You are viewing 1 of your 1 free articles
Tenants bring real value to the boardroom
In his final piece before his retirement, Richard Peacock reflects on what Soha’s tenant board training sessions have taught him
I really thought my final column for Inside Housing would be a retrospective, in which I wrote about lessons from the past.
It turns out that some lessons are learned from those who are the future. I’ve had a wonderfully rewarding career, having worked in housing since my early 20s.
Of course there are difficult challenges from time to time, but it’s really been an ace job. And some days are fabulous. Today was one of them.
As I get closer to retirement, my last few weeks seem to be speeding up. I have some concerns, of course, at the end of my career.
Handing over the reins is hard. I’m really proud of what tenants and staff have built together at Soha.
“I am sure that the mutual model helps redress the traditional balance of power between landlords and social housing tenants.”
In particular, I think the mutual model is the right one for community benefit companies like Soha and I know it will thrive.
I believe tenants should have more power and I am sure that the mutual model helps redress the traditional balance of power between landlords and social housing tenants.
Last week I watched presentations from five involved tenants who are helping to shape Soha’s membership and who are thinking about applying for board membership.
READ MORE
About a year ago, we nicked the idea from Town & Country Housing of providing a structured training year to help prepare enthusiastic tenants for possible board membership.
I have to pause here and thank the Town & Country team for their generosity in sharing ideas, training and other details.
The presentations from the five Soha tenants were of a high quality and as good as I would expect from any of my managers.
They included impressive self-awareness, a growth in confidence and a sense of direction in what they – individually and as a group – want to achieve.
Perhaps more importantly, they were clear about the importance of behaviours – not just what we do, but how we do it. How we do things is critical to Soha’s ethos as a mutual association.
The lessons learned by our trainee board members seem good lessons for the sector as a whole. Here’s what I took away.
The sector needs to reflect on key values. There’s a lot of operational detail of course, and that’s important.
But we need to keep sight of what we’re here for.
- Diversity is strength. Each of the six presentations reflected on this, in terms of age, culture, experience, disability and more. And each reflected the strength of the individual and the group precisely because of these differences.
- We need to keep providing homes for people who need them. Some truths should be self-evident and a decent home for all is one of them. We must keep returning to the importance of people having a great home.
- We need to understand the relationship between tenants, staff and board. Tenants pay our wages. They should be able to expect excellent services, accountability and an investment in them as individuals and local communities. Of course, there is crossover as some tenants are also members of staff and some are also board members. That seems entirely right, sensible and healthy to me.
- We desperately need more homes and we need them now. But we need them to be affordable, and I mean truly affordable, and we need them to be excellent quality.
- We also need to remember that there are four million existing households living in social housing. We need to engage with them to the fullest extent to benefit from their contribution to providing and managing their homes.
I firmly believe every one of the five tenants who presented to us could be on the board of any housing association and do an excellent job.
I challenge every part of the sector to reflect on the value brought to the boardroom by tenants.
If you really can’t find tenants capable of being board members among the number living in the homes you manage, I suggest you’re not trying hard enough.
Last week has reassured me that we’ve invested in the future and that it is in good hands.
Richard Peacock, chief executive, Soha Housing
