Counting house

According to Hays Accountancy Personnel, which put together the latest annual review of accountants' salaries, the housing sector is taking advantage of this parity and increasingly looking outside its boundaries to hire finance experts.

The average salary for directors of finance at large registered social landlords rose 3.9% on last year to hit £65,533. Although regional variations were huge – £34,000 in Northern Ireland compared with £100,000 in central London – it compares well with the average salary of £73,126 for RSL chief executives, as revealed in our 2004 salary survey (HT 5 March, page 26). The 3.9% increase is above inflation, which is 1.4%, and compares with a 4.1% average pay increase across all RSL staff.

Heather Clarke, business manager for Hays, says: "The housing sector is extremely buoyant because of the increasing diversity of associations created from stock transfers, ALMOs and tenant management organisations. That is creating, particularly at a senior level, a significant shortage of candidates and this is reflected in salary."

In central London, the salary offered to a head of finance at a large association has increased from about £45,000 to £55,000 over the past 12 months, Clarke says.

The problem of high demand is exacerbated by an increasing scarcity of qualified accountants over the past five years. Registered social landlords are now advertising for staff in general accountancy magazines and websites as well as outlets specific to RSLs.

The sector does offer attractive perks, though. Pushpa Raguvaran, deputy chief executive and director of finance at Housing 21 in Buckinghamshire, says housing's shorter working hours and caring ethos are appealing. "At a senior level, people are very choosy about where they work and they are drawn to housing associations by altruistic reasons," she says.

RSLs are also more likely to offer home-working, flexitime and shorter hours – 40 hours a week rather than 60.

Orbit Housing Association in Coventry offers flexitime, private healthcare and is accredited as giving "gold standard" support for employees for employees taking the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants' professional exam. Claire Davis, group finance director at Orbit, says it recruits many junior posts from the private sector: "Quite often, small private practices pay less than us, and our package is quite attractive, so once here, they stay."

Meanwhile, at new RSLs, there is the opportunity for senior staff to mould the finance department the way they want it (see "Why accountants go for the sector", below).

In the private sector, a regional finance director in the Midlands makes £80,000. A housing association finance director gets £82,000 in the West Midlands and £62,500 in the East Midlands. Clarke says: "Salaries are fairly comparable at the top of the scale. Public sector salaries are typically a couple of thousand pounds less than the private sector, but the terms and conditions are better."

In junior positions, pay scales are similar to the private sector: a private payroll clerk gets £15,341, compared to £16,067, £15,650 and £15,174 at large, medium and small housing associations (see "Who gets what", below)

However RSLs do pay their finance experts more than councils. The head of finance in a metropolitan borough council gets an average of £49,942, compared to the £65,533 for a director of finance at a large association. Staff at post-transfer landlords tend to stay on these slightly lower pay scales but they often enjoy final-salary pension schemes and flexitime.

Perhaps the most attractive factor, though, is the fact that housing offers a level of job security unknown in the dog-eat-dog business world. "Redundancies are extremely common in commerce and industry," says Clarke. "But it's extremely rare to have redundancies in the housing sector."