Wales & West at 50
As Wales & West Housing celebrates its 50th birthday, chief executive Anne Hinchey tells Jules Birch about its past, present and future
ANNE HINCHEY HAS a mantra that runs through everything she says about Wales & West Housing:‘making a difference to people’s lives, homes and communities’.
But things did not start out that way when it was formed in 1965. ‘It was very much about a group of professionals seeing a business opportunity who got together,’ she says. ‘It was set up very much for profit.’
Hinchey herself joined Wales & West in 1999 and became chief executive in 2006. Did anything surprise her when she looked back to those early days? ‘We became what we are by pulling together a whole raft of different things going on all over the place,’ she says, ‘whereas a lot of organisations started as one thing and grew.’
One of those different things explains the association’s name. Wales & West once owned properties across the border in Bristol but a stock rationalisation exercise in the late 80s and early 90s saw cross- order property swaps with English associations. ‘The name was just kept. Over the years we have talked about it because we have no properties across the border. It’s happened each time we’ve had a rebrand but what we found is that the name has a history, a tradition and a reputation that goes with it.’
Wales & West no longer operates in the west of Wales either for that matter. It still operates in 12 of the 22 local authority areas but decided a couple of years ago to pull out of Anglesey, Gwynedd, Ceredigion and Carmarthen because it didn’t have enough stock to do anything more than be a landlord there. ‘If you looked at the wider community we couldn’t make a difference,’ she explains.
However, Wales & West is still a national organisation working across North and South Wales. It owns almost 10,000 homes, two-thirds general needs and a third retirement properties, making it the largest provider of older persons’ housing in Wales. Like others it has extra care schemes, but these now include one with a purpose-built dementia wing and it is also working to become a dementia-friendly organisation.
On the general needs side, welfare reform has posed particular challenges with sometimes unexpected results. After a mass door knocking exercise to contact people affected by the bedroom tax: ‘We found we were starting to see people we’d never seen before. They’d never been on the radar before, they’d never committed anti-social behaviour or been in rent arrears, they were just getting on with their lives. We decided we were going to do it in a very personalised way, so that every person affected would have a personal housing plan. That very quickly grew into an understanding of the support that people would need.’
The board employed seven tenancy support officers. ‘We could have taken the decision that if we do nothing we are going to lose x amount of money. Actually we took the decision to employ seven tenancy support officers that are going to cost us the same amount of money, so we’re no better off, but they are going to make a difference to people’s lives in their homes.’
As in many other associations, the support officers worked on income maximisation, getting debts written off, negotiating with the big utilities and helping people into employment. ‘When we reviewed the success of the TSOs at the end of the first year, not only had they done what they needed to do in terms of helping people to maintain their tenancy, but they had also made an average saving per person they’d supported of £780 a year in terms of increasing their income.’
Looking to the future, Wales & West is taking its first steps into care and support within its own properties. ‘We provide a lot of supported housing but predominantly as a landlord and we’re taking our first steps into thinking maybe we will be a support provider as well. But does it help us to make that difference to people’s lives, homes and communities? We get offered things all the time – whether it be land, development, business opportunities – but if it’s not sustainable in the long term we are not about growth for growth’s sake.’
But doesn’t that raise questions about another of the organisations commitments: the Living Wage? Other housing organizations have pulled out of offering care because they can’t make it pay, let alone offer decent wages.
‘When we put this to the board, one of the things they said is that we will be a Living Wage employer – there are no exceptions,’ she says. ‘How can you make a difference to people’s lives homes and communities if it doesn’t include the people who work for you? It’s a no brainer. It is the right thing to pay the Living Wage. How could you hold your head up high if you didn’t? If we expect people to live and work by our values then we have to demonstrate those values for the people that work for us as well.’
When Wales & West introduced the Living Wage in 2012, the extra cost was around £15,000 as lower-paid staff got a bigger pay increase. ‘One of the questions I’ve been asked often is “how did everybody else feel about other people getting such a big increase’? Universally it was welcomed because people could see the sense of the living wage.’
An Inside Housing survey last year ranked Wales & West as the 40th biggest developer in Britain. Can a business plan that envisages building 1,000 homes over the next five years be sustained in the face of continuing austerity?
‘There are always risks,’ she says. ‘Our business plan is not based on sales at all so we haven’t got the exposure that associations had in England. We’ve got the arrangements in place now and for the foreseeable. We’ve got the capacity and our gearing means we can do more. For us it’s been more about building the right things in the right areas.’
Rising interest rates will present challenges, she says, but grant is falling at a much slower rate than in England and there is much greater government support for social housing from Welsh Government. Wales & West has been a key player in the Housing Finance Grant developed jointly by Welsh Government and the sector and is delivering around 20 per cent of the programme.
She sees universal credit as the big threat for the future. ‘With the bedroom tax we knew what the problem was but we don’t know who is going to come on and off universal credit,’ she explains. ‘Because it’s predominantly for new claimants, your crystal ball is as good as mine as to who is going to come out of work. And then there’s the issue of direct payments. It’s not a world we’ve been used to and looking at the experience of other organizations has been interesting. They’ve seen rent arrears increase, they’ve seen more people get into debt. So part of the work of our tenancy support officers has been to try and make people as ready as they can be to take that on.’
So what does she see as the biggest successes and failures in her time at Wales & West? ‘I think success-wise, it’s been around the culture and ethos of the association. We’ve been one of the biggest players in Wales from years ago and we’ve grown and we’ve changed in terms of delivering our services. But if you talk to people who knew us 10-15-20 years ago, they will talk about the feel, the culture, the ethos of the organisation, the fact that our values are real, they’re alive, we expect people to make a difference, to have that passion and enthusiasm. And how we then value staff, so it’s not just about how we deal with our residents.’
However, she finds it much harder to think in terms of mistakes and failures. ‘I can think of little things in terms of stuff that you tried that didn’t work but nothing that would make me think I really wouldn’t do that again. Maybe I’d think about my choice of supporting football team. Cardiff City has been a bit of a mixed bag of late.’
So what are the prospects for Wales and West 75th? ‘If I was still here, and I won’t be in 25 years, our driver would still be about making a difference. How we make that difference might have changed in relation to what society is like and what the needs are at that time. But absolutely it would be about making that difference to lives, homes and communities.’
The Wales & West story 1965-2015
1965 Formed by group of businessmen to develop low cost rented and co-ownership homes in Cardiff and South Wales
1974 Registers with Housing Corporation, has developed 1,500 homes throughout Wales and the west of England
1980s One of first associations to build using grant and private finance. Absorbs two smaller Welsh associations in financial difficulty
1990 Stock rationalisation exercise sees swap of stock with English associations and acceptance of Corlan and Corlan Retirement Housing Associations as subsidiaries. Stock now 5,500 homes
1999 Opens first 24-hour customer service centre in Cardiff.
2002 Largest housing association in Wales with just under 9,000 homes
2003 Restructures into two offices in Cardiff and Flint with staff relocated to be closer to customers
2005 Achieves charitable status
2006 Anne Hinchey succeeds David Taylor as chief executive
2011 Makes Sunday Times 100 best not-for-profit organisations list
2012 First housing association in Wales to introduce Living Wage. Achieves Investors in
People Gold status
2015 Third on Sunday Times not-for-profit list in Britain and highest rated in Wales