As a social housing landlord and provider of specialist care and support services we know that our customers, be they tenants or service users, may be anxious about how the announcements made in the Coalition Government Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) might affect them and their families. So what do we know so far?

It is still early days and we will need more details about how the CSR is to be implemented – it’s not law yet. The intention is that existing tenants will not have changes to their rent and security of tenure forced upon them. However, there will be changes for future tenants; but again, we need to wait for the complete picture to unfold.

At Metropolitan Housing Partnership (MHP) we will work hard to monitor what is happening and will keep all of our customers informed as we find out more about the changes and analyse their impact. We will work with politicians and civil servants to make sure that our customer interests are represented because their views count. We plan to work our socks off to find innovative ways to make things work for all of our customers and will look for opportunities in these difficult times. We will have to find ways to use our resources more imaginatively and we are already examining the way we provide our services to customers, looking for efficiencies and asking ourselves “is this the best way we can do things?”

Over the coming months we’ll be deciding how we can change what we do and paying close attention to what is happening outside the organisation, so we can adapt to the new external environment. The standards we are measured against will change as a result of a new regulation framework and we can’t be afraid to meet these challenges head on.

There is no doubt we will continue to do our best for our customers, but we all know that tougher times are on the way. Our aim is to understand the needs of the people we deliver services to in order to make the best decisions we can.

We want to be “Improving life together” as a partnership – and that requires teamwork. We rely on our customers sharing their opinions with us. Wherever we can, we will implement their suggestions and communicate their concerns to influence the approaches taken to social housing, and care and support.

We are committed to listening to our customers and some MHT London tenants and leaseholders are already making their voices heard. The videos below reveal that there is still a lack of clarity about the impact of the cuts, but as we get more detail our understanding is likely to change and so we will revisit our customers’ views. Here are some initial reactions from a few of our residents.

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MHP is a big charity with 80,000 customers, 38,000 tenants and many recipients of care and support who are vulnerable and in need of quality services that are costly to provide. It appears none of us is really clear what David Cameron will end up with from his Big Society idea. In addition, this Big Society relaunch will coincide with massive cuts in public spending and this does raise the possibility that the two will become inextricably linked.

When those cuts are defined more explicitly in the spending round we will all start to measure what the quantitative impact is likely to be. We will be able to check whether it was the pessimists or the optimists who were the most accurate pundits. We will have to manage what comes down the line as best we can and will do our best when this happens. What we do need to think about, in my view, is how we will judge the qualitative impact on people as these changes happen, and in the longer term, the real price of cutting the cost of services to the vulnerable.

I believe there is still great merit in the ideas regarding citizenship as a measure of what you do developed by David Clapham, Professor of Housing at Cardiff University, with the Chartered Institute of Housing in the mid-90s.

This work suggested that when you carry out an activity, or even say something, you should benchmark the impact that you have against three elements:

• What about the rights and respect offered to people (including their self-respect) and the recognition given to them?
• Are you having an impact on their skill and ability?
• Are you changing their willingness and intention to work with you in future?

This works just as well for groups as much as for individuals and a simple check as to whether the impact on these three factors is positive, negative or neutral should help in our analysis of what comes down the line from the Big Society.

In addition, there are other serious considerations. Is charitable and third sector involvement expected to be done for free in providing those services that are currently commissioned and paid for by local and national government? If so our contribution will be scaled down, not increased. Will we be expected to find volunteers to do the jobs that we pay for at the moment, and how many of my 2,350 paid staff could be replaced by them to deliver highly regulated services with onerous legal duties of care?

If some of the most vulnerable in society are going to be looked after for less money how long before the three citizenship measures applied to both the recipients and givers of support have a negative score against each? What impact will that have on our society as a whole?

The challenge for government, and us, will be to supplement what is needed as a fair and reasonable basic level of support with additional engagement by the wider community. How will this come together as we enter the age of austerity?

We are willing to do our bit, and leadership from government has to engage with our willingness to put our customers first. The Big Society will need more work and explaining before we can test it against the CIH citizenship challenge. Getting more people to volunteer is nearly always a great idea, but it does contradict the instinct to behave like that old Yorkshire saying – ‘If tha’ does owt for nowt always do it for tha’ sen’, in other words – ‘If you do anything for nothing always do for yourself’.

Note: Bill Payne was President of the CIH 1995-96 and commissioned the CIH research referred to above to generate a debate on the subject for his year of office.

Bill Payne, Chief Executive of Metropolitan Housing Partnership, introduces MHP’s new vision and values.

The six member organisations that comprise MHP are uniting together under one shared vision and one set of values. Our vision and values will strengthen understanding of the benefits and skills we gain from being part of this Partnership and show how we will meet our customers’ needs and the challenges of the future.

It’s important to know where we have come from to understand where we want to be.

Where we started

We’ve come a long way since 1957 when The Metropolitan Coloured People’s Housing Association was registered to meet the needs of immigrants and help them to find decent accommodation.

From our first three terraced properties in Hackney we now have a turnover of c£230 million and manage 35,500 homes, providing a diverse range of services, including care and support, to over 80,000 customers.

Where we are now
We are experts in delivering large scale regeneration programmes and award-winning homes, including construction of the first commercially developed Code Level 6 zero carbon sustainable homes in England.

At the core of everything we do is our commitment to listening to what our customers want. Effective customer and service user involvement enables us to share information, ideas and decisions to achieve excellent standards of service and good value for money.

Together we help improve the lives of thousands of people everyday. Our work helps to build communities, not just places to live, and we add extra value as a diverse social business.

Our future

We wanted our vision and values to reflect the positive impact and change we help create on individual lives, within the communities in which we work.

Our vision is simple and clear and our values are the foundations of our Partnership and the cornerstones from which we intend to grow.

This is our vision:
In all that we do, wherever we work, we are – ‘Improving Life Together’.

These are our values:

• We put our customers first and at the heart of everything we do.
• We deliver best quality services with the resources that we have available. Seeking continuous improvement and looking for new best practice with a locally focused solution to meet local demands.
• We are business effective and aim to be viewed externally with respect, and as experts within our sectors of operation.
• Finally, but not lastly, we have care and concern for our employees, our goal is to have happy people in the right place, with the best tools, doing the right job.

At MHP we dare to be different, we celebrate diversity and refuse to shy away from the most challenging work within the housing sector. We go beyond bricks and mortar, and our new vision and values reflect this.

The government has announced plans for its £90 million ‘Green Deal’, a loan scheme that will fund energy efficiency retrofit works to homes in order to cut energy bills and achieve the challenging carbon reduction targets set out in the Climate Change Act.

Under the Green Deal it is intended that high street shops, local authorities and energy companies will fund energy efficiency retrofit works to the tune of up to £6,500 per home. Households will then repay the amount over time from the savings on their energy bills (previously known as Pay-As-You-Save).

The government is not just seeking a small improvement in the energy efficiency of our homes, but must stimulate a radical shift in ambition towards zero carbon in all our homes by 2050, to achieve the legally binding targets set out in the Climate Change Act.

Here at Metropolitan Housing Partnership (MHP) we are familiar with the challenges of achieving even basic improvements to large swathes of our stock. We will achieve our Decent Homes targets this year, we lead the sector with our approach to large scale estate regeneration and were recent winners of the 24housing Retrofit Best Practice Award 2010 for our ‘whole house’ package of works that is halving carbon emissions on Victorian street properties in the London Borough of Haringey.

We know how to do it, but the biggest single barrier is financing this kind of work on an even broader scale. The kind of energy efficiency works, beyond simple loft insulation, that needs to be done is both expensive and very disruptive to occupants.

For MHP, we conservatively estimate that the average cost of zero carbon retrofit would be in excess of £30,000 per home, equating to a total cost of approximately £1bn. That means finding £25 million per year, every year, for the next 40 years. Even in a boom period this would be laughably optimistic. In these austere times, with very limited prospects of public grant and no rent flexibility, MHP knows it is crucial to take advantage of new funding initiatives. We recognise it is important not only to help achieve the government’s ambitious targets, but also to support our residents in the face of future energy insecurity and continued energy price rises.

The Green Deal is a step in the right direction, but it’s not the real deal. It is well short of the estimated costs of works required for many property types, and £6,500 per home will not be enough to complete work on our properties. Furthermore and perhaps most importantly, we are yet to see the evidence that proves the marginal savings of low-income households are enough to fund repayments on the Green Deal loan. The government estimates the Green Deal could save £550 each year for the most energy inefficient homes. We know that some of our residents don’t even spend that much per year on energy.

So whilst we cautiously welcome this first step and the government’s commitment to the energy challenge, we urge the government to continue to talk with the social housing sector to explore and develop new funding mechanisms that will help us to achieve these ambitions, embed the green agenda into the economic recovery and protect even the most fuel poor and vulnerable in our communities.

A key priority for NHS Lambeth in its five-year commissioning strategy is to reduce the impact of mental illness on individuals and the community. When they realised they needed to engage customers, they turned to Metropolitan Support Trust (MST) – our specialist care and support provider – for help.

Facilitating meaningful dialogue

MST places an emphasis on involving customers throughout the organisation. It is this experience that convinced NHS Lambeth to commission our services to help them understand how to improve adult mental health services in the borough. They tasked MST with setting up and facilitating a service user and carer engagement body that would create meaningful dialogue between themselves, mental health service providers, service users and carers.

Engaging customers

NHS Lambeth had previous unsuccessful attempts to set up similar groups. The aim was to widen the net, and provide a way for service users and carers who had not been engaged in formal service user/carer consultation to get involved and have their say.

Through promotional activity we recruited a few interested members to the engagement body, and they helped to recruit more members. We now have 16 services users and carers who work together to collect the views and feedback of other service users and carers in the borough. This not only spreads consultation further and makes it more meaningful, but also provides members with skills that aid recovery.

Social inclusion, well-being, employment

Throughout the process of information collection, Vital Link representatives and volunteers are provided with opportunities to engage in social networking, access free training and get back into employment.

The recovery principles on which the service is founded enables service user and carer representatives to set out their goals and visions in a personal development plan. This means that the experience they develop in the role can be channelled towards moving into work, training, employment or other services, with support from MST.

Some of the tasks representatives carry out:

• set up focus groups to gather the views and opinions of other service users and carers on the mental health services they receive
• get feedback on changes and developments taking place in mental health across the borough
• promote the aims of the group to other service users and carers, and encourage them to get involved.

As they do this, we will provide support and training to help develop their skills and confidence. By establishing strong, sustainable links with vocational services throughout the borough, we will provide clear pathways back into work and/or volunteering.

Meeting commissioner needs

Service user and carer priorities were established during Vital Link’s launch event in March 2010 and include:

• addressing issues around inadequate after-hours care
• preventing people from falling through gaps in services
• motivating people to get into and sustain training and employment.

The priorities form the basis of the group’s 12-month work plan, and are balanced with the requirements for user involvement within the work streams that form part of NHS Lambeth’s Mental Health Improvement Programme (MHIP) and improved care pathways.

Improving life together

MST offers a range of care and support services and innovative services such as Vital Link. For information, contact Mark Austin on 020 7501 2202.

If you would like to find out more about Vital Link, please email Naomi Graham

Paul Birtill, Director of the Migration Foundation, explains why the Migration Foundation has been launched and what it aims to achieve.

Migration happens. It’s a fact of life. People who are fleeing persecution need safe countries to seek refuge in and business leaders constantly argue that migration is essential for economic development. Nevertheless, the subject has continued to fuel some of the big political debates over the last 10 years. This was highlighted in the recent election with all parties talking about immigration caps and when immigration doesn’t work. But there was little talk about what does work and fewer solutions offered to make things work. This is where the Migration Foundation comes in.

What we will do

The Migration Foundation seeks to understand migration in the UK and make life better for new migrants and whole communities. We will do this through three main activities:

Funding in partnership

At the local level, so important to making migration work, we will fund innovative projects to try new approaches or extend something that works to benefit more people. By securing match funding from partners with similar interests, we will increase the bang for our buck, promoting the benefits further still. Like the Housing and Migration Network jointly funded with Joseph Rowntree Foundation and delivered in partnership with HACT. The network gives publicity to local projects and fuels the national debate about what needs support at the local level.

Research and evaluation

We will evaluate the projects we support to build an evidence base about how new migrants integrate and how communities respond and, indeed, plan for their arrival. We also want to offer our expertise to other organisations who want to address new migration issues. We’ll do this through our research and consultancy service that is dedicated to new migration issues, headed by Dr Charlotte Keeble.

Influencing policy and practice

It’s not just about building up evidence. We will use what we learn to make change. To influence policy and practice, to make life better for all.

Why we are well placed to make sense of migration

I’m proud to be the first Director of the Migration Foundation, and I’m committed to realising our vision of communities that feel and see the benefits of their diversity; where new migration complements and extends traditions. I know that our Chair Maureen Dalziel and the rest of the Committee are equally committed to realising our goals. We feel that we have a unique offer to make to our funding partners and commissioners. Not only do we have an exclusive focus on new migrants and the communities where they live and work, but we also have access to literally thousands of new migrants and wider communities through Metropolitan Housing Partnership and benefit from its 50-year history working with diverse communities. We believe we will make sense of migration – and we would like your help in doing it.

Keep in touch

Whether you are:

• a potential partner who may jointly fund a new programme
• looking to commission experts to help you resolve new migration issues, or
• an individual or an organisation with similar interests

…please do get in touch. Visit our website to find out more and to sign up for updates as we begin our journey. Migration happens. Let’s build a base of evidence on new migration that we can share. Let’s focus on how new migration can help to build on the richness of our communities. There’s real gold out there.

More about Paul Birtill.

It’s a new year and with it come fresh challenges and opportunities. MHP is shaping up for what lies ahead with a new Chair, Barbara Roche. Barbara is no stranger to MHP, having been on various member organisation boards since 2006. As a barrister and former MP and Government Minister, she brings with her a wealth of experience that will help us to deliver improving, innovative and diverse services.

At MHP we celebrate diversity and refuse to shy away from the most challenging work within the housing sector. That’s why in 2010 we will continue to:

• provide care and support services
• support refugees and asylum seeker
• regenerate communities
• implement a successful sustainability strategy and use the learning from our award-winning eco developments
• offer affordable homes for rent and affordable home ownership.

We don’t just manage homes we also provide help to the people who need it most, so our work ultimately contributes to a more equal society. In total we support over 80,000 households across the UK in many different ways, including:

• 36,800 customers who rent our homes
• 12,000 Care and Support service users
• 8,000 Metropolitan Home Ownership customers
• 12,000 Shared equity householders
• 2,500 refugees and asylum seekers
• 6,000 Home Improvement Agency customers
• 3,000 households affected by our Community Investment activity.

Four cornerstones guide our work, we:

• put our customers first in all we do
• have a passion for quality and do the best we can with the resources we have
• always look for the most business effective way of working
• have care and concern for employees.

This year the work we do will also be supported by sustainable growth and the consolidation of assets, so we can increase our financial strength and focus our efforts more effectively. For example, we will be reducing the number of local authorities we work with from 90 to 53 by swapping and selling homes with other housing associations in areas where we have few properties. This will require detailed discussions with tenants and other customers, as well as those local authorities affected. It should, however, help us to improve the services we provide. Consolidation means that some of our customers will have new and more local landlords, which should also result in them receiving an even better service.

The local communities we serve are at the heart of everything we do. Therefore we will continue to shape our organisation and the services we deliver to ensure our customers’ needs are paramount.

Bill Payne, Chief Executive, MHP.

So, I do not propose to offer any firm predictions here or pretend to have any special knowledge about the housing and mortgage market. However, I am an Aries, so you will realise I do have most of the answers but am too competitive to share them.

As Managing Director of Metropolitan Home Ownership (MHO) I am responsible for a team that helps as many working households as possible get onto the affordable home ownership ladder, or into reasonably priced rented homes.

This has been a pretty tough challenge over the last 12 months but we are firmly on track to have provided homes to over 1500 households by the financial year end of 31 March 2010. The good news, too, is that we have managed to house more people more efficiently by improving the speed we sell and let homes.

However, the overall positive picture belies the fact that there have been some large differences in how markets have performed. Sales have been far better in London and the East regions of the country than the East Midlands, where market prices are still falling.

Indeed for now and next year, I think the usefulness of national or even regional averages as a guide to investment in many market places will decline. The successful appraisal of new ventures and the management of existing business will require good local indicators and knowledge.

Our teams are spending less time trying to make sense of traditionally valuable data in a very unstable world and spending more time sensing what is going on in very specific areas.

We are also spending more time getting out and about in local market places, meeting stakeholders, customers and prospective customers than we are analysing data and trends that seem far more relevant to a housing and mortgage market of a bygone age. This type of working is of the utmost importance now as we face a general and some local elections. Whatever the political outcome we should expect major changes to housing policy and public funding, driven by spending cuts and a need/desire for innovation.

In my view, 2010-11 offers the certainty of more uncertainty, but with it comes exciting opportunity.

Predictions

• Unemployment or the threat of it combined with rising living costs will prevent or discourage some customers from buying or moving.
• Access to mortgages for lower income households and those with small deposits will remain difficult.
• If the success of recent Government mortgage relief, mortgage rescue and new homes subsidy schemes is continued fewer distressed sales will come to market and this will keep prices stable.
• The ending of public funding for open market equity schemes in 2010-11 (customers buy a home on the open market), traditionally one of the lowest risk and most popular methods of housing we do, will reduce the number of households we help by about 60%.
• Demand for what we do at MHO is likely to continue to rise this year as more households cannot afford to buy or get a mortgage through traditional home buying routes and the supply of new homes remains weak.
• A new shared ownership lease, which we worked on with many partners including the National Housing Federation (NHF) and Council of Mortgage Lenders, should make affordable new build home ownership much more attractive to lenders and customers by substantially improving investment security and raising standards of customer and stakeholder care.
• A simplification of the products and brands we use will make what we do more understandable to new customers and partners, giving them the confidence to take part in greater numbers in the market place.
• A new model of public investment by the HCA will encourage more private investment.

Graeme Moran, Managing Director, Metropolitan Home Ownership

Personalisation is at the top of the agenda for everyone involved in care and support services. The concept that everyone who receives support, whether provided by statutory services or funded by themselves, will have choice and control over the shape of the support they receive is fast becoming a reality. And it is bringing huge transformation to the industry.

What has changed?

The emphasis has shifted from a professional assessment and allocation model of services to one where the individual is at the centre. Where local authorities/Supporting People would offer bulk contracts, individuals will now understand upfront the resources available to them and play a leading role in deciding how their care and support needs can best be met.

What are the implications for commissioners and service providers?

For local authorities and commissioners the recent Department of Health milestones have set ambitious targets. During 2010 all new eligible service users and carers and existing service users who are due to be reviewed should be offered a personal budget. By 2011 the target is for 30 per cent of all service users and carers to be receiving a personal budget. Alongside this local authorities will be expected to demonstrate a shift towards preventative commissioning and the efficiencies this has delivered.

Local authorities are in the process of completing their commissioning strategies which set out their direction of travel. Inevitably service providers will be asked to work outside of existing funding arrangements, personalise existing services and develop the range of services they provide.

What does Metropolitan Support Trust (MST) think?

As an experienced provider of care and support services, we welcome the transformation agenda and personalisation of services and feel we are well placed to help local authorities meet their targets.

The preventative and individual focus of our support work is an ideal platform to deliver personalised services. Our support staff work with our service users using person-centred support planning to identify outcomes and the support needed to achieve them. We already have performance systems in place that measure how successful we are at meeting outcomes, and they have been adapted in preparation for personalisation.

What are the challenges for MST and other care and support providers?

Our challenge is to work with our existing customers, commissioners and the community to refine and develop services. We are already working with partners on a number of personalisation pilots and looking at our business processes and existing services to personalise them further. We need to work closely with our existing and potential new customers to understand what is missing from the services we currently provide. In parallel to this we need to develop people’s understanding of these services, and give them the tools they need to be able to act as informed customers.

Personalisation does bring risk and uncertainty for providers, with the need to adapt to less secure ways of funding and increased customer choice. At MST we aim to provide people with high quality services that represent value for money. Building trust with our service users is part of our core culture. We do this by working with people in an honest and transparent way. Our experience and the value we place on providing services that are person-centred, tailored to individual outcomes and focus on independence and prevention, gives us confidence in approaching personalisation.

To find out more about the agenda of personalised care and support services – and to find out how we can work with you, please contact me on 020 7501 2217.

Amanda Campbell-McGlennon, Head of Quality and Improvement, Metropolitan Support Trust

MHP has a long standing commitment to improving our environmental performance, so we followed the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit at the end of last year with particular interest. We hoped the talks would galvanise action on climate change globally, nationally and locally, providing a clear mandate for us as an organisation on how our staff, customers and partners can continue to support this crucial agenda.

The final Copenhagen Accord, written by just five countries and hurriedly reviewed by the other 187, falls far short of what was hoped would be achieved. With no legal obligations, no deadlines for action and no timescale for making the Accord law, many view the result of the talks as a failure that stands to jeopardise the lives of millions across the world.

As of the end of January, less than 30 per cent of the United Nations’ member states had signed up to the Accord. Pledges for emissions reductions fall far short of what is needed to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius – beyond which, experts claim, we will experience the most severe impacts of a changing climate.

So what does this mean for MHP and our customers? According to the science, climate change means more than just a warmer world: extreme weather events are set to become more severe and more frequent. This will result in more of the flooding and storms we’ve seen over recent years. More prolonged drought and water shortages too. Hotter summers will expose many of our more vulnerable residents to the health risks of overheating. Climate change is a very real threat to MHP, our homes and, most importantly, our customers.

Following the failure of the Summit in Copenhagen, it’s more important than ever that MHP takes strong action to tackle climate change. We’ve signed up to the national 10:10 campaign, which commits us to reducing our organisational carbon emissions in 2010 by 10 per cent, and that’s just the start of our ambitions. We continue to work hard to bring energy efficiency improvements to the homes and families who need it most. For us, helping save energy in the home is not just about cutting carbon, but saving customers money on energy bills and tackling fuel poverty.

We’re also learning important lessons from our award winning new developments that can be transferred to projects on our existing homes, such as how to make the best use of new technologies to provide low carbon heat and power, and retrofit our properties so they become low carbon homes of the future.

We’re working to develop our understanding of the ways our customers use their homes, so we can provide useful advice and support, as well as understand the best ways to improve them. We’re working with other housing associations to create alternative products and solutions that will supplement face-to-face advice and will help customers use less energy in the home, and make it easier to pay fuel bills.

In 2010 and beyond, we’re going to be building on our aims to make MHP a leader in sustainability by working together to make the individual changes that add up to big differences. If you want to be a part of the effort to reduce emissions, and take action with us, why not sign up to the 10:10 campaign at www.1010uk.org. To read about some of the inspiring things that MHP and our customers are doing to build a better future why not download our latest sustainability report at www.mhp-online.co.uk/sustainability.

Seb Junemann, Sustainability Officer, Metropolitan Housing Partnership