Two more associations follow fashion for selling their expertise

Waterloo Housing Association is in talks with Solihull Community Housing about acting as developer for the arm’s-length management organisation.

The talks follow the ALMO’s two-star inspection result, published by the Audit Commission yesterday. The rating gives it access to £16.7m of extra funding to March 2006, with a further £46.6m potentially available.

A source close to Waterloo said Solihull could work in partnership with the housing association to build new housing.

Matt Cooney, chief executive of Solihull Community Housing, said: “At the moment our priority is decent homes. In the future we intend to explore the possibilities of developing social housing but we have no proposals at the moment.”

Meanwhile, Whitefriars Housing Group’s consultancy service, which provides training and development services to ALMOs and housing associations, has struck a deal with ALMO Your Homes Newcastle to collect employment and demographic data for the Newcastle area.

Neville Wells, regeneration manager at Whitefriars, said: “We’re testing contractors’ and stakeholders’ views on the local labour market and coming up with recommendations for training initiatives, as well as community engagement.”

Whitefriars has also provided similar services for Solihull Community Housing and for Stockton’s ALMO Tristar Homes.

Wells added: “We’re passing on the experience Whitefriars has had – we’re ahead of the game on issues such as community engagement.”

Housing associations and ALMOs are increasingly looking to sell services in the hope of boosting revenue. ALMO Sheffield Homes has announced it is looking to handle tenant arrears for other organisations, while housing association Derwent Living has held talks with ALMO Derby Homes about becoming its developer (HT 7 January, page 12).

Ian Keys, partnership director for consultancy Pinnacle Housing, said the trend for housing organisations to sell services to one another or buy services jointly was growing.

He said: “Some housing associations have a size problem in that they are not big enough to recruit specialists. If an association can’t afford to recruit a surveyor, for example, it could join with others on recruitment in order to get a better quality member of staff at a more affordable price.”