Governance is changing in housing organisations. Rather than board members being gatekeepers who pick holes in reports, we need them to become sounding boards for staff, enabling them to test new ideas and get contributions from the board at an early stage.

Many boards already have directors with social housing, council or customer perspectives so the challenge is to bring in people from outside the sector with a commercial perspective.

Recruiting a new chair or board member is a fantastic opportunity for improvement and to bring in new skills and experience. Here are five tips on creating a better board for your housing organisation:

This article from the Guardian gives us food for thought:

“1. Know what you need
Know what skills you want and why. Start with a review of the board team skills using tools like skills gap and SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis against your organisation’s strategic plan.

The essential skills for all boards are ensuring the organisation is viable; managing risk, and focusing on customers. But just as important as evaluating individual board members’ skills is assessing whether the board will work well together as a team. Consider a team analysis tool to give valuable insights into how your board members behave and communicate.

You will then have a clear idea of the profile of the board member or chair to search and select against.

2. Look for independent thinking
When recruiting to your board, make sure you look for a team player who will work with current members but is also independent. This is not just about having no conflicts of interest but also looking for someone who will exercise independent judgement – evidence-based, critical thinking – and not represent an industry perspective, personal or political agenda. Ensure the board as a whole has experience from outside the sector with not too many current or former social housing executives.

3. Sell yourself to candidates
How attractive is your organisation to high calibre board candidates?

Attracting the best possible members to your board means you need to highlight the advantages for board members, as well as for the organisation. This is a chance for them to improve themselves, too. Sell your value to prospective candidates so they understand what difference they can make and what they will get from their contribution.

Agree a recruitment and induction process that shows them the support and training they will get.

4. Cast your net as widely as possible
Make sure your board reflects the diversity of your community. Not only will this make your organisation better, but social housing regulators will downgrade your governance if your board is dominated by white middle-aged men.

Consider how you can attract candidates from underrepresented groups. There are many ways to do this, but they each have pros and cons. Here are some of the options:

Sector insiders
Pro: By definition, they will have sector knowledge and expertise.
Con: A board with too many insiders runs the risk of being siloed in its thinking. Members might be less willing to challenge the executive and may lack essential commercial experience. Consider the benefits of a fresh approach.

Headhunters
Con: This is an expensive option. It can lack transparency and fairness and there has been independent research suggesting a bias towards men. If you use a headhunter, make sure they have adopted a recommended code of conduct and that your brief is crystal clear.

Talent pipelines and networks
Pro: Sustainable succession planning can ensure a continuous supply of keen candidates. This is a pool of candidates developed and supported by the organisation to have the skills, experience and commitment to be put forward for selection when a board place becomes vacant. It helps you steer clear of the “great and good” and look for people on the way up who are hungry to learn and make a difference.

Advertisements
Pro: These can help widen the net, if you include industry and local publications as well as the Guardian and online sites such as Women on Boards.
Con: It will depend on your budget.

Social media
Pro: It has the potential to reach a wider audience and is mostly free. This may enable you to target new groups of potential applicants.

5. Don’t rush in

It’s easy to fall for a slick presentation, but shortlisted candidates should undertake further assessment before interview. There are some excellent psychometric tests on the market but be sure to use only those that are relevant, accurate and will provide valid evidence on which to make a judgment about the candidates.

There are also less formal assessments to consider. Map candidates against the team profile to ensure a good fit. Consider appointing someone as a co-optee to start until you are satisfied with their performance. Use the interview process as a test to ensure a fit on both sides.

And finally, once you’ve chosen your new board members, make sure they get a really good induction!“

….and here are some views from HQNs Alistair Mac – also in the Guardian:

” Housing association boards are in a new era, one that requires the ability to juggle a huge range of demands. They must have something to offer that makes sense to government, councils and people from all walks of life who want homes.

On the one hand, housing association boards need to be more commercial. This is not new: it’s been that way since the 1980s, when housing associations first started taking out big loans to build homes. But the risks have got sharper and the game is changing. The Tories want to see a lot more homeowners, and housing associations can either help with this or hibernate.

For those in London, where developers are selling flats off-plan to eager buyers from around the world, this might be a good thing. But housing booms don’t last for ever.

While it’s no secret that some associations want to be set free to be full-blown private companies, there are questions about what will happen to them. Take a look at what is going on at private landlord Grainger. A hedge fund has snapped up a stake and Grainger is now under pressure to return a lot more cash to the shareholders. I can see a few housing associations falling into that same trap – which might make them yearn to go back to being regulated by the Homes and Communities Agency.

Another ball for housing associations to juggle is having to deal with a lot of Labour councils. These local authorities own plenty of land and can be a source of cheap loans, but of course they have a different agenda to the hedge funds: they want homes for the lowest possible rent.

What skills do your board members need to deal with these very different commercial and social demands? Of course, you need members with high-level finance skills. You also need people who can sniff out the booms and busts of the housing market.

But the biggest skill required is listening to people and thinking carefully about how you can give them what they want. It may sound trite, but if everyone all put in a bit more thought, boards would avoid a lot of trouble.

A lack of thinking and empathy has estranged us from both the government and the people, and has led to the situation of £1m shared ownership homes. If you don’t put on your thinking cap in a board meeting, that’s the sort of screw-up you get down the line.“

Alistair McIntosh is the chief executive of Housing Quality Network.

This is a useful summary of the recent activity and decisions to be made from the CIH.

What you need to know about the proposal to extend the right to buy

“Chris Walker, head of housing and planning at Policy Exchange, said nationalisation of housing associations followed by a state sell-off into the private sector could become “a serious option” if the Office for National Statistics (ONS) decides to reclassify housing associations as public bodies.

Inside Housing revealed last week the ONS has begun reviewing its classification of housing associations as private bodies, following government policy changes.

Mr Walker said: “Obviously if that [reclassification] were to happen, the government will be keen to get that debt off their books as quickly as possible.“There’s a lot of talk about selling off assets to the private sector – that could become a serious option.

“The government does not want to be in a position where it is keeping that debt on its balance sheet. If it is relaxed, it must feel it has got potential to move that money off the balance sheet, which suggests it has got a plan.”

He said a potential sell-off could follow the model used for the re-privatisation of Lloyds Bank – with a dedicated government team responsible for managing the assets and identifying buyers.

Policy Exchange  has developed several housing policies – such as the sell-off of high-value council homes – which have been adopted by government. Its former head of housing, Alex Morton, now works on housing policy for Number 10. Mr Cameron last week described housing associations as “part of the public sector” at Prime Minister’s Questions.

Paul Doe, chief executive of Shepherds Bush Housing and a board member at Placeshapers – which represents more than 100 social landlords – said: “We are and always have been independent, and in many cases charitable organisations, and we would be very concerned about any change in that status.

“The consequences [of privatisation] have not been thought through and are not fully understood.”

The Treasury announced that Hualing Industry and Trade Group will become an investor in the schemes led by the Scarborough Group worth a total of £1.2bn.

The deal is a result of a delegation sent to the Xinjiang region led by chancellor George Osborne and including Liverpool mayor Joe Anderson and leaders of Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds city councils.

According to Inside Housing:

“The Scarborough Group projects include Middlewood Locks in Salford, worth around £730m and incorporating a total of 2,000 residential units.

It also includes a £400m mixed-use scheme at Thorpe Park in Leeds, the first phase of which is looking to deliver 300 new homes. Scarborough Group says it has the potential to unlock the construction of 7,000 homes in total.

The third scheme in Sheffield concerns commercial and office development.

The Treasury said the three projects are “expected to create 18,000 jobs and enable the delivery of 10,000 much-needed new homes, helping to build the Northern Powerhouse”.

Mr Osborne said: “We are building an ever closer relationship with China – it’s a partnership that is set to unleash growth and help regions like Xinjiang where we know investment can make a real difference, as well as unleash new growth back home, in places like our own Northern Powerhouse.” “

Statistics are in the news for the housing sector at the moment, not for their own sake, but because of their significance to the housing sector’s continued degree of independence from state control, influence and even ownership.

Here is some advice from our friends at Antohiny Collins Solicitors:

“The aim is to bring more transparency into the merger process and to ensure boards are focused on the interests of their organisation when taking decisions.

The NHF has set up a group of landlords to look at ways in which the scheme could work. The group will have its first meeting next week.

Sector figures said a code could combat perceptions that some mergers are driven by considerations such as chief executive retirement dates, as opposed to what is in the best interests of tenants and associations..

The move follows a speech by Julian Ashby, director of regulation at the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA), in May, in which he suggested the sector adopt a ‘city-style’ takeover code.  Under this code, companies make an offer in writing and set out the potential benefits. The board receiving the offer must act in the interests of the company and address the stated benefits by accepting or rejecting within a specific timeframe.

Clare Miller, group director of governance and compliance at Affinity Sutton, is sitting on the steering group. She said that following a code would be a “good discipline for the sector”. She said: “It would show we are serious about value for money and efficiency – sometimes that is doubted.”

The steering group will look at how applicable a City-style code would be for the housing sector.

There have been 89 mergers, amalgamations or transfer of engagements in the sector since 2011, according to the HCA. However, the number of sector mergers is widely expected to increase as landlords seek efficiencies to cope with the four-year 1% social housing rent cut.

The principle of a code has been welcomed by sector figures. David Montague, chief executive of L&Q, said: “It is likely that we will see further consolidation over the coming years; it should be done in a transparent and orderly way.”

James Tickell, partner at consultancy Campbell Tickell, which advises on mergers, said: “The code should help boards to focus first on the interests of their tenants and the organisation, rather than getting into the detail of their own positions and those of the executives.”

The NHF has also commissioned consultancy Savills to do some work on producing merger guidance.The NHF declined to comment on the merger code plans.”

From 1 October 2015 the Deregulation Act 2015, together with related regulations bring in a raft of changes for housing providers. These include tenancy deposit protection, prohibiting retaliatory eviction by private landlords and significant changes to the procedures and requirements for s.21 notices. Don’t get caught out! Take note of the changes below.

Thanks to our friends at Anthony Collins Solictors for this god advice:

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has ordered the government to provide figures on sale proceeds and the number of homes built to assess whether the scheme is value for money for the taxpayer.

It stated the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) had no way of knowing whether the programme was successful because it had not recorded this information.

Committee chair Meg Hillier said the government’s approach had been “wishful thinking dressed up as public policy”.

“It has no record of sale proceeds, nor their value in relation to prevailing market prices,” she explained.

“The government cannot tell us how many of these homes now exist – or will ever exist.

“Instead it appears simply to have hoped huge numbers of houses would spring up across the country.”

In 2011, former housing minister Grant Shapps set a target to sell off enough public land to build100,000 homes.

In March this year, communities secretary Greg Clark claimed the target had been surpassed and set a new target of land for 150,000 homes by 2020.

The Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) was responsible for collating data for the programme and also acted as the property disposal agency for the DCLG.

The committee called on the DCLG and the Homes and Communities Agency to take account of sales proceeds and progress on the construction of new homes when measuring the new target. It also said the number of affordable homes should be recorded.

A DCLG spokesperson said: “Previous governments allowed valuable brownfield land to go unused while housebuilding levels crashed to their lowest levels since the 1920s.

“We have got the country building again and are releasing surplus government land to protect taxpayers from paying for their upkeep and build the homes families need.

“This has released enough land to build 109,000 new homes and we now want to go further and faster with land sales for a further 150,000 homes by 2020, helping people achieve their dream of homeownership.”

An HCA spokesperson said: “We will continue to deliver on government’s housing ambitions including bringing more people in to home ownership.

“We exceeded our targets to release land for homes in the last programme and will work with government to deliver under the new programme taking account of any lessons from the Public Accounts Committee report.”

Here is the full speech from the NHf conference in Biringham last week which gives HAs up to Friday to sign up to RTB voluntarily:

“If we think about housing and ask ourselves the fundamental questions, what do people really want?
Food, a home, warmth and love.

Take any one of these away and you grotesequely diminish a life’s potential for joy. Take shelter away and you make the attainment of the other three necesseties that much harder to achieve.

One of the reasons I was so keen to spend time with you in Birmingham yesterday was because what you do matters. And I was also proud of my time on the board of a housing association and seperately as the trustee of a hostel.

Proud because we did the vital job of providing those roofs to cover people’s heads. Proud too because through the dedication, the skill and the dedication of staff we gave hundreds of people what they need to achieve the future that they wanted but which at times seemed far out of reach.

So housing is special because it is so vital, but also because its so personal every home you build or evrey home you manage changes the lives of the people who live in it. I bet you, like me, can picture the course of your lives through the homes that you have lived in.

For me it was a bungalow and a garden in Middlesbrough where I spent all of my childhood. Then the thrill of that first room of my own, Virginia Woolf was right about that at least, at university. The musty smell, the crappy furniture we’ve all been there, the creeping awareness that adulthood was coming to be associated with that moment. And then after that the fun and the diplomatic challenges in a succession of flat shares post university.

The flat that I carried my first child home to, and now my family home in Kent, a home that begins again that cycle for my own children.

And it’s true for everyone. For good and sometimes for bad.

And so its a big responsibility to be the people, as we all are in this room, who can shape those memories and to a great measure those lives.

So that’s why I, just like you am so determined to build more and better homes. Almost all of us in this hall today are fortunate enough to live in our homes. I say fortunate not just because of the economic security a home will provide, your home is a refuge against everything the world can throw your way. So we have a duty to provide a home everyone can enjoy.

And that duty becomes an imperative when fewer and fewer people can share what our generation has taken for granted. The reason for this is well known and simple. We have been building too few homes. Far too few. For far too long.

There are over 200,000 households a year being formed. Households should have kept pace with that. Yet in recent memory house building suffered a cardiac arrest. In the last quarter of 2008, housebuilding was 20,000 homes away from stopping altogether.

Since then, the patient has been revived. But when commercial developers sat on their hands and their landbanks, had it not been for the contribution made by housing associations, I’m the first to acknowledge the situation would have been much worse.

Now the [National Planning Policy Framework] is having a positive effect, just as we intended. Planning permissions are up by over a third since it was adopted. On average more homes are being built in Britain – this is what we argued during that big debate, with the support of the federation, and it’s come to pass.

But it’s not enough. Last year about 131,000 new homes were completed. Way short of the 200,000 plus that we need each year to house our fellow citizens. This must change. And I regard that as a personal responsibility.

I want to see a million homes built during in the next five years, and then I want more. We must tackle the housing deficit with the same determination with which we are expunging the financial deficit. The long term economic plan is important, but the long term housing plan is vital too.

It is not just the number of new homes that has fallen way short of what’s needed. Twenty five years ago 85% of the population said they wanted it. Five years ago, it was 86%. And yet the aspiration and the reality of home ownership has drifted apart.

In 2003 71% of people in this country achieved this ambition. Yet over the following decade that had fallen to 63%. Between 1996 and 2012 the number of 20 to 34 year olds living with their parents had increased by two thirds of a million. We have all heard of the bank of mum and dad, well increasinly young people have had to rely on the hotel of mum and dad too.

And our government is determined to ensure home ownership is once again seen as a reasonable aspiration for working people. So as with house building we have made some important progress. The number of first time buyers is at a seven year high. And through policies like Help to Buy 200,000 people were assisted to buy their home during the last Parliament.

But as with housebuilding we have much further to go and I want to hold out just the same aspiration to own their own home to the next generation as to our generation. And that includes housing association tenants.

Your tenants share the same hopes and dreams as everyone else. They live in the same towns, their children go to the same schools, they have the same ambitions themselves.

They should have the same opportunity, if they want it, to own their own home. Andthere is no reason at all why signing a tenancy agreement with a housing association should mean signing away your aspiration to own your own home.

That’s why extending the Right to Buy to housing association tenants was such a big part of our election manifesto. So big in fact it was chosen to launch the manifesto itself. Now that manifesto has been endorsed by a clear majority in the polls and we will waste no time in discharging our promises. And to do so alongside a massive programme of house building such has not been seen in this country since the days of Macmillan.

And that is what we will do during the years ahead of us. It is a big moment for our country and a point of decision for this sector.

I’ll be completely candid, there are some who say that to achieve the transformation we need requires a fresh start – that the housing association sector has taken us so far but might not be the right partner for the future.

That the energy and appetite for rapid and creative development is not what it was. That in truth the sector’s heart is in developing properties for rent, and little zeal for developing homes for home ownership.

That a once insurgent movement has become staid – with development too low and executive salaries too high.

That for the transformation in housing we seek we should look elsewhere. To councils through the devolution agenda, to private developers, to our own agencies in government and to new entities.

But there is another view: that this is a sector that has scored big successes over many years. That can be agile and adaptable to the changing opportunities and requirements of our nation. A sector that has always been respectful of the mandate of that successive governments have had.

That deep in the DNA of this sector is an instinct to empower and give opportunities to people, going beyond the strict business of building and renting out homes. And that the devolution agenda, putting local communities in the driving seat is an unmissable opportunity for associations who know their communities inside out often better than most other people in those communities.

A view that this is a sector which is a standing army of expertise, motivation and experience, capable of building hundreds of thousands of new homes that our country so desperately needs.

So two contrasting views: Be content with the achievements of the past – or look to build and to own a new future.

And the choice between them will determine the very future of the housing association movement.

My unambiguos opinion is that this sector’s future lies with the second option. You are already helping to reverse recent history, helping to build more homes than we have done for years. And of course you helped build 80,000 shared ownership homes over the last decade.

Now I want you to expand the mission by expanding the opportunities of home ownership even quicker. But in no way would such an expansion contradict your important historical mission.

Let me explain why. David Orr and I have spent the summer working together on a proposal that he makes for a big place for this sector in the future of government. At its heart is a joint commitment to build more homes than we have built for decades. And it’s based on a recognition that you are voluntary organisations perfectly capable of working with me and with Brandon Lewis my housing minister and the government as willing partners rather than requiring legislative compulsion.

So David’s proposal is in three parts:

The first is that the opportunity of extending the Right to Buy will be embraced voluntarily in keeping with the housing association tradtion to empower and meet the aspiration of tenants.

Associations would give the chance to your tenants, for anyone who wishes to take it, the chance to own your own home. In other words all 2.3m tenants with the same degree of financial help through discounts that are available to council tenants.

In every case the tenant would have the chance if they want to achieve their goal. The housing association would have the chance to build a new property, expanding the housing association sector.

The presumption would be that most people would have the chance to buy the home that they live in. But just as with the council Right to Buy sometimes there may be good reason why that’s not in everyone’s interest: In a rural area where planning restrictions mean replacements simply can’t be built for example, where the property is part of a wider service that’s been provided such as sheltered accommodation.

In cases like this, the association would have the discretion, if reasonable in the spirit of the scheme to offer an alternative home, and the tenant would have the option to take their discount to the other property.
Each property sold will have the discount refunded by the government at open market level, so that no one is out of pocket.

And the second part of David’s proposal is that the sector would have a guaranteed place as a major force in building new homes. Every home sold will trigger a new home built by a housing association on a one for one basis. For every tenant who exercises the Right to Buy housing stock will rise by one.

Releasing equity in people’s homes to build new homes that otherwise couldn’t be supplied will be one of the principle benefits of the Right to Buy.

Under David’s proposals, it will be housing associations rather than alternative partners of government who will build hundreds of thousands of these new homes.

Furthermore we want these homes to be built as quickly as possible. As you know, councils have three years to build a new property whent the Right to Buy is exercised. I want to speed that up. The Nat Fed has challenged us to simplify the regulatory hurdles so that new homes can be built within two years. I will rise to that challenge that has been set – to bring forward new land for development, including public land. To allow a broader range of new properties, including starter homes and shared ownership.

And where the Right to Buy is exercised in an association that is not developing new homes, the proposal is that the Nat Fed would help match them with an organisation that is keen.

The third part of David’s proposed agreement would be to make an historic change.

Rightly or wrongly, the housing association movement has not been principally associated with increasing home ownership. As most of us know in this room, that is very unfair.

Most of you in this room have been restrained by regulation, by public policy and by your public sector partners.

And yet even with these restraints you have found ways to be inventive enough to allow people who want to achieve their aspirations through such things as flexible tenancies.

And so I want to work with you to provide the means for every tenant who wants to – new or existing – to acquire a stake in a home that can increase over time.

I want to follow the same golden principle that applies to the Right to Buy, namely that where a financial contribution is inejected by tenants all of it should be used to build new homes.

Taken together, this is a proposal which offers the chance of a new partnership between housing associations and the government. It’s one that would respect the independence and the voluntary ethos of the sector. And it provides for both for the extension of the Right and for other ownership opportunities, and critically for the expansion of home building.

It is a proposal that if it were put to the government by the whole sector and agreed it would make it unecessary to take legal measures to extend the Right to Buy.

But of course, that is for you collectively to decide.”

A report by Core Cities UK argued the government’s Comprehensive Spending Review, scheduled for 25 November, should allow devolved areas to gain control over a “single-pot” infrastructure investment fund for housing.

TThe report was reviewed by Inside Housing who commented:

The report said: “Greater local flexibility to pool housing funds and apply them to distinctive local need will get better results. In addition it called for a removal of Housing Revenue Account (HRA) caps and greater incentives to develop brownfield sites in order to “capture uplifts in land values”.

It also warned that proposals on extending Right to Buy (RTB) to housing associations, paid in part by forcing councils to sell off their high-value properties, and a 1% cut in social rents would “limit cities’ ability to invest and deliver”.

Speaking at an event to launch the report, Nottingham City Council leader Jon Collins – who is also vice chair for growth at Core Cities UK – said: “Through combined authorities working together, we are far better able to manage housing targets and land delivery than we can individually.

“To be able to work collectively and potentially do some ‘horse trading’ to encourage housing where it’s wanted is a real advantage.

“Through devolution deals, if there’s the opportunity to get hold of some of the funding the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) still has, and to coordinate development on the fragmented public estate, is also potentially a huge advantage in the short-term.”

The report also called for a review into the New Homes Bonus, which it said was benefitting England’s least deprived councils more than the most deprived.

Local authorities were given a deadline of 4 September to submit bids for combined authority status and devolution plans, in order to feed into the Comprehensive Spending Review.

A number of devolution bids have asked for control over HCA funds and existing Right to Buy receipts, as well as a lift on HRA caps.

The Department for Communities and Local Government has now published a list of 38 areas asking for devolved powers.

Communities secretary Greg Clark said: “The sheer volume of bids we’ve received, from cities and counties, demonstrates how local leaders are embracing this opportunity to have a direct hand in shaping the future of their area, whether in skills, transport, housing or healthcare.”

*in devolved nations”