Why wait for an inspector to tell you which areas of your RSL should be improved? A peer review could give you the answers you need. Joanne Drew and Ross Fraser report on how it helped West Kent.
Any successful organisation on the brink of change or major growth needs to ask itself if it is ready for all that this will involve. Can it ensure that performance will not suffer? Peer review provides a mirror in which such organisations can view their effectiveness.

The Improvement and Development Agency has used peer review 122 times in local government as part of the process of preparing councils for comprehensive performance assessments, but it is also suitable for housing associations. Performance specialist Housemark is working with the agency to develop a housing service module of IDeA's corporate peer review, and with the National Housing Federation on a pilot peer review scheme for associations.

West Kent Housing Association, however, has already become the first registered social landlord to carry out such a review, with Housemark's help.

Why use peer review?
West Kent is on the doorstep of two of the Communities Plan growth areas – the Thames Gateway and Ashford – and has been identified as a preferred partner in the development of the former, so it has numerous opportunities. Barbara Thorndick, chief executive of West Kent, is well aware of the responsibility this brings. "Being responsive to customers is central to our business and needs to remain so if we are to meet the challenges of playing a leading role in the development of new, thriving communities," she says. "Trying to be excellent in all that we do is about hitting moving targets, hence the need for continuous improvement."

Housemark's Excellent Housing Association Benchmark provides a picture of what an efficient housing association should look like, focusing on 16 key areas (see "What happens during a review?", right). It concentrates on the aspects of an organisation that stand behind service delivery and ensure continuous improvement. It is, however, firmly linked to the Housing Corporation's regulatory code and the expectations arising from the NHF's In Business for Neighbourhoods initiative, to which West Kent has signed up.

The key recommendations from West Kent's review were:

  • there is a need for the association to manage change more proactively and to ensure that staff have adequate support through a period of substantial change
  • the association could make better efforts to ensure that the wider public knows more about its successes
  • the association needs some standard approaches to procurement and project management to ensure that it achieves best value.

West Kent must now consider its priorities for action. From the review, the RSL has identified opportunities to:

  • build on its strength of community and resident involvement to develop services via its new community development organisation, West Kent Extra
  • fundamentally review its organisational development function, bringing an emphasis on change management. The organisation it is likely to become will be radically different from the one it is today, so extra investment in this area will be crucial
  • introduce a new housing management information system that will incorporate the latest tools to deliver effective performance management.

The board and senior managers recently had joint training on managing change. West Kent has employed a consultant to look at how it carries out best-value reviews and has put together a strategy and checklist so they are carried out consistently in the future.

The process of peer review gave West Kent a very positive means of highlighting its successes and learning about its priorities for future development. West Kent will be putting its learning to work by taking part in a further pilot review using the benchmark. It will supply a peer as part of the team to review RB Housing, the post-transfer association in Reigate and Banstead in Surrey. West Kent has also invited the Housemark peer review team to come back in a year's time to assess its progress.

What happens during a review?

The Housemark Excellent Housing Association Benchmark looks at 16 core competencies in three key areas:
  • Governance and leadership – governance, vision and strategy, empowerment, managing change, innovation and creativity, working with others
  • Community engagement – resident and community focus, communication with residents and the community, resident consultation and participation, empowering the community
  • Performance management – planning and review, managing people’s contributions, setting and achieving standards for products and services, project management and procurement, financial and asset management, risk management.
In West Kent’s case, the review was undertaken by three people over three days: Mandy Warner, Housemark’s business services director, Sheila Lewis from Volanti Consulting and Helen Cope, associate consultant for Housemark and a former chief executive of East Thames Housing Group. West Kent provided the review team with a number of documents in advance, including business plans and key policies. The review team interviewed staff, asking questions tailored to individuals, depending on their department and position. They focused on the association’s vision, ability to manage change, how it plans for the future, how it communicates with staff, tenants and stakeholders. The team then put everything they had learned into a 14-page report, with an assessment of current competence and recommendations for improvements.

Source

Housing Today

Postscript

Joanne Drew is director of housing and communities at West Kent Housing Association. Ross Fraser is chief executive of Housemark.

The full findings of the review are available on West Kent's website. For more information on the benchmark and peer review process, contact Mandy Warner, business services director at Housemark, on 02476 460500 or email mandy.warner@housemark.co.uk