Setting a new standard

When Amicus Horizon was placed under supervision by the social housing regulator it was a shock to the organisation. It was put under the watch of the Housing Corporation in March 2007 because of the poor performance of one of its subsidiaries, South London Family Housing Association, and the regulator’s related concerns about the governance of the group.

After the supervision was lifted in 2009, the group began a shake-up of its structure and performance.

At the same time as Amicus Horizon, which owns and manages more than 28,000 homes across London and the south east, was implementing its governance changes, the TSA developed its system of co-regulation under which social landlords are becoming the subject of self-regulation, with tenants holding them to account and shaping services.

So when the TSA asked for landlords to bid to become co-regulatory champions, the association decided to put itself forward. The 10 champions - Amicus Horizon, Family Housing Association, New Charter Housing Trust, Community Gateway Association, Salix Homes, Helena Partnerships, Wirral Partnerships, Wherry Housing Association, The Riverside Group and Soha Housing - received one-off grants of £2,000 to £3,000 in March to demonstrate co-regulation in practice.

Sharing expertise

Amicus Horizon will match its £3,000 grant from the TSA with its own money to spend on a series of events, held between June and September this year, to share its experience of co-regulation with other housing associations and tenants.

Previously, the organisation had boards for each of its seven subsidiary housing associations. These subsidiaries have now merged and Amicus Horizon has its main board of eight independent members and four residents. It also has nine area panels, and each of these has two representatives on the association’s residents’ council.

Broadly speaking, the residents’ council deals with group-wide strategy - no policy goes before the group board until the council has approved it - and the area panels deal with issues and policies affecting their locality.

Area panels involve the most senior local staff member, the area manager, meeting with eight resident and four independent members. Each panel is paired with a member of the group board.

The structure was designed by a resident board member group - made up of members nominated from the boards of the seven subsidiaries - which worked with staff and management for about a year to design a new structure (see graphic, below).

‘[The organisation] was clear it wanted residents to have a voice locally and a way of escalating issues up the structure,’ says David Newsome, resident empowerment manager at Amicus Horizon. ‘It set the tone for residents and staff working together from the off,’ he says. ‘I think that is the biggest difference between how we do it and how others do it.’

Contributing ideas

So far the residents’ council has helped write the group’s communications, resident involvement, and community development strategies.

The area panels have helped create between six and 10 local offers - performance standards set by tenants for their landlord, which were published last month and come into force this month - apart from the offer concerning repairs, which is being piloted this month with the intention of being of being rolled out later.

These offers are linked to the six regulatory themes covered in the TSA’s regulatory framework for England, they also include policies relating to evictions, complaints and pets. Each of the panels has £20,000 per year for residents to improve to their local area.

Now all complaints are handled within the 10-day target compared with 75 per cent two years ago. Last month the group recorded 92 per cent satisfaction with complaints against 46 per cent in April 2010 before the new procedures came in. One of the group’s local offers published in March, developed by a project group of residents and staff after canvassing 15 per cent of residents, aimed to set faster response times for repairs. It will be implemented this summer.

Measuring effort

Amicus Horizon will quantify how much time staff spent on creating and supporting the new structure as part of its annual governance review, which is currently under way and will be presented to the organisation’s board in May.

Surveys carried out for the review have found that the changes are already starting to have a positive effect: 77 per cent of residents were satisfied with the area panel structure and 89 per cent thought their views were taken into account.

New policies have also had an impact. A new complaints procedure, designed by a specially set up group of residents and staff called the Complaints Task Group means grievances are dealt with by the staff member who takes the call.

The group has advice for others who want to follow in its footsteps. Mr Newsome warns that the change was time-consuming. ‘Organisations need to be prepared to put time in but, once you do that, you get better performance and a better product and save time later,’ he says.

At first, the board members were very mistrustful and staff also felt threatened by the restructure, recalls Mr Newsome, but the long period of working together helped to breakdown the barriers.

When the TSA launched co-regulation, providers feared it would be expensive. The only real cost of the governance changes at Amicus Horizon was in employing Mr Newsome, paying him around £38,000 per year. ‘The majority of providers could co-regulate effectively within their existing resident involvement budgets,’ he says. He adds that it is vital to get senior staff involved in designing the restructure. ‘If you do not get that level of buy-in, you won’t get massive change or culture change.’

The group is likely to make further tweaks to the structure as part of the governance review, such as giving residents more feedback from their area panels and clarifying the separation of issues covered by the panels and the residents’ council.

It is important the local panels retain their local focus, and do not spend too much time concentrating on organisation-wide strategy, and also that the residents’ councils focus on overall governance rather than problems specific to their own areas.

Beth Williams is a tenant member of the east Kent area panel and the residents’ council and worked on the local offers. ‘It is real resident influence, in my opinion,’ she says. ‘We are getting a chance to input at every level.’

Ironically, without being placed under supervision, it’s unlikely the association would have made the change which got it co-regulatory champion status, says Mr Newsome. ‘Supervision was a shock, but the results were great.’

How Amicus Horizon’s new and improved governance structure looks