14 December 2023

Reassessing housing management

 

By Lisa Birchall

NFA Lead Policy Officer

Many local authorities and ALMOs have been reassessing the full range of their housing management work over the last few years, prompted by the combined influence of the Social Housing White Paper, the work of the Housing Ombudsman and the advent of the Social Housing (Regulation) Act.

So local authority membership bodies – our own NFA, alongside the Local Government Association (LGA), Association of Retained Council Housing (ARCH) and Councils with ALMOs Group (CWAG) – have very much welcomed the opportunity created by the Better Social Housing Review to collaborate across the whole housing sector, and it was interesting to see yesterday’s updates on progress so far from the CIH and National Housing Federation. 

Our context is of course a little different to that of housing associations, with oversight of the quality of our homes and services principally in the hands of each community’s elected representatives. Even so, the work of the Better Social Housing panel and its findings have been fully supported by local authorities and their ALMOs, and they are reviewing their approaches to a range of housing management issues.

Stock condition, the management of damp and mould, effective data and evidence collection and, vitally important in the context of the 2019 Social Housing White Paper, better use of tenants’ voices to shape and monitor services – all are priorities.

And, to take account of its members’ unique operating context, the NFA has developed its own action plan to help members assess themselves again the BSHR panel’s recommendations. Even though the ALMO model comes with a mandatory requirement to take account of tenant voice, and ALMOs should always be  rooted in their communities because they are council-owned organisations, NFA members are taking the opportunity to understand how they currently measure up against the recommendations. The NFA’s support for members includes:

  • Providing cross-membership support and learning through NFA-hosted officer groups covering expertise such as asset management, data collation, tenant engagement, housing management and complaints handling;
  • Publishing good practice guidance, including Excellence in Management and Partnership (updated 2022), and our most recent focus on tenant scrutiny in the ALMO sector, Critical Friends (2023);
  • Working with the NFA’s ’s Tenant Advisory Panel to make sure tenant voice is heard and tenants can feed in learning from first-hand experience.
  • Working with NHF and CIH to share ALMO good practice across the wider social housing sector, particularly in relation to asset management and repairs.
  • Helping to put a clear case to government for giving councils sufficient resources to deliver core housing services, particularly through sustainable Housing Revenue Accounts.

We do not doubt that there is work to be done to improve and innovate, but continuing learning is where ALMOs have always been strong

Alongside the detailed guide to this work offered by the NFA’s own action plan, we are also feeding the ALMO experience and members’ views into two sector-wide initiatives linked to the Better Social Housing Review. We are supporting the NHF’s Knowing our Homes project which aims to establish a shared, standardised approach across the social housing sector for gathering and using information about property condition and residents, so that data from any part of the sector is comparable with the rest. And we are also a partner in the CIH-led Rethinking Repairs initiative to develop and apply new standards defining what an excellent maintenance and repairs process looks like.

As part of our contribution to these two strands of work, the NFA has surveyed its members on the stock and tenant data they hold, and how they plan to use both in the coming years to improve services and operational processes as part of a wider local authority survey. It is reassuring to see the work that members have been doing to make sure their knowledge of the homes they manage is up-to-date and robust, working with tenants to review their services, reviewing governance arrangements, and generally preparing for proactive regulation.

We do not doubt that there is work to be done to improve and innovate, but continuing learning is where ALMOs have always been strong, sharing their experience with each other, openly talking about not only good practice but also the challenges they face, and committed to delivering good quality housing management services. 

This case study from NFA member Barnet Homes is an eloquent illustration of why we believe that ALMOs are very much part of a future in which social housing does indeed become better.

Barnet Homes is part of The Barnet Group, and is the ALMO for Barnet Council managing around 10,000 council homes and 4,000 leasehold properties. Over the past few years, Barnet Homes has done a lot of work to understand its stock and customers, and align that information to its long-term business planning. Work undertaken includes:

  • A 100 per cent stock condition survey over a three-year period, moving to a 25 per cent per annum rolling annual survey approach from 2024. Alongside core Decent Homes and other statutory requirement including HHSRS assessment, the survey gathers information on the remaining life of internal and external components to help shape and inform future planned works programmes. In time, this should reduce demand on the repairs service and enable us to further develop that service for the benefit of Barnet Homes’ residents.
  • Energy efficiency assessments are included in the survey as a starting point to formulate sustainability strategies and energy improvement plans. This information has already enabled us to secure SHDF funding for 249 properties where a ‘fabric first’ package of works is being delivered.
  • Stock condition data is used to predict likely issues, for example all residents that may have some form of damp and mould in their property based on intelligence from the survey have been contacted and encouraged to report any issues.
  • A specialist asset management system (PIMSS) has been implemented which will enable the organisation to obtain and update its stock data from future surveys other sources, including repairs, housing and customer service teams and residents. Ultimately, PIMSS will interface with Barnet Homes’ other database software systems.
  • PIMSS will also be the single source of the truth for compliance related information on our stock with the priority on fire risk assessment and asbestos data ‘going live’ later this year. Reporting our compliance performance will be more robust, in this way, requiring less manual intervention.
  • Barnet Homes has reviewed and strengthened the way that the resident voice is heard at Board level and used to shape decisions. The governance structure includes a Resident Board which ensures that residents can scrutinise and feed their views into the Board. All relevant strategy papers must include a section on what it means for residents and how resident voice was taken into consideration in making the decision.
  • The organisation runs a rolling customer survey that allows almost real-time information to be gathered on the quality of services. This includes TSM data and transactional surveys.

Lisa Birchall has worked on policy for the National Federation of ALMOs since 2017 and has more than a decade of experience in social policy, research and bid roles. 

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