How to get leadership right in a post-coronavirus future

We must work together across the sector: charity, housing association, local authority, ALMO, specialist and generalist.

Each organisation is unique and special, but all have a core common theme: a clear understanding of the essential requirement for quality, secure affordable housing for people to build their life from and the importance of ending homelessness and poverty.

We know that achieving these will support the economy. We need to look at what we know and make our case, for example:

• Prior to COVID-19, more than five million workers in Britain were in low-paid, insecure work and millions of private renters were just one pay cheque away from losing their home. Many of these are the essential workers we all completely rely on in this crisis.
• Before the virus, it was estimated that 1.4 million people over the age of 65 had unmet care needs, often linked to housing conditions and four million people over 65 in the UK lived alone. Research has shown that there is a significant human cost of social isolation and loneliness, including cognitive decline, depression and early death – with lonely people more likely to be admitted to hospital, visit a GP or A&E, and move into residential care. From society’s response during lockdown we know this can be changed.

COVID-19 has highlighted many of the daily challenges faced by the people the sector works with.

Sadly, it has also imposed these on a greater number in our society and people might now realise how many people live with these hardships every day and how precarious their own position may be.

This tragic situation does mean we have an increased chance of being heard and influencing government.

We must evidence how quality, secure affordable housing where it is needed, with long-term funded support, is fundamental to the well-being of society – and consequently underpins the economy.

As a sector, we must make the case for more social housing for rent and flexible tenure products, and we must ask the government to maximise options to enable us to do this.

Bricks and mortar alone are not enough. Building will help to kick-start the economy, but this must go hand in glove with long-term support services. Never more so is the cost of failing to fund adequate support over the long term, to the most vulnerable in society, so abundantly clear.

As individual organisations this requires us to revisit our business plans, stress-test them and work out how we can offer a more flexible tenure from social renting to outright purchase or sale with aligned, tailored support options to change over time, all at the same address.

Is this a challenge to far? I sincerely hope not.

I would open the debate to meeting this challenge by saying our business models can deliver this.

We are predominantly a not-for-profit sector, publicly funded to make a difference, and we need to make sure we do.

If you do what you have always done, you get what you have always got. This may mean for some, if not all, a step change to business leadership and management.

Can we be more rigorous in the use of our resources and be clearer of the impact our services have yielded? How do we continue to use enhanced technology, reduce costs, build and maintain our culture, improve our customer focus and tailor our services? Do we leave too much to staff individual choice? Do we have strong enough eye on real, measurable outcomes for the consumer?

Boards, trustees and councillors are critical. They have to respond effectively to the new environment, review and set a long-term strategy, be clear what outcomes are expected and when, and monitor the delivery of these.

External scrutiny of boards, trustees and councillors needs to focus on strong leadership and governance, using resources wisely and producing the right outcomes for the people to whom we provide homes and services.

Rebecca Rance, vice-chair, Framework Housing Association