Helen White gives a progress report on the work of the Regulatory Board for Wales.
It’s been great to hear lots of positive feedback about the work commissioned by the Regulatory Board to assess the progress being made on the quality of housing association governance.
As a result of this work The Right Stuffwas launched at the CHC governance conference back in March and is now available on the Welsh Government website. I’m thrilled to hear associations are using it as a way of challenging the quality of governance in their own organisations.
I know from personal experience that achieving and maintaining good governance is really difficult. Good governance requires continuous attention. We want our findings to help every housing association to continuously and rigorously consider the quality of their own governance to prompt improvement. Boards need to be confident that the governance structures they have in place provide the right level of assurance about all aspects of delivering an excellent housing service.
One of the opportunities identified during the review was the need for the development and dissemination of cutting edge practice, innovation and expertise. As a result, we are setting up in partnership with Community Housing Cymru, a governance thought leadership group. This group will be key to making sure this vitally important area remains high on the agenda across Wales, providing expertise and challenge to make sure housing association governance continues to improve.
As you know co-regulation is an important part of the Regulatory Framework in Wales. This relies on a good working relationship between the regulator and housing associations. If any regulatory concerns arise there is a requirement for associations to self report these issues. This should be done as soon as the issue is identified. As the chair of a housing association myself I understand things can and do go wrong. When this happens early, proactive and transparent engagement with the regulator is vital.
I am also pleased that the Data Shed project, developed as a result of our review into value for money, will be ‘going live’ soon. This will enable tenants and other stakeholders to access information captured in the global accounts about landlord performance online. The regulation team will be running demonstration workshops at the TPAS conference.
Our third thematic review is now underway. We are seeking to understand what positive tenant engagement looks like. The review will think about how associations can better understand the views of tenants and develop meaningful ways of engagement, exploring new ideas and challenging current practices. This is a really important piece of work and I’m excited about how this can help build on good practice to make sure tenants are effectively involved in strategic decision making and shaping services. This work will be completed by Summer 2019. (For more on this, see Bob Smith’s article on pxx.)
I was pleased to see CHC launch its new board members offer recently. Based on the four principles of influence, connectivity, support and information, I look forward to seeing this develop to make sure board members have access to a network that helps drive strong leadership and governance. I’ve attended a few of the CHC board member network meetings over the last few years and find them a great way of being able to discuss the many shared challenges and opportunities of being a board member.
Conference season is now underway! I am looking forward to speaking at both the CHC and TPAS conferences in a few weeks’ time. Spending time discussing key issues with tenants, board members and housing association officers is always interesting!
Helen White is chair of the Regulatory Board for Wales. She is on twitter @arthursmam