Working together to deliver Stronger Neighbourhoods pdfs/Presentations/Annual...Learn with us. Improve with us. Influence with us | 5 My aim today •To set out a ‘best practice’

Learn with us. Improve with us. Influence with us | www.cih.org

Working together to deliver Stronger Neighbourhoods

Neighbourhood sustainability pilots: approach methodology and progress so far

17 October 2013: CIH Annual Midlands Conference

Richard Medley & Dave Smethurst CIH Consultancy

Laura Davies Shropshire Housing Group

Learn with us. Improve with us. Influence with us | www.cih.org 2

Why Neighbourhood Sustainability Plans?

• Working in the sector we identified demand for a tool that helps organisations:

Focus their resources locally in a way that complements neighbourhood sustainability

Produce meaningful local offers / service promises

Improve joint working internally and externally

Be better able to adopt flexible service responses

• Was particularly important in the context of:

Co-Regulation and lack of top down regulatory guidance

Developing consumer standards

Local authority spending cuts

Managing the impact of government initiatives e.g. Welfare reform

• The CIH pilot: working with different landlords to develop a more effective approach to neighbourhood working


The CIH Neighbourhoods pilot

• Involves developing Neighbourhood Sustainability Plans (NSP’s)

• Based on a core methodology that has had some success in the northwest, mainly with LSVT’s

• Wanted to test out the approach with a larger national group of landlords to develop something with wider applicability

• Collective sessions ran for 12 months with 12 participants

Range from LA’s, to traditional HA’s, LSVT’s and ALMO’s

North to south; large and small, 3,000 to 28,000

• Started work in September 2012

• At the last stage with landlords producing plans as we speak! ..... An initial review will be produced in November

• Final report in April 2014 when all plans have been launched.


Who are the pilots?


My aim today

• To set out a ‘best practice’ approach for how to work in neighbourhoods

• To use the approach to help you think about how you want to work in your neighbourhoods

• What do you want to achieve with your organisational resources?

• Want to talk about:

What the basic NSP model looks like

Lessons so far

Implementation Case study from a member of the pilot: Shropshire Housing Group

• Finally we want to see how you would choose to use scarce resources in a neighbourhood!


Neighbourhood Sustainability Plans

• Focus on neighbourhood sustainability

• Sustainability = whether people want to live and stay in a neighbourhood

• Determined by

Quality of, and access to Services

Quality of life

Opportunities & life chances

• Plans identify what needs to be done to Improve neighbourhood sustainability = interventions


The plan development process

NSP development stages Relevance

Divide all stock into identifiable

neighbourhoods

Defines what local is and gives local

focus

Rate all neighbourhoods in terms of

sustainability

Identifies where to focus resources

Identify neighbourhood issues via audit Identifies specific local issues

Identify interventions needed to improve

sustainability

Identifies local service solutions

Produce Neighbourhood Sustainability Plans 3 dimensional local offer to tenants

Develop specific operational action/

implementation plan

Organisation and teams have to

identify how they will deliver (who,

what, where, when)


Identifying neighbourhoods

• Essential first step

• Not an exact science

• Coherent geographical unit

• Needs to make sense locally and operationally

• Normally between 300 to 600 homes

• Once done can start to apply data


Repairs & Maintenance Policy

?????


Rating neighbourhoods

• Use Neighbourhood Indicators to do this

• Mixture of internal and external figures

• Use simple sustainability rating system (eg Gold, Silver, Bronze)

For neighbourhood as a whole

And for individual indicators

• Gives an ‘at a glance’ sustainability map of stock

• Indicates general & specific areas for resource focus


Neighbourhood Indicators

Internal E.G’s External E.G’s

•Voids

•Turnover

•Rent Arrears

•Neighbour Nuisance

•Customer Satisfaction

•ASB

•Repair costs

•Income

•Crime

•Employment

•Education Statistics

•Health Indicators

•Access to services

•Environment



Auditing neighbourhoods

• Indicators give trends but not the full picture

• Audit identifies specific local issues

• Need a range of views:

Officer view : (desktop analysis, hot spots)

Customer view: (Survey, focus group)

Visual assessment (visual Inspection)

External partners view (Action plans, survey, interviews)

• Balanced assessment from all stakeholders



Interventions

• Includes actions by landlords and actions by others

• Try to join up what you do internally

• Align with what others do externally

• Helpful to use consumer categories i.e.

Neighbourhood and community: ( e.g. ASB, environmental, wider agency initiatives i.e. employment ,policing)

Home: (e.g. fencing, repairs , improvements, infrastructure)

Tenancy (e.g. nuisance, tenancy support, estate management)

Empowerment (e.g. local feedback, scrutiny, priorities, etc.)

• These form centre piece of the NSP and is sent to tenants



Action plan: the magic ingredient

• Need separate operational action plan

• This acts as a catalyst for change in terms of how services work together – very important

• For each intervention Key tasks

Key milestones

By who

By when

• Can include other agencies


Monitoring & impact

• Initially use action plan targets

• Main monitoring is through indicators

• Some indicators can take a long time to change

• Can use shorter term tests

– Proxy measures

– 360 degree stakeholder feedback

• Also some more detailed impact models out there. E.g. SROI

• Also Currently working on a balanced scorecard measure


What our pilots have valued In NSP’s

• Whilst our Pilot organisations are all developing their plans in their own image their are some common elements they have valued :

• One coherent, locally focussed vehicle for all activity

• Local blend of existing services and link to local offers

• Use of at a glance guide approach with different indicators (e.g. health, ASB)

• Mix of different views in the audit process

• Operational plan development means joined-up working is a must

• Potential to link customer panels etc. to monitoring of plans post implementation.

• Makes it easier to differentiate between Management, Support and Springboard activities


Tales of the unexpected?

• The importance of the organisational narrative to success

• The easy ‘Golden thread’ link from plan interventions to corporate plans

• Surprisingly wider focus of the engagement and empowerment interventions (insight, scrutiny, community projects, social enterprise, etc.)

• The act of developing plans became a massive catalyst for change for many of our participants

• Plans are more successful if their activities are seen as part of the day job

• Plans allowed organisations to draw up a list of what they do in neighbourhoods for the first time = powerful improvement tool

• Organisations developed a much more fluid view of staff roles, deployment and capability


Easy assumptions?

• External Partnership working seems underdeveloped

• Lots of informal partnership working day to day but lack of joint targets or plans

• Ambiguous relationship with asset management

• There is a general lack of internal joint working arrangements at neighbourhood level as well

• Political relationships can create unexpected tensions around neighbourhood plans

• The sector is conservative which can limit ambition

• Organisations are often blind to the amount of silo working they engage in in neighbourhoods

• Many organisations have poor neighbourhood level data

• Big is not always beautiful. Often the biggest organisations find it hardest to change


Final Thoughts

• Real potential in the sector for this approach on neighbourhood sustainability

• The pilot has developed valuable insight on the impact of using a simple planned approach for different types of landlords

• All have managed to do it in a way that reflects their needs and local circumstances

• This is true even though there are significant differences between them in terms of stock, customer and partner profiles

• The central lesson seems to be that having a plan as a focal point can produce significant and wide ranging benefits

• There are regional variations though which impact on the model (indicator measures, stock profiles, demographics, etc)

• Next thing we want to do is work to develop more regionally focused models...... we will need your help

• We are also actively working on a balanced scorecard for impact assessment

• Watch out for our initial report in November

Neighbourhood Sustainability

Plans – the Shropshire

experience!

Laura Davies, Neighbourhood Services Manager

Shropshire Housing Group

17th October 2013

How does this sit with SHG?

More Homes, More Choice

Excellent services and satisfied customers

Well run for community benefit

Growing and developing our business

Working for sustainable communities.

Where are we as an organisation?

• Big changes ahead!

• Neighbourhood strategy written and approved

by SMT. Presentation to Boards in October.

• Reshaping the team

The Challenges - Organisation

• Data

• Resistance from colleagues

• Fitting this into the business

• Time and patience!

The Challenges - Neighbourhood

• Very isolated

• Bad reputation

• Lots of broken promises

• Not very representative of other SHG stock

Manor Place

What has it been like?

Difficult but worth it.

Full evaluation of service delivery.

Project outcomes

So far…. Greater Neighbourhood strategy drafted and mini re-structure

underway

Empowerment of front line staff

For the future Hoping for increase in customer satisfaction

More flexible way of working

Efficiency savings

What is next? Launch the completed plan

Restructure the team

One plan each over the next 12 months – 9 plans across

Shropshire

Wider county fit – locality commissioning, troubled families.

Social value assessment

Tips

Don’t pass this around the organisation!

Think about how this approach can be

embedded,

Get housing officers on board as early as

possible.


Neighbourhood game

• You have

– A neighbourhood description (including indicators ands audit info)

– A list of interventions split into 4 categories (24 interventions in all)

– They are classed as high resource (A), medium resource (B or C), Low resource (D, E, or F)

– Each intervention category contains a mixture of high, medium and low resource interventions

• In groups you have to

– Choose the 10 interventions from the overall list you think will best address the neighbourhood issues

• There are some rules!

– You can only pick 2 ‘A’ interventions, 3 ‘B’ or ‘C’ interventions and 5 ‘D’, ‘E’ or ‘F’ interventions

– You have to pick at least 1 intervention from each intervention category (i.e. Neighbourhood, Home, Tenancy, Engagement)

• Please write down what you chose ....Good luck!


What do you think?

• We hope the CIH NSP pilot project and the experience of SHG produces a useful model for landlords to think about

• Here are what we think some of questions our work on the pilot has raised:

Is there a Gap in effectiveness at neighbourhood level that needs filling?

Do we have a lack of clarity on what we should be doing post TSA and audit commission?

Do we need a common approach/methodology?

Should the sector be a leader or a follower here?

Should we just be sticking to our core business?

Do we need an overall plan or should we go for more targeted initiatives?

Should we only focus provision on our worst neighbourhoods?

Can what we do as landlords really affect neighbourhood sustainability?

Is neighbourhood sustainability on the political agenda in the right way?

Documents

Working together to deliver Stronger Neighbourhoods pdfs/Presentations/Annual...Learn with us. Improve with us. Influence with us | 5 My aim today •To set out a ‘best practice’