April 2015 CIH South West Conference 2015 A brave new world for housing These remain unprecedented times for the housing sector. RPs like yours, find themselves operating in an environment of heightened risk whilst being challenged to deliver against a backdrop of rising demand, reduced grant funding, tighter regulatory scrutiny and diversification of provider and activity. Your board is increasingly being tasked with overseeing non-traditional or core activities across a range of new and different business models so if they are to be fit for purpose in 2015 and beyond, they will need to understand more complex financial arrangements and ensure that their executives understand them too. Good governance is extending far beyond the traditional compliance-based, tick box exercise and calls for a holistic approach. Boards are under both media and regulatory scrutiny with recent attention focusing on care standards, procurement challenges, data breaches and fraud in addition to failures in gas safety, repairs and maintenance. To effectively manage these risks your board needs to instill your organisation with a shared culture of excellence, openness, transparency and continuous improvement at all levels. The devil is, as always, in the detail. Where Capsticks can help Capsticks is a top-ranking law firm to the social housing, health and social care sectors, with complementary expertise in local government and the third sector. Our housing team of over 50 social housing specialists have been advising RPs like yours on the detail for over 35 years, with an expert eye on the broader governance and regulatory context in which it sits. We provide legal and consultancy support across the full spectrum of day to day issues to over 150 RPs of all size, scale and ambition throughout the UK.
Capsticks LLP Every member of our team is a housing expert, so when we re advising you, we get it right first time every time without reinventing the wheel at your expense. To complement our legal expertise in the housing sector, Capsticks Consultancy Services is designed to provide you with services that are more than just the law. We believe in prevention rather than cure and our consultancy offerings, supported by an exceptional network of consultants, deliver the skills needed to help you run your organisation more effectively. We can offer specialist consultants in HR and organisational development, governance and regulation, mediation, anti-social behaviour, commercial and estates project management, clinical advisory/cqc and development services under a true one stop shop service. To follow is an overview of some of the areas where we can help your organisation. Governance and regulation Capsticks Governance Consultancy Service is a self-standing team of governance experts who are fully integrated within our legal practice including our social housing division, ensuring that our advice not only reflects best practice and guidance, but is also fully up to date with legal developments. Our experts work regularly with a range of codes of governance and regulatory frameworks and we partner with credible associates who have a strong track record of working within social housing. Our approach is to work in partnership with RPs from the outset in developing a flexible but robust approach to your governance review that will ensure your procedures and supporting arrangements meet and are consistent with the relevant regulatory requirements. Our team is always mindful of the heightened risk environment in which you operate as a result of the diversification of providers into a wider range of activities and more complex financial arrangements. This means that what has been good governance in the past may not be good enough now. Moving forward it is essential that the skills, expertise and experience of your board members are commensurate with this new complex landscape. Our review team will challenge the RPs they work with, bringing new ideas and thinking and delivering a governance review that benefits your organisation and your standing with regulators and other stakeholders. Creating a culture of excellence Creating a well-governed organisation that is able to grow and deliver whilst managing risk and maintaining effective engagement with stakeholders means recruiting and developing capable staff at all levels who will invest in your organisation s success. Excellence should be embedded in every part of your organisation and inform every decision. To achieve this you need to adopt effective recruitment strategies, leadership, training and succession programmes, absence
CIH South West Conference 2015 and performance management processes and pay and reward schemes. You may also be required to change staff roles, responsibilities and/or locations. Our team of nigh-on 50 employment lawyers, one of the largest and strongest in the country, is on hand to assist with all of these issues, helping your organisation meet its business and operational objectives whilst protecting you from avoidable risk. In addition, through our HR Advisory service, our HR specialists across our four national offices can advise you on the full range of employment issues you deal with on a daily basis. These can include board or executive remuneration, pensions risk and liabilities, local authority contracting, non-standard shift patterns, bank or casual work, trade union relations, vetting, barring and safeguarding and public sector equality duties. On a more strategic level we can advise you on large-scale or complex reorganisation and change of terms projects complicated by TUPE- inherited employment terms. Our HR Advisory specialists are all CIPD qualified experts each with an exceptional track record across the not-for-profit sector, so they fully appreciate the governance and regulatory landscape in which you operate and its relevance to HR. They are fully integrated within Capsticks and will help you deliver the practical as well as the legal aspects to a solution, supporting with everything from a one-off independent grievance or whistleblowing investigation, to a fully outsourced end to end HR service freeing you up to concentrate on your core business and delivering substantial costs savings. Our employment lawyers and HR specialists work closely together, building in advice from each other if needed (at no extra cost to you), to deliver a truly rounded, cost-effective service across the full spectrum of HR support. Protecting your reputation Increased use of social media means that good news and bad news alike can be quickly published to a wide audience. Our team of dispute resolution and reputation management experts can assist you in managing the legal and regulatory risks associated with use of social media and wider media attention. We can also help you handle complaints effectively by taking appropriate steps to counter criticism so they have a minimal knock-on effect with the HCA, Housing Ombudsman and others. We are experts in the law of defamation and its particular criminal and civil remedies. Defamation claims were up 23% in 2014 from 2013 (according to Thomsons Reuters) and we can guide you through the defense of these often high value claims, their cost and their risk. We provide clear user-friendly advice with recommendations in relation to the strength of your legal position and support you in managing the practical considerations around any actual or threatened claim. Integrating with health and social care Can health, housing and social care each operate in isolation? We all know that the answer is no, and that the main political parties are speaking out in favour of the integration of services. So, are you doing enough for your tenants and communities? We have all heard a lot about the barriers to integration: funding; relationships between the partners; the core business taking up all available resources; no way of assessing outcomes etc. Despite these barriers, innovative housing providers are successfully challenging local authorities and health providers to enter into mutually beneficial arrangements. These range in size and
Capsticks LLP complexity from signposting services, entering into arrangements to allow for the development of social housing on public sector land, to building step-down facilities to help individuals on the path home. At Capsticks, our immersion in the health, social care, and housing sectors means we are uniquely placed to help your organisation with the introductions to potential partners, to support collaborative projects get off the ground. We often give our clients a road-map to chart the way through a project. We can talk you through the range of structures that are available, and the governance and funding structures which are most effective. We have been advising on projects of this nature for more than 20 years, and so won t need to reinvent the wheel. We can advise on memoranda of understanding, joint venture agreements, prime-provider arrangements and sub-contracts. We can also help you with new corporate structures, like social enterprises and mutuals, including community interest companies and community benefit societies. Capsticks housing experts in every field In addition to these specialist areas, we offer full-service support to the housing sector across your business needs, from complex public law and procurement challenges, HR change management, multi-million pound development, regeneration, stock rationalisation and securitisation projects (with full after-sales service) to day-to-day commercial contract, housing management and anti-social behaviour support.
Your Social Housing contacts PHILIP BROWN Head of Social Housing 020 8780 4795 philip.brown@capsticks.com CHRIS GROSE Head of ASB Advisory 078 9480 7446 chris.grose@capsticks.com JENNIFER BENNETT Head of After Sales 01962 678 362 jennifer.bennett@capsticks.com MICHAEL OWEN Head of Housing Management 01962 678 376 michael.owen@capsticks.com Capsticks www.capsticks.com @capsticksllp KELVIN CHEATLE Director of HR Advisory 020 8780 4607 kelvin.cheatle@capstickshra.com London 1 St George s Road, London SW19 4DR T +44 (0)20 8780 2211 F +44 (0)20 8780 1141 DX 300118 - Wimbledon Central Birmingham 35 Newhall Street, Birmingham B3 3PU T +44 (0)121 230 1500 F +44 (0)121 230 1515 DX 13003 - Birmingham Leeds Toronto Square, Toronto Street, Leeds LS1 2HJ T +44 (0)113 322 5560 F +44 (0)113 242 2722 DX 713112 - Leeds Park Square Winchester Staple House, Staple Gardens, Winchester, SO23 8SR T +44 (0)1962 678 300 F +44 (0)1962 678 311 DX 2532 - Winchester MOOSA PATEL Head of Governance Consultancy Service 0121 262 6570 moosa.patel@capsticks.com SUSIE ROGERS New Homes, Asset Management 020 8780 4829 susannah.rogers@capsticks.com KEVIN STEELE Development 01962 678 371 kevin.steele@capsticks.com MARY SWAINE Consultant Employment and HR contact 020 8780 4858 mary.swaine@capsticks.com ev54.indd315