address these challenges is morally indefensible and economically unsustainable.

While the underlying causes of achievement gaps are complex, and require similarly complex solutions, the world’s highest performing education systems are making good progress by improving the quality of classroom teaching, which we know has the biggest impact on pupil progress. This is especially significant for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds, where the difference between a good teacher and a bad teacher can represent a whole year’s worth of extra learning in any given academic year.

Yet a shortage of expert teachers in the stands is frustrating our ambition to close this attainment gap. This problem is particularly acute in certain areas of the country that struggle to attract, develop and retain members of staff. The government has acknowledged this problem and recently pledged to try to address it by spreading ‘educational excellence everywhere’.

In order to improve teaching expertise through existing channels, three barriers must be overcome.

• Courses, programmes and workshops are often poorly designed and delivered.
• Incentives to participate in training and development are often poor.
• The environments in which training and development takes place are often poor.

As a result of these challenges, too much training and development benefits neither teachers nor their pupils, failing to transform the knowledge and craft needed for expert teaching; indeed, it often lacks the incentives required to encourage participation in the first place. Some development does benefit pupils, but those benefits are often locked within a single school. Likewise, many current university master’s courses offer good incentives – they’re portable, and give those who undertake them a sense of status and progression – but their focus is often on research rather than on transforming classroom practice.

If we are to improve teacher training and development, we need to address all three challenges – poor design and delivery, poor incentives and poor environments. We need a well-incentivised, transformative training and development offer, delivered within a supportive environment.

This paper draws on examples of successful, innovative school-led teacher development programmes in the US and Singapore. It argues for the creation of a new school-led, higher education training institution – an Institute for Advanced Teaching (IAT) – that could address each of the three barriers to effective teacher development described above, and deliver well-incentivised, transformative training and development within a supportive environment.

As a dedicated not-for-profit social enterprise with a mission to build a movement of expert teachers who will ensure that all children get an excellent education, the IAT would accomplish the following.

• Recruit high-potential, qualified teachers who work in challenging schools.
• Develop them into expert teachers.
• Build them into a movement for change in education.

Through careful design, it could meet three objectives that will be vital to addressing England’s teacher training and development needs.

Transforming classroom practice

• A master’s degree in advanced teaching, designed by global experts and informed by rigorous international education research.
• A faculty made up of England’s highly expert practising teachers (see boxed text below) leading the delivery of the course (and developing themselves as expert facilitators).
• Advised by a steering group of high-performing schools that serve low-income communities.

Incentivising participation

• The creation of a prestigious institution that draws credibility from founding schools, high-calibre faculty, the quality of its course and its demonstrated outcomes.
• Portable master’s-level course accreditation.
• Opening a progression route for the most expert teachers to join a prestigious faculty of experts.

Providing teaching within a supportive environment

• Associates (those who are enrolled in or have graduated from the programme) will be grouped into larger cohort and smaller cross-school units, thereby mitigating the risk of poor in-school development cultures.
• The course will equip associates with the knowledge and craft required to support a culture of development within their own school.
• The development process will be separated from performance management within schools, in order to maximise engagement from associates.

The next stage in the work of the nascent IAT will be to outline the practical elements of this institution. It will shortly be drawing up more detailed plans for the content and composition of the course, the design of the social enterprise, and the cost involved in creating the scheme. As leader of the IAT project, the author would welcome any feedback on this proposal as it is taken forward.

Defining ‘expert teacher’

Defining the term ‘expert teacher’ is the subject of debate, in part driven by an individual’s view of what outcomes our education system should aspire to. For the purposes of this paper, we will use John Hattie’s definition. He identifies five major dimensions of expert teachers: they have high levels of knowledge and understanding of the subjects they teach; they can guide learning to desirable surface and deep outcomes; they can successfully monitor learning and provide feedback that assists students to progress; they can attend to the more attitudinal attributes of learning (especially developing self-efficacy and mastery motivation), and can provide defensible evidence of positive impacts of their teaching on student learning. Here in, Hattie says, lies the difference between ‘expert’ and experienced.”

This document sets out the government’s plan of actions to deal with hate crime until May 2020. It applies to England and Wales only.

Action_Against_Hate_-_UK_Government_s_Plan_to_Tackle_Hate_Crime_2016

It outlines actions the government will take to:

• prevent and respond to hate crime
• increase reporting of hate crime incidents
• improve support for victims
• build an understanding of hate crime

As part of the hate crime action plan, a £2.4 million funding scheme for places of worship has been launched. This will provide security measures and equipment for vulnerable places of worship that need increased protection.

“The ‘hardest-to-help’ have been left behind by employment support. The government’s Work Programme has been under-resourced and unable to provide the innovative, holistic approach that is required by those who have been out of work for a long time.

When the current programme’s contracts expire in 2017, the government will replace it with a new scheme. However, this Work and Health Programme is set to have even fewer resources. It is therefore unlikely to provide either the support or the innovation required to help move people into good quality, sustained employment.

Instead, we propose a radically different ‘welfare earnback’ approach, with the following key features.

Local welfare earnback companies should be set up by mayors or local leaders to cover major city-regions, with investment from across the public sector – local authorities, the Treasury, the Department for Work and Pensions and local NHS commissioners.

These companies should adopt an invest to save approach – that is,investing in employment support upfront, on the basis that getting people into work will result in both savings for the public sector and increased tax revenue.

Specialist advisors should use an intelligent diagnostic tool to select candidates for whom there is a ‘case for investment’ – where the financial cost of the intervention is likely to be outweighed by the financial benefits of their being in work.

These advisors should be able to commission whatever works on a case-by-case basis, including job placements. Local government would then be incentivised to align these advisors’ initiatives with their own job-creation or brokering activities because they would save when they are successful.

KEY FINDINGS

Many individuals are too ill to work, or lack the experience and qualifications that employers need. The government’s Work Programme is designed to deal with this but, due to a lack of resources and an inability to innovate, it has failed to provide the interventions that people need. Thiswastes public money on both ineffective interventions and spells on benefits that are, for some, unnecessary: with the right interventions many more could be in work and contributing to the public finances instead.

However, not enough money is being made available to invest in these interventions upfront, despite the fact that they could save money down the line, or may involve the same amount of spending as currently but succeed in moving someone into work.

For example, the annual tax-benefit saving for moving a single woman on employment and support allowance, living in council tax band C private rented sector housing in Hammersmith, who moves into a job paid at the new minimum wage (which the government calls the ‘national living wage’) into a is £7,500 for a 20-hour week – enough to fund a wide range of employment support, provided that that sum can be harnessed.

The Work and Health Programme that will succeed the current Work Programme will be a better model in some ways: it will be co-commissioned with local authorities in order to more effectively tailor the scheme to suit local labour markets. However, it will have even less moneyto spend than the current scheme. In order to function, it will therefore need to do the following.

• Unlock more funding upfront for the support that is required, which can often be more expensive than the interventions which are currently being delivered.
• Enable a broader range of interventions, that are tailored to individuals’ needs, including the option of paid work placements or sheltered employment when necessary.

A number of relevant lessons emerge from our review of current and alternative policies in the UK and abroad, such as:

• Public money can and has been shifted around the system through various invest to save and place-based initiatives in public services, but the realisation of cashable savings is crucial.
• Local government is in a good position to shape employment support in order to generate jobs and to place the hardest-to-help in those jobs where appropriate. However, close collaboration with the rest of the public sector is essential.

KEY RECOMMENDATIONS

We therefore propose that the Work and Health Programme is funded on a radically different basis than is currently proposed.

• A ‘welfare earnback’ joint venture company should be set up, with the purpose of investing to save.
• All relevant agencies would invest in this company with the objective of getting the hardest-to-help and others for whom there is a case into work: the combined authority, the Treasury, the Department for Work and Pensions and local NHS commissioners would invest, and it would have a remit that extends across the city-region in question.
• This initiative could be led by the ‘metro mayor’ where the office exists; otherwise, a local authority leader or leaders could bring stakeholders together.
• They would be incentivised to do so because it would make their own services more effective without spending more money; there would even be the potential to make a saving if so desired.
• The advisors would select individual jobseekers, using a more developed form of the cost–benefit analysis tools already in use, andinvest in their support upfront based on the savings they expect to make.

Participants should be referred and assessed for eligibility on a case-by-case basis.

• People could be referred by doctors or housing associations, or could refer themselves for assessment by a specialist advisor.
• This specialist advisor would use their own experience, and a wide range of intelligence to make an assessment of (in simple terms):
  • the cost of overcoming all of their barriers to work
  • the saving and additional revenue that would accrue to the whole public sector over three years
  • the probability of success (this would need to account for deadweight, retention rate, cashability and optimism bias; see HM Treasury 2014).
• Some participants could be ‘high-cost, high-saving’ claimants, such as those with low-level health needs claiming employment support allowance who are not receiving the holistic and more expensive support they need; however, ‘low-cost, low-saving’ claimants would also be eligible, such as a young jobseeker’s allowance claimant in need of a short-term job placement to gain work experience.
• Those who do not present a case for investment according to these criteria would still receive support, but through other programmes or Jobcentre Plus – which is getting more investment.

If there is a case for investment then a ‘whatever works’ approachshould be adopted.

• The hardest-to-help claimants often need multi-agency, wraparound support. For some this might include mental or physical health provision; for others it might mean literacy classes or other skills provision.
• Crucially, in cases in which there appears to be a strong chance of success, the company should be free to fund short-term job placements, intermediate labour markets and other demand-side interventions.
• The ‘whatever works’ approach means, in turn, that whichever organisation in whichever sector is best-placed to undertake each function does so.

Employment support should join up with job creation where possible.

• Local government should be rewarded when their job-creation and/or brokering activities result in the employment of the hardest-to-help, on the basis of the reductions in the benefits bill and increases in the tax-take that result.
• These rewards should be allocated through a separate mechanism: the five-yearly ‘gateway assessments’ of current earnback and gain-share deals should include robust estimates of savings generated by such activity, which can be derived from universal credit’s reporting systems. The Treasury and the government departments that benefit should sign up to such an arrangement as part of a devolution deal and would then be expected to contribute if sufficient evidence is provided.”

However, the government’s recent reductions in subsidies for solar and wind power, and changes to other financial support mechanisms, have left the future of community energy highly uncertain. A number of new financing models are beginning to emerge, including peer-to-peer lending, pension fund investment and municipal energy company funding. But new community energy projects will need to find business models which don’t depend on subsidy for their profitability. At the same time there are continuing challenges to ensure that community energy schemes reach the lowest-income groups.

The primary goal of the new municipal energy companies has been to provide lower prices for consumers, and thereby tackle fuel poverty. Robin Hood Energy in Nottingham, Bristol Energy and Our Power in Scotland have been able to offer lower tariffs than the ‘big six’ utilities and in this way to stimulate price reductions among their competitors as well. The challenge now is to extend beyond their retail supply role into the provision of energy efficiency services, renewable electricity generation and decentralised heat, and ultimately into demand management. But there remain as-yet unanswered questions about how many municipal energy companies the market can sustain, and how far trust in them will withstand future wholesale price increases.

Given the UK’s changing energy system and the opportunities raised by new and more decentralised technologies, a national forum that convenes both local and community ventures could help to develop longer-term strategies to tackle the challenges facing this sector.”