Pete Apps

Boris Johnson is scrabbling to persuade London landlords to increase their com-mitment under his £1.25 billion aff ordable homes programme, after a deadlock on terms led to radically reduced bids.

Four of the capital’s largest landlords confirmed City Hall representatives have been in touch since the 10 March dea-dline, asking the associations to increase their bids – suggesting the programme is undersubscribed. Many more landlords are understood to have been contacted.

Some housing associations submitted reduced bids compared with the 2011/15 programme due to fears councils would nominate tenants who could not afford to pay the higher affordable rents.

Keith Exford, chief executive of Affinity Sutton, said the 57,000-home landlord was asked to submit a bid for additional

grant last week but was unlikely to. It has bid for 1,168 homes compared with 2,700 in the 2011/15 round.

‘We are concerned because many of the boroughs nomi-nate traditional social housing tenants who cannot aff ord the higher rents,’ he said.

The 2015/18 p r o g r a m m e introduces two rental products fixed at 50 per cent and 80 per cent of market rates. Landlords charged an average of 65 per cent in the previous programme and are concerned about a lack of flexibility under the new regime.

c Continued on page 2

Development London landlords scale back ambitions for mayor’s 2015/18 affordable homes programme

Boris seeks bids as appetite shrinks

Designer houseThe specially designed homes improving dementia suff erers’ quality of life Feature, page 30

A problem sharedHow tenants on the brink of eviction are being helped to remain in their homesFeature, page 38

c Apprentices abandoned by their employer, page 24

2 May 2014 | www.insidehousing.co.uk IBP magazine of the year IBP journalist of the year IBP young journalist of the year PPA new business journalist of the year

Boris seeks bids as

grant last week but was unlikely to. It has bid for 1,168 homes compared with 2,700 in the 2011/15 round.

‘We are concerned because many of the boroughs nomi-nate traditional social housing tenants who cannot aff ord the higher rents,’ he

The 2015/18 p r o g r a m m e introduces two rental products fixed at 50 per cent and 80 per cent of market rates. Landlords charged an average of 65 per cent in the previous programme and are concerned about a lack of flexibility under the new regime.

Continued on page 2

London landlords scale back ambitions for mayor’s 2015/18 affordable homes programme

appetite shrinksgrant last week but was unlikely to. It has bid for 1,168 homes compared with 2,700 in the 2011/15 round.

‘We are concerned because many of the boroughs nomi-nate traditional social housing tenants who cannot aff ord the higher rents,’ he

The 2015/18 p r o g r a m m e introduces two rental products fixed at 50 per cent and 80 per cent of market rates. Landlords charged an average of 65 per cent in the previous programme and are concerned about a lack of flexibility under the new regime.

Continued on page 2

London landlords scale back ambitions for mayor’s 2015/18 affordable homes programme

appetite shrinks

IH.020514.001.indd 1 30/04/2014 19:54

16 | Inside Housing | 2 May 2014

Comment

Housing’s fi nest

For some time now there’s been the view in certain policy circles that, taken as a whole, English social landlords are all mouth and no trousers when it comes to grant rates.

The theory goes that whether it’s London’s City Hall or the Homes and Communities Agency setting the rates, landlords will whinge a bit and say they’ll never bid at such a disgracefully low rate – but then, when it comes to the crunch, do whatever’s asked of them.

There are, of course, very practical reasons for adopting this ‘alter what you can, but then get on with it’ approach. After all, a future pipeline of grant is vital to the delivery of affordable homes at anything like the levels needed to meet demand and reduce the affordability gap. Opting out does little to help meet need and risks sending out a dangerous message to government.

However, it appears that a point is now being reached in London where the potential level of grant available per home is so low – and the conditions attached so onerous – that landlords are drawing a line.

As our front page story reveals this week

the bids received by London mayor Boris Johnson for his £1.25 billion affordable homes programme have not met his expectations. Despite the deadline for bids closing on 10 March landlords are still getting calls from City Hall asking them if they would be prepared to increase their bids. It’s a bit like a waiter asking you if you want more food when you’ve already paid the bill and put your jacket on.

This is important because it sheds light on a more fundamental problem – the value attached to affordable housing in both London and the wider UK. At a time when the government is committing £42.6 billion to the HS2 rail link and worrying about queues for trains, the less visible queue for housing still falls way down the list of political priorities.

We need to have a serious conversation about not just grant rates but the commitment of governments of all colours to delivering the homes the UK needs.

The sector needs to push hard in the run-up to next May’s general election to make sure that we don’t spend the next decade talking about how best to share out the crumbs.

The right values

In a week when the UK Housing Awards celebrated the very best of the housing sector, it would be wrong not to mention Richard Crossley.

Richard, who died last week from cancer, was chief executive of the National Tenant Voice and earlier this year was awarded an OBE for a lifetime’s service to neighbourhoods and tenants.

I didn’t know him well, but we spoke often in the run-up to the creation of the NTV and the immediate aftermath of

its axing in 2010.His passion for the project and more

widely, for working with tenants both nationally and locally, always shone through.

The tributes paid to Richard underneath his obituary on Inside Housing’s website this week sum up, more eloquently than I can, just how well regarded he was within the sector (and what a thoroughly nice man he was).

This week we lost one of the very best.

MartinHilditch

One Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London E14 5AP www.insidehousing.co.uk

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Subscriptions and back issuesUK £134, Europe £165, other countries £197Inside Housing subscriptions teamTel 024 7657 1013CIH members should call 024 7685 1700 Published byOcean Media Group LtdPrinted by Headley Brothers Ltd, Ashford, Kent

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Magazine of the yearJournalist of the yearYoung journalist of the yearHousing and residential property journalist of the yearSustainable writer of the year

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MartinHilditch

IH.020514.016-017.indd 16 30/04/2014 19:30

Closing date 25 April* Or a £500 donation to the charity of your chioce

The Lakanal and Shirley Towers tragedies show landlords must act on fire risks - how safe are your residents?

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www.insidehousing.co.uk/fire-survey

Inside Housing and nulogic would like to know:

• Are you confident your fire risk assessments are up to date?

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10 January 2014| Inside Housing | 31

(£0.015) is a tenth of the cost of answering it over the telephone (£0.15).

Spreading the wordWord of SBHG’s work with Student@Home reached A2 Dominion. It is partnering with the company on a project to help 1,300 tenants in rent arrears aged 45 and over get online over three years. The project is funded by £40,000 from the govern-ment’s ‘digital deal’, a scheme aimed at encouraging social housing tenants to use the internet.

The 34,000-home association, which matched the funding, has com-missioned Student@Home to provide one-to-one tuition to 100 residents and group tuition to a further 210 by the end of April. It also hopes 500 tenants will access online learning videos developed by Student@Home. Forty-fi ve trained volunteers – made up of housing association employees and residents – are targeting all other tenants who need support.

Welfare applicationsThe ‘obvious’ reason for the project was to prepare tenants for the even-

tuality that 80 per cent of claims for universal credit will be made online by 2017, says Fiona Cornell, A2 Dominion’s deputy executive direc-tor for operations.

‘The surveys that Student@Home have done with that target group have revealed that, while computer or internet use is quite high at 80-plus per cent, the proportion who are con-fi dent in doing online applications is lower than that – 29 per cent,’ she adds. ‘So there’s quite a gap there.’

For more Careers and ideas, visit www.insidehousing.co.uk

“While internet use is quite high at 80-plus per cent, the proportion who are confident in doing online applications is lower – 29 per cent.”

Careers and ideas

Expert opinion Movers & shakers

Home Group has announced the appointment of Brian Ham as executive director of

enterprise and development. He is currently chief executive of Dolphin Square Foundation, and will take up the new post on 3 February.

Jennean Alkadiri has joined St Mungo’s as its new campaigns manager. She worked previously as campaigns manager at WaterAid.

The Quay Foyer Trust in Poole has appointed Andrea Metcalf, managing director of Nationwide Training, as a new trustee.

New Charter Housing Trust Group has appointed Fay Selvan as chair of its board.

Ms Selvan is chief executive of The BigLife group.

Bullock has appointed Ian Burnett as chief executive. Mr Burnett was previously an independent

consultant to the organisation’s board. Prior to this, he worked for Wates Group.

Berneslai Homes has appointed Melvyn Lunn as chair of the board. Mr Lunn was previously

vice chair of the board.

Send your movers and shakers to gene.robertson@insidehousing.co.uk

In 2013, the number of homeless people grew and the resources to pay for those supporting them were cut further and further. There were also some disturbing reports of neglect in care and support schemes for older people, in which staff shortages were cited by the Care Quality Commission as a factor. A number of providers put their name to a campaign along with the National Housing Federation and the Chartered Institute of Housing for reform of commissioning practices responsible for what has slipped into sector parlance as ‘the race to the bottom’: the driving down of wages and the consequent destabilisation of services for vulnerable people.

Towards the end of the year, our second annual Barometer pay and

human resources benchmarking survey revealed that HR directors in homelessness and care remain seriously concerned about their ability to recruit, retain and motivate staff on wages that are barely enough to live on, particularly in London.

I recently discussed the survey results with a group of directors in care and support, who shared a range of ideas they have been applying to motivate their workforces when pay is so low. These included having better career development paths; investing in sound IT infrastructure and hand-held devices to make it easier for people to do more for less; and off ering long service awards and fl at-rate, non-consolidated bonuses.

The problem is that although all these things are cheaper than paying decent wages, they still bear a cost. This cost becomes unaff ordable when hourly rates at which contracts are won get shaved further.

Much on-the-job development is done through line managers, but as their responsibilities grow bigger there is insuffi cient time for them to spend showing staff the ropes.

Many of those making it through to managerial roles are disillusioned when the biggest part of the job turns out to be dealing with the relentless churn of replacing leavers and inducting new staff in the face of recent recruits unable or unwilling to stick around on poor wages. Clients experience this churn the most acutely, as they learn to trust one new key worker only to see them disappear and then have to put up with transitory agency relief until another new starter arrives.

Training provision is a motivator, but only where it is done properly. One trainer told me he has withdrawn from working with a provider which insists on squashing 40 people on to courses on which a maximum of 20 can be trained to work safely.

The Offi ce for National Statistics reported recently that 2,000 older people in care homes have died as a result of neglect over the past decade. Over the past couple of years the number of people living on the streets

has risen – people with complex needs who are at risk of dying if services are not funded at a level suffi cient to pay for the intensive levels of skills and attention needed to support their journey off the streets.

Let 2014 be the year in which all involved – the government, local authority commissioners, providers, the NHF, CIH and trade unions – recognise that this picture can only get bleaker unless we form alliances and take action to reverse the race to the bottom instead of bemoaning it. Our mantra should be ‘a decent price for a decent and safe service and a fair wage for a bloody hard week’s work’.Helen Giles is HR director of Broadway Homelessness and Support and managing director of Real People

HelenGilesWe must stop moaning about discrepancies in care and support services and act on them

“As line managers’ responsibilities grow bigger, there is insufficient time for them to spend showing staff the ropes.”

c Continued from page 29

IH.100114.028-031.indd 31 06/01/2014 14:57

2 | Inside Housing | 14 February 2014

News

Governance

Downgrade for big landlordsPeabody and Gentoo among those rapped by HCA over value for money Carl Brown

Landlords penalised by the regulator for failing to meet value for money rules have spoken of their disap-pointment.

The Homes and Communities Agency on Wednesday downgraded governance ratings of 14 landlords for failing to publish a transparent, robust value for money self-assess-ment by the end of September.

Peabody, Gentoo, Progress Hous-ing Group, Bolton at Home, Fabrick, and Vela Group’s subsidiaries Housing Hartlepool and Tristar Homes were among the larger landlords down-graded. Some landlords were penal-ised for not publishing them on time, while others had their ratings down-graded for not making their self-assess-ments accessible to ‘stakeholders’.

Fabrick did not publish its self-assessment until after being con-tacted by the regulator in December, although it had been doing work on value for money.

Alison Thain, chief executive of

Fabrick, said her board had taken a ‘dim view’ of the downgrade given Fabrick and Vela are merging as part of a plan to save an estimated £38 million over fi ve years. ‘The reg-ulator has missed the real point [on value for money],’ she said.

Ms Thain and a spokesperson for Peabody, both said their organisa-tions were not clearly made aware of the 30 September deadline.

An HCA spokesperson pointed to an accounting direction which said self-assessments should be published in accounts, which are submitted by 30 September.

Bolton at Home did not make its self-assessment accessible enough. Chief executive Jon Lord said he accepted the downgrade but described it as ‘harsh’. He said Bol-ton at Home put the self-assessment on its website in June but later took it down due to a redesign.

Matthew Bailes, HCA executive director of regulation, said only ‘a minority’ of providers had ‘risen to the challenge’. Mr Bailes wrote to all association chairs on Wednesday to warn them about value for money.

For more on regulation, visit www.insidehousing.co.uk

Regulation

Landlords slam fee plan c Continued from page 1

A spokesperson for the NHF said it might ‘reluctantly’ accept fees if they increased the HCA’s resources. She added: ‘It is clear, however, that the present exercise will not increase the HCA’s resources, and is essentially about shifting the burden onto hous-ing associations and away from the Treasury.’

Brendan Sarsfi eld, chair of the G15 group of large London landlords, said: ‘Fees need to complement, not replace government funding.’

Julian Ashby, chair of the HCA regu-lation committee, said the document starts a conversation ‘about the poten-tial for switching… to a system where the regulator recovers part or all of the cost of regulation through fees.’

The regulator, which was criticised by MPs last June for lacking adequate resources, has argued that other sec-tors pay for regulation and that land-lords benefi t from being regulated. The NHF has rejected this comparison, arguing providers in the water, rail and energy sectors are profi t-making.

A CLG spokesperson said: ‘All bod-ies in receipt of public money have a responsibility to minimise costs.’

The paper suggests a minimum £300 annual fee and a fl at registra-tion fee for new entrants. The HCA hopes to charge fees from April 2015.

c See Leader, page 16

a Five most read1. Housing association placed on HCA watch list2. 12 landlords in line for downgrade by regulator3. Councils resist retirement housing4. DWP confirms temporary bedroom tax loophole5. Waste workers confirm homeless people are sheltering in bins

a Five most commented1. Food for thought2. Average earners need to double salaries to get on housing ladder3. UN housing expert’s report calling to end bedroom tax slammed

4. Bedroom tax blamed for increase in arrears5. Councils resist retirement housing

a BlogThe recent floods in England could open up opportunities for new house building, writes Colin Wiles at www.insidehousing.co.uk/blogs

a Web pollDo you think the Care Bill will have an impact on council care budgets?

From the webwww.insidehousing.co.uk

In this week’s magazine

News

12 Analysis Why the impact of cuts to the energy company obligation is much worse than landlords might think

Comment15 First up Tenant complaints can ruin lives, even if they turn out to be false, says Inside Housing’s anonymous columnist

Features

22 Agent for change Clare Tickell reveals her priorities as the new chief executive of Hanover

Careers and ideas28 Room for dignity How a new approach aims to help small social landlords care for tenants with dementia

Sustainable HousingDon’t miss yourfree copy of Sustainable Housing, free with this issue, which focuses on the work of landlords to alleviate fuel poverty

And 5 pages of jobs

A Yes A No A Don’t care

Poll respondents: 77

86%

9%5%

The recent floods

could open up opportunities

www.insidehousing.

Sustainable Housing//Sustainable Housing025/spring’14 www.insidehousing.co.uk/eco

Pay as you ecoShould tenants pay more rent for energy-efficient homes?

Heat seekersThe housing association staff helping

tenants living in dangerously cold homes

Water works Why social landlords should harness hydropower

SH.Spring2014.001.indd 1

10/02/2014 18:13

IH.140214.002.indd 2 12/02/2014 18:17

SALES ACTIVITYPROVIDES 39% OFHAs’ NET SURPLUS

Read the report by visitingwww.socialhousing.co.uk/assetsanddevelopment

Sales-related activity surplus across the 130 HAs included in this report amounted to £637.4m, or

39% of the total £1.65bn net

surplus.

Why this matters: This report looks to establish the

sector’s level of reliance on sales by looking at the accounts of the 130

largest HAs in England, with just under 2.2 million units and almost

£1.65bn in net surpluses.

£637.4mtotal sales

£1.65bnnet surplus

2.2m

IH.250714.021_A.indd 21 23/07/2014 12:27

4 | Inside Housing | 14 February 2014

News

Employment

Housing chief sacked for gross misconductFormer BME National chair alleged to have ‘brought association into disrepute’

Carl Brown

Lara Oyedele has been sacked as chief executive of a small housing association following a four-month suspension.

The board of Odu-Dua housing association dismissed the former BME National chair for gross miscon-duct following a disciplinary hearing on 27 January, which she did not attend. Several reasons are under-stood to have been given, including breach of confi dentiality and bring-ing the 289-home organisation into disrepute.

It is understood Ms Oyedele is now likely to pursue a claim for unfair dismissal. Ms Oyedele and Odu-Dua declined to comment. A hearing at Central London County Court to determine the legitimate board is

expected to take place on Monday.The dismissal, which came into

eff ect on 6 February, is the latest chap-ter in a saga that began on 14 October last year when Ms Oyedele was sus-pended for allegedly recruiting board members without the knowledge of the board.

Ms Oyedele claimed the board was

no longer legitimate following the resignation of chair John Oke on 2 October.

In November, Ms Oyedele’s support-ers announced she had been re-instated following ‘a meeting of shareholders’. As a result, Ms Oyedele installed herself in her former offi ce, putting security on the door and changing the locks.

This led to a temporary injunction banning Ms Oyedele and her sup-porters from entering Odu-Dua’s premises. The injunction was lifted against the nine supporters, but not against Ms Oyedele, at a court hear-ing on 5 December.

Cym D’Souza, interim chair of BME National, confi rmed that Ms Oyedele is no longer chair of the black and minority ethnic landlord representative body. A new chair was expected to be chosen this week.

For more on Odu-Dua, visit www.insidehousing.co.uk

Black and minority ethnic people are more likely to be homeless or live in overcrowded accommodation, a study has found. 

The research, by race equality charity Runnymede Trust, and which focused on Croydon, Redbridge and Kingston, also found higher home-lessness rates among black people.

In Croydon, just under half of all homeless people were black, with white people making up 25 per cent of this group. The black home-less group is proportionally more than twice the size of the black popu-lation in Croydon, which is 20 per cent.

In Redbridge, east London, 9 per cent of the overall population are

Homelessness

Report reveals race bias in homelessness

black, but they make up 26 per cent of the homelessness list, compared with 24 per cent for whites.

In the west London borough of Kingston, black groups make up 9 per cent of homeless households, despite only making up 3 per cent of the population. The white popula-tion constitutes the majority of the homeless population as a whole. 

Overcrowding was found to be around three times as high among black and minority ethnic communi-ties than in white communities in each borough.

A spokesperson for Kingston said the data refl ected the national pic-ture of homelessness from statutory returns.

Finance

London home-ownership ‘out of reach’ Soaring house prices mean people earning average wages will need to more than double their salaries in order to buy a house in England, new research reveals.

The report by homelessness char-ity Shelter found the average worker in England earning £25,932 in 2012 would need an extra £29,344 added to their annual salary in order to buy a home.

In Hackney, east London, the aver-age person’s salary would need to increase from £31,304 by more than £100,000 to keep pace with the hous-ing market.

Shelter said the possibility of homeownership was ‘slipping further out of reach for a generation’.

The report came as fi nance com-pany Castle Trust released a study showing just one in seven adults believe they will buy a home before the age of 30.

It found around 12 per cent of people looking to buy a house will borrow from their parents, with 5 per cent intending to ask their grandpar-ents for money.

Erimus Housing and Tees Valley Housing, part of the Fabrick Housing Group, have installed 10 internet kiosks across Teeside. Here resident engagement officer Michael Khurana helps Pat Davies get online at a newly installed booth at Portland House,

Middlesbrough. Residents will be shown a number of online skills such as claiming and checking benefits and reporting repairs.

The booths have been installed as part of ResiNet, which helps people improve their technology skills.

for gross misconduct

Dismissed: Lara Oyedele

IH.140214.004.indd 4 12/02/2014 12:02

22 | Inside Housing | 14 February 2014

Agent forchange

The first 100 days in the job are any new executive’s most crucial. So how does Dame Clare Tickell plan to make her mark at Hanover? Lydia Stockdale finds out

When we meet Dame Clare Tickell, the new chief execu-tive of Hanover has been in her job

for just 15 days. By her calculation, that means she has 85 left to settle in.

‘Management speak says you’ve got 100 days,’ she explains. ‘There’s an expectation after that, you’ll be able to provide some sense of direction.’

Dame Clare, previously chief exec-utive of the charity Action for Chil-dren, clearly isn’t someone who has ever lacked a sense of where she’s heading. For a start, she picked up her title in the Queen’s 2010 New Year’s Honours List. It was awarded for her services to young people – recognition of her passion and com-mitment to working on issues such as child neglect.

Taking the helmThen , instead of resting on her lau-rels, on 2 January this year, she started working with those at the opposite end of the age spectrum, taking over from Bruce Moore at the helm of Hanover, a 19,000-home

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housing provider for the over-55s.Her office in Staines, west London,

which overlooks a swollen River Thames, is sparse and functional. Dame Clare, who is 55 herself, has not yet had the chance to stamp her con-siderable personality on her sur-roundings or her 900 new colleagues.

A statuesque and rather imposing figure, she doesn’t need to try very hard to make her presence known, but she’s in no rush to get too com-fortable too soon.

‘There’s a small, precious window when you get to ask the really straight-forward questions,’ she says with a smile. ‘People assume very quickly you know what you’re talking about.’

Dame Clare has first-hand experi-ence of this. She’s been in this same position several times before: when she took the top job at Action for Chil-

dren in 2004; in 1997, when she became chief executive of Stonham Housing Association, now the care and support arm of 55,000-home Home Group; and in 1992, when she started as chief executive of Phoenix House Housing Association, now Phoenix Futures, an organisation that works with young people with drug and alcohol problems.

When asked why she decided to make the move to Hanover, she sim-ply says that ‘someone rang me up and it just kind of clicked’.

But this is a woman who doesn’t enter into anything without rigorous examination.

Over the past couple of years, she’s been chair of the charity Help the Hos-pices’ commission into the future of hospice care. ‘That introduced me to some of the important policy issues around older people,’ she explains.

As well as her own investigation into older people’s housing, the work produced by her new organisation during the Hanover@50 debate, which involved it publishing research documents on housing and ageing by nine think tanks between April

“People assume very quickly you know what you’re talking about.”

IH.140214.022-024b.indd 22 12/02/2014 10:12

home housing association Guinness Partnership for the past three years (see box: Around the houses).

‘Clare was never really away from housing,’ says Mr Tickell. Neverthe-less, he adds: ‘I’m really pleased she’s back in our corner.’

Career pathAs our interview progresses, Dame Clare becomes increasingly animated and enthusiastic.

‘I did social work at university, but did a great long placement at Shelter and discovered housing that way,’ she says, charting her career history.

‘Everywhere I’ve worked, even in my last job, it has been a truth that if people don’t have good quality hous-ing other aspects of their lives suff er.’

Shortly after the coalition govern-ment came into power in 2010, Sarah Teather MP, then minister of state for children and families, commissioned Dame Clare to chair an infl uential independent report into the early years of children’s lives.

Later, she was outspoken about the impact welfare reform would have on vulnerable children. It is clear she will be just as vocal about the impact of welfare reform on older people. Although they have, to some extent, been protected from the government’s welfare changes, many Hanover residents are anxious about

24 | Inside Housing | 14 February 2014

and June last year, also drew her in. ‘They were a big pull,’ she says.

‘They were just so interesting.’England’s population of 64 to

84-year-olds is expected to increase by 39 per cent between 2012 and 2032, according to future trends anal-ysis by healthcare charity the King’s Fund, which uses 2001 and 2011 cen-sus information to make predictions. The number of over-85s, meanwhile, is set to rise by 106 per cent over the same period.

What can we expect Dame Clare to bring to the increasingly important older people’s housing sector?

Her cousin, consultant James Tick-ell, is a director at Campbell Tickell. He lists her ‘laser intelligence’ and ‘burning commitment to social jus-tice’ among her attributes.

In 2008, Third Sector magazine readers voted Dame Clare as their ‘most admired chief executive’.

Mr Tickell believes she will make an equally strong impression on hous-ing. ‘The demands of leadership are the same, whether it’s about young people, substance users, homeless-ness or older people,’ he says.

Even when she was at Action for Children, one of the UK’s most well-established charities supporting vul-nerable children, Dame Clare kept up to date with the housing sector. She has sat on the board of 60,000-

what the future holds for them, says Dame Clare.

‘They’re aware of the economic context in which we’re living,’ she explains. ‘They read the papers and they see that a large proportion of the welfare bill is spent on older people and those with disabilities.’

Dame Clare would like more infor-mation about the direction in which welfare reform is heading. Will there be more cuts and, if so, what impact will they have on Hanover residents who are worried about how they would cope with less money?

‘There’s a basic thing about getting some clarity about what the future looks like, not just over the next 12 months or so, but what does welfare reform mean for older people [in the longer term]?’ she says.

Given that there is a general elec-tion coming up in 2015, ‘it would be really helpful for political parties to include in their manifestos some clar-ity’, she argues. ‘What we don’t want

is older people not making choices because actually, they don’t feel able to because there’s uncertainty.’

‘We all know that people are living for much longer and leading much more active lives. There are a whole set of complexities [around that], so let’s properly have those conversa-tions. What does well-being mean? How do we engage older people?’

Dame Clare has come back to a housing sector that has changed dra-matically in the past decade. ‘It’s much more complex than it was,’ she says. ‘When I started in housing back in the day, it was very straightforward. We got grant money, we got a lot of grant. That’s so diff erent now, not only because grant levels are much lower, but also because private sector build-ers and developers can bid for what small amounts of grant there are.’

Commercial thinkingAt Action for Children, she got used to thinking commercially. Although the majority of the charity’s income came through local authority con-tracts, ‘an incredibly signifi cant minority came from independent fund raising’, she explains.

‘The advantage of having worked in supported housing [at Stonham] was that it had a set of quite complex rela-tionships with the Probation Service and so on. So actually, it had to be more commercial,’ she adds.

Sir Stephen Bubb, chief executive of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations, describes Dame Clare as being ‘very rooted in social purpose’. He adds that she combines this with having a ‘very strong chief executive background’.

He believes she has commercial acumen, but has not lost sight of why she’s doing the job. ‘Some social housing organisations have become too business-like, they try to play down their social purpose, which is ludicrous,’ he says.

‘How you are contributing to peo-ple’s quality of life, particularly people who are vulnerable – whether that’s because they’re poor, young or old – is really important for me,’ explains Dame Clare. ‘It’s why I do what I do.’

But that doesn’t mean she has any answers for Hanover in particular and for the problem of providing enough housing for older people in general. Yet.

Fifteen days into a new job, ‘you don’t know enough to know what you don’t know’, she admits.

Dame Clare certainly knows better than to rush in with hasty solutions, but no doubt ideas are bubbling away under the surface.

‘Is this a new challenge for me personally? Yeah. Totally,’ she says with a laugh. ‘Am I up for it? Totally.’

Comment on this story at www.insidehousing.co.uk

For three years, Dame Clare Tickell has sat on the board of Guinness Partnership, and is due to stand down at the end of the financial year.

‘It’s been really helpful,’ she says. ‘It’s helped me to understand how different

the housing sector is now to when I was working at Stonham [Housing Association].’

Throughout her career, Dame Clare has taken numerous non-executive and advisory roles at organisations ranging

from Praxis, which supports refugees and

migrants, to the Howard League for Penal Reform.

For six years, she was on the board of the Information Commission.

When fulfilling such positions ‘there’s always lots of relevance to your substantive job’, she says. ‘I find that very stimulating

intellectually.’At the moment, Dame

Clare chairs the community, voluntary and local services honours committee, awarding MBEs, CBEs, OBEs and other honours to people working in various sectors including housing. She also sits on the main committee that makes the final recommendations as to who should receive an honour from the Queen.

Dame Clare has two sons, aged 23 and 25. ‘My kids are grown up now. Looking back earlier on in my career, that’s when those work/life balance [issues] were bigger.

‘I think I’m probably a bit of a workaholic in a sense. I think probably my partner would say that, but not in a bad way. I just like to be doing a lot, not just sitting twiddling my thumbs.

‘I like to have different things [going on], I like cross-fertilisation.’

“There’s enormous uncertainty… what does welfare reform mean for older people?”

Around the houses

Hanover residents are anxious about She has sat on the board of 60,000-

For three years, Dame Clare Tickell has sat on the board of Guinness Partnership, and is due to stand down at the end of the financial year.

‘It’s been really helpful,’ she says. ‘It’s helped me to understand how different

the housing sector is now to when I was working at Stonham [Housing Association].’

Throughout her career, Dame Clare has taken numerous non-executive and advisory roles at organisations ranging

from Praxis, which supports refugees and

migrants, to the Howard League for Penal Reform.

For six years, she was on the board of the Information Commission.

When fulfilling such positions ‘there’s always lots of relevance to your substantive job’, she says. ‘I find that very stimulating

Around the houses

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