Professionalisation in social housing: the new reform explained
A new law will require managers and executives at social landlords to obtain professional qualifications. Peter Apps asks why the law is being introduced and what it will mean for housing association and local authority landlords
The news that senior social housing managers and executives will be required to obtain specific qualifications is the biggest reform to professional standards in the sector’s history.
The changes will be introduced via an amendment to the Social Housing (Regulation) Bill, and will apply to executive-level staff (who will require a Level 5 qualification) and managers (who will require a Level 4).
Managers are to be defined by reference to criteria published by the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IATE).
This definition casts a wide net (see box below), but will catch those responsible for the management and delivery of housing and property-related services within their business. This will include neighbourhood housing managers, void managers and asset managers, among several other roles.
The changes will mean about 25,000 housing staff going back to college, and change the way staff are trained and recruited in the social housing sector for good.
So why is the government taking this step? And what will it mean for social housing?
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The Social Housing (Regulation) Bill is, primarily, a response to the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017 and concerns that the building was not adequately managed by its landlord, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC), and its management body, the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO). Grenfell United, the group of bereaved and survivors, have pushed for professionalisation to form part of the bill for years.
“Our experience at KCTMO was that this organisation had no interest in having professional staff,” says Eddie Daffarn, a former resident of the tower and a Grenfell United member.
“Being on the receiving end of that was a very bruising, humiliating experience. That’s why it’s important that the sector encourages people who are interested in gaining a qualification and developing professional skills to work in this space.
“In that role you have the capacity to make hundreds of people’s lives a misery, and the very least we should ask for is that the people who do it are qualified.”
The group, which has been supported in lobbying for the change by Shelter and other campaigners, has been repeatedly knocked back on this point.
As recently as October last year, the government was promising only to make it a legal requirement for landlords to ensure staff have the right skills, experience and knowledge, but to leave it up to providers to decide what that meant.
But then came the inquest into the death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak in a housing association home in Rochdale; the verdict that his death was caused by serious damp and mould in his home which went unaddressed for two years; and a significant hardening of the rhetoric from Michael Gove, the housing secretary, towards the sector.
This, of course, follows two years of revelations about poor repairs performance, and an increasingly active Housing Ombudsman publicising the failures it investigates.
Grenfell United continually pushed Mr Gove to go further, and would have vocally criticised the bill if it saw it as too weak. The housing secretary, who has made no secret of his desire to shake things up in the sector, relented and told civil servants to introduce the requirements
“At every stage of this we were telling the government to think of the example of social work, teaching and nursing – similar vocational professions. If you say people who work in social housing don’t need a qualification, what are you saying about the people who live in social housing?”
Mr Daffarn, a qualified mental health nurse, explains that his professional background influenced his belief that professionalisation was important for social housing.
“At every stage of this we were telling the government to think of the example of social work, teaching and nursing – similar vocational professions. If you say people who work in social housing don’t need a qualification, what are you saying about the people who live in social housing?” he says.
Kwajo Tweneboa, a Clarion resident who has gained a platform by raising concerns about poor conditions in social housing, also welcomed the move. “Pleased with this move,” he tweeted. “This should’ve been a requirement 40 years ago. The lack of professionalism across the sector, top to bottom, really frustrated me.”
The legislation will introduce a requirement for qualifications, but will not require registration with a professional body, as is the case for solicitors or medical professionals, who can be struck off or suspended for misconduct.
“The regime applies to the organisation, not to individuals,” says Gavin Smart, chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH). “It’s the provider’s responsibility to ensure they have staff who are properly qualified.”
As well as being a membership body, the CIH is a training provider, and accredits other organisations to offer the courses housing professionals will now be required to seek.
Inside Housing asked Mr Smart if he thought the issues which hit the headlines in recent years were caused by a lack of training.
“I think what the government is aiming at here is trying to reduce that likelihood by making sure that people in key roles have got the knowledge and the skills that they need to do the job properly and that they’re properly sighted on what the legal requirements are,” he says.
“You can have lots of professional staff who are actually quite brilliant and professional, but if they’re not operating in a culture that supports them to do that, it’s not going to work”
But no one thinks professional training courses will be a complete solution.
Debbie Larner, a consultant focused on professionalisation who helped draft the CIH professional standards, adds: “Fundamentally, I think it’s good to get people to have the right knowledge and skills to do a job. And that is what this is doing, but it does not tackle attitudes and behaviours.
“That has to go back to the culture and values of the organisation. You can have lots of professional staff who are actually quite brilliant and professional, but if they’re not operating in a culture that supports them to do that, it’s not going to work.”
Geeta Nanda, chief executive of Metropolitan Thames Valley and chair of the G15 group, says: “We broadly support the direction of travel here. We have to make sure that the qualifications are appropriate and that they relate to the people who live in our housing.
“But they’re not the root cause of the problems we have seen recently. Dealing with overcrowding [and] the need for more investment in housing is just as important and therefore it’s got to be seen in that broader context if we’re asking whether or not this will solve the problems.”
Who will need the new housing qualifications?
An amendment to the housing bill will require a foundation degree or Level 5 qualification for senior housing executives, and a Level 4 qualification for senior housing managers.
A senior housing executive is defined an employee or officer of the registered provider who has responsibility for the day-to-day management of the provision of services and is part of the provider’s senior management.
For senior housing managers, the amendment refers to a statutory definition of ‘senior housing and property managers’ that is published by the IATE.
This definition, written with the assistance of several social landlords, lists the following job titles as examples of the role:
- Neighbourhood housing manager
- Neighbourhood investment manager
- Property manager
- Voids and lettings manager
- Assets manager
- Incomes manager
- Resident involvement manager
- Supported housing manager
- Leasehold manager
It added: “The senior housing and property management occupation in both social and private housing sectors is responsible for the management and delivery of housing and property-related services within their business and service area(s). The role involves the management of resources with delegated authority to deliver the business objectives. The work must comply with contractual, statutory and legal regulations.
“The senior housing and property manager manages a specific function and associated team(s) while working with the wider organisation, team, communities and external partners.”
Once the requirements are in force, there will be specified time limits within which relevant staff must enrol on and complete qualifications.
What about the timelines? The government has not said when this requirement will be introduced, but has committed to consulting with the sector over an appropriate transition period before it applies.
Part of this is to build up the capacity to do the training. Ms Nanda estimates that only around 40 people out of her staff of more than 2,000 currently have the relevant qualifications, and a “substantial proportion” of her managers will need to take a course.
At the CIH, 350 people are currently taking the Level 4 qualification and 150 the Level 5 each year. It is not the only organisation which offers this training, but it is the major one.
Universities have generally stepped back from offering housing courses and the training landscape is not yet ready for the number of people who will need to do these courses.
This means the capacity for this big training requirement must be built up.
It will also need to be planned carefully. There will be a huge spike in demand as current staff all go through the system at once, which will then level off rapidly.
“There are probably people who may have done many jobs over a period of time who will not want to go back and do the qualification at this stage”
As Ms Nanda says, organisations and individuals also need time to figure out when and how they will do the training – and whether they want to.
“There are probably people who may have done many jobs over a period of time who will not want to go back and do the qualification at this stage,” she says.
Ms Larner adds: “You’ve got to be looking at a transition period of at least five years.”
For those who do go back to college, what will they learn? “Some of it is technical knowledge, some of it is a bit more ‘What does best practice look like’,” says Mr Smart.
Information on the IATE website about the Level 4 qualification describes specific areas of knowledge (such as the legal and regulatory context), skills (such as customer service and communication) and behaviours (such as adaptability and customer care).
Mr Smart adds that the CIH will look to design ways that existing knowledge can be taken into account to shorten the study period for those who have already worked in the sector for years.
What do the housing qualifications consist of?
The mandatory modules for a CIH qualification of Level 4 and Level 5 are:
CIH Level 4 Certificate in Housing: financing for housing, housing law, housing policy and professional practice skills for housing.
CIH Level 5 Diploma in Housing: ethical practice in housing, leadership and management in housing, strategic and business planning for housing, housing in context and managing relationships in housing.
What about cost? The CIH charges £2,250 for a Level 4 course and £2,880 for a Level 5. For the sector, this is a training requirement of around £60m, without accounting for the time staff will be away to do the training.
Local authorities will be assessed for new burdens funding, but housing associations will fund it themselves.
These are not vast sums when spread across the sector, but they do come at a time of financial stress. Housing associations are pushing for a funded Decent Homes Programme and more money towards decarbonisation. “It really depends on what support we get for our other priorities as well,” says Ms Nanda, when asked about the financial burden.
Could an unintended consequence be that recruitment from outside the sector will become harder? “We should be trying to get people in from the wider economy, with experience in customer insight, digitisation, use of data to predict [or] highlight problems,” says one sector source.
“It might make it harder to recruit people with customer service skills from other sectors. If that happens, we will go backwards, not forwards.”
“I think it’s a double-edged sword,” says Ms Nanda. “There will also be some people who are going to feel like, ‘This is a professional career and I’m doing good qualifications and I have a real sense of pride in putting this on a more professional footing’.”
The law being introduced only applies to England, and there are no equivalent requirements in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. But that may change.
“We really believe this bill now has the chance to make things better for people who live in social housing. We don’t want to be remembered for how we were treated, but for the change we helped bring about”
“One of the fascinating things about policy in the UK is the… move across borders. So we know that governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will be looking at this and saying ‘Does this suggest that we should change our approach?’,” says Mr Smart.
“In Scotland, it is worth noting that there are already mandatory qualification requirements for letting agents. They’ve done an evaluation of that policy, and found it to be highly successful. One of the things that evaluation [looked at is] whether this kind of approach might work in related sectors.”
Greater regulatory control heightens the risk of housing association being added to the national balance sheet, as was the case in 2015, resulting in a deregulatory package to get them off again.
“Someone needs to look at the provisions of the bill in the round and work through the potential impact on classification. On the face of it, we could be heading close to the edge of the cliff again,” says one sector source.
However, the reform offers the opportunity for change and for pride and professionalism to take centre stage in social housing management.
“I know that opinion will be divided in the sector about it,” says one source. “But I actually think, probably in five years’ time, we might all look back and say ‘What was all the fuss about’?”
Mr Daffarn concludes: “We really believe this bill now has the chance to make things better for people who live in social housing. We don’t want to be remembered for how we were treated, but for the change we helped bring about.”
