our Self Assessment

Coastal Housing Group – Self Assessment January 2015
Context
2014 was a year of change for Coastal. Our longstanding Chief Executive, Tim Blanch
retired and our Group Finance Director, Debbie Green, took over the Chief Executive
role in April 2014. We had other changes at the top too, our Development Director left
in January 2014, our Housing and Maintenance Services Director retired in the autumn.
Our Head of HR was promoted to a newly created Director post created a Head of HR
vacancy. So after some rigorous but successful recruitment we have some excellent
candidates who will bring us new skills; we will have our virtually new senior
management team in place by March 2015.
At a time when we have had two vacancies at Director level, we have worked closely
and collaboratively with our Board to develop a governance model where we have the
right structures in place and the right culture to promote an appropriate mix of support
and challenge. Our Board established a Governance and Remuneration committee to
take our Governance strategy forward and to own Board performance. In 2014 we also
appointed new Chairs to our Board, Finance and Development Committee and
Governance and Remuneration Committee. We have recently co-opted a new Board
member with accountancy skills who joined us in January 2015 as Treasurer and will be
taking over as Chair of our Audit and Risk Committee. The Board of our “for sales”
subsidiary, Pennant, runs co-terminously with the Coastal main Board. We are pleased
to have a skilled and diverse Board both in relation to gender, age and length of service.
We manage strategic risk collectively as a Board and Management Team. We jointly
attend a annual strategic risk workshop facilitated by Zurich Risk Consultants which
assesses sector risk and strategic risk specific to Coastal.
In terms of service delivery, 2014 was a year of transition. Coastal already has a
reputation for delivering excellent landlord services. In the light of Welfare Reform, and
through an organisation wide debate about “the right thing to do”, we are moving
towards a more pro-active, person centred and community focussed housing
management service. Our frontline staff have asked tenants in our communities the
open questions; “What matters to you about Coastal’s services?”, and “What does a
good life look like to you?” Working with Vanguard consultants we have used the
answers to these questions to develop a whole organisation “outside-in” approach to
service redesign. Because our change programme is a holistic one Vanguard have
worked with us on an action learning basis commencing in 2014 and lasting into spring
2015. For the detailed programme see Appendix 1.
We remain financially strong and took part in the early round of financial viability
assessments this year achieving a pass.
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Content
This document tells the story of where we are now, what we will be doing over the next
few years, and why; the detailed documents appended will provide additional evidence to
back up this self assessment.
Core Principles of Self Assessment and their application within Coastal
The Housing Association Circular Self Assessment, Guiding Principles for Housing
Associations in Wales, sets out a number of principles that could underpin an effective self
assessment; they assume a top down approach to learning, change and improvement. The
Vanguard method of systems intervention works in the opposite way; bottom up, and aims
to create a self organising (complex adaptive) system that has the flexibility and capacity to
deliver what matters to individual tenants and service users. The following section lists the
main working principles that Coastal uses in applying the Vanguard method to learn and
improve, and explains for ease of reference what the equivalent principles are in the Welsh
Government document. It is important to note that the two methods follow a different
logic, by following the Vanguard method Coastal will not be seeking to apply the core
principles in the manner described in the circular. For a detailed read across for self
assessment principles to systems thinking continuous improvement principles see the table
“Systems thinking is a better way to make the work work” – Appendix 2
“Use self assessment as a live tool, WG” - in Coastal we use systems thinking as a live tool
which facilitates continuous improvement. “Assess your performance by reference to issues
and services that matter most to your customers, WG” – Our systems are designed at the
outset to deliver “what matters most” to our customers, in this way we put citizens at the
heart of everything we do. We ensure we know what customers want through capturing
and analysing demand and identifying value demand and failure demand. Some examples
of demand we have captured are contained in Appendix 3.
We then measure our systems capability to deliver the work so that the customer receives
the right service at the right time. We have a set of leading and lagging measures for our
key systems; leading measures relate to what matters to customers, e.g. was a repair done
when they wanted it and fixed right first time, lagging measures are a consequence of
doing this; these are typically reducing costs, increasing capacity, more satisfied customers
and more engaged staff. Work that does not deliver what matters to the customer is waste
and eliminated. This is a self adjusting system so that receiving feedback from customers is
done systematically, that is as part of the day to day work, so does not require a separate
“performance assessment” and changes to the system are made in real time in response to
the information we get from our customers and our measures.
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“Consider broader community based achievements, WG”- we know that “what matters” to
tenants predictably includes the quality of the wider community environment, relationships
with their neighbours and communities and the ability to use their skills and give something
back; precisely what this means in practice will vary from community to community. Our
community based intervention work carried out at our Cwmfelin Estate in Swansea, and
more recently in our Swansea North East Area, illustrates how we are designing work to
address issues that matter to customers, and also pulls in broader community based work.
Equally “engagement with residents and other service users, staff and key external partners,
WG” happens systematically as a result of “pull” and design of the work, our community
intervention described below evidences how this works in practice.
“Ensure that improvement priorities are managed effectively, WG” – in Coastal, eliminating
failure demand and waste and ensuring that systems deliver value work, “what matters”, is
the responsibility of staff in the work and frontline team leaders and managers.
Improvement priorities are integrated with the work by the people doing the work and are
implemented by staff who have delegated authority to act on the system; therefore no top
down management is required. By application of continuous improvement methodology
supported by the Vanguard method, a manager’s job is specifically to ask the following
performance related questions all the time, and resolve the systems issues raised:

What are we here to do - what matters to tenants, service users and customers?”

How do we currently do it and why do we do it that way?

What gets in our way or wastes our time?

How do we know if we have done it well?”
“Ensure that assessments of performance are objective and based on outcomes, or end
results for customers, and provide evidence for your judgements, WG. We use measures to
assess performance and alongside these we consistently ask the “what matters” question.
Examples of evidence includes measures, data on our business intelligence system Qlikview;
collated “what matters” answers from the community intervention, and surveys such as
Coastal’s 2012 Tenants’ satisfaction survey; the Big Tenants Survey by Housing Partners
2014, and the All Wales Tenants Survey, 2014. These surveys are all submitted as part of the
Welsh Government checklist of documents required.
Performance reporting to Board is described in more depth below.
“Ensure there is active board engagement and ownership of the self assessment, WG” – In
Coastal, the Board’s role in conjunction with senior management is to

act on the system,

understand and support the can do culture,

know what system reviews and other initiatives are taking place, and

recognise what we are learning from them and how improvements are being
implemented.
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In May 2014 at the Board away day the Chief Executive presented on the external
environment, the implications for our tenants and for how we need to deliver our housing
services in the future, in the knowledge that assessing “where we are now” would not deliver
the right services and support for tenants in the light of welfare reform. A copy of the
presentation is provided in Appendix 4.
As a consequence of the ensuing discussion the Board decided to invest in the work with
Vanguard and commence our current change process.
During the course of 2014 there has been a rolling programme for Board members of
presentations by staff and reports. This enables Board members to satisfy themselves with
regards to our delivery outcomes, and how we are applying systems thinking, for example:
February
Welfare Reform Update Report
March
Presentation on Lean Review of applications process
Targeted Recruitment and Training Update
May
Presentation on Lean Review of Rent Management
July
Presentation on the Community Intervention – purpose and methodology
August
Stakeholder Survey Report and Discussion
September
Lean Intervention Programme Update
November
Presentation on Digital Inclusion
Targeted Recruitment and Training Update
Maintenance - Repairs Team Performance and WHQS update
Strategic Risk Update
Supporting People Update.
Performance reporting to Board
In addition the Chief Executive provides a general written update to each meeting, the
quarterly management accounts pack is extensive and contains performance data on voids and
arrears as well as other key areas, and key maintenance statistics including gas safety, void and
repairs performance are regularly reported.
We have recently reviewed our quarterly performance reporting and we will be producing a
new report “our performance”, sent as part of the WG document request, which we will be
publishing on our website and in our magazine.
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Structure of the self-assessment
The narrative of this document follows the flow of Coastal’s purpose rather than the order of
the delivery outcomes. However for ease of reference where referred to the delivery outcomes
and demonstration points are shown in red.
We make sure our purpose is clear and we achieve what we set out to do - knowing who
does what and why - We have strong, accountable leadership, with clear, informed, transparent
decision-making to ensure we achieve our purpose; the whole organisation is aligned to delivery
of purpose and has the capacity, skills and tools to deliver successfully. Our planning, selfassessment and performance management, (using the Vanguard method) supports delivery of
our purpose, and ensures we continually improve.
Vision and values
Vision - Coastal is a values led organisation; historically Coastal’s vision has been to
“offer a choice of homes that you, your friends, your parents, or your children would be proud
to live in, and that meet the needs of the communities that we serve. To contribute to the
social and economic development of the areas within which we work.”
We believe we have met the aspirations of our original vision and that this is embedded in our
work. Building on the original vision, since 2014 we have been working towards a new vision,
which has emerged from a narrative amongst our staff, which is to
“provide homes and services that enable our tenants to thrive and the communities we serve
to prosper, supported by, growing our social business and extending the reach of our homes
and services “
Values - We are informed in all that we do by our values which are
Trust
we trust our staff to get the job done
Respect
we respect our tenants and our staff and have a no blame culture
Innovation
we try new things so we can do things better
Learning & growing we think about what we do and learn from it
High Standards –
we are proud of what we do and aim always to deliver the right service
at the right time
Purpose
We have been clarifying our purpose so that we are fit for the future and to ensure that “the
whole organisation is aligned to delivery of its purpose and has the capacity, skills and tools to
deliver successfully”.
Our new Chief Executive and the Board has led a process to engage with our tenants, our
stakeholders and our staff with a view to shaping future service delivery. Our stakeholder
survey was completed in June 2014 and is included in the documents requested.
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In our community intervention, which commenced in our Cwmfelin Estate, as well as asking the
“what matters” question” we also asked tenants individually what a good life looks like for
them, see the section on our Community Intervention.
Our community intervention project
Our corporate plan consultation, also in the list of documents submitted, describes how we
have engaged with different groups of stakeholders and what we are asking.
What happened next?
Tenants - we are continuing to roll out our community intervention work into new
communities. The success of our intervention now means that we are embedding this new way
of working; we have recently started to do this in the whole of Swansea North East where we
have roughly one third of our stock, and using the learning to inform how we structure the
department, and deliver all our housing management services in a way that further supports
our tenants’ lives, more information on these changes is outlined in Our community
intervention project below.
Stakeholders – we held a stakeholders event to feedback the results from the stakeholder
survey at which the Chief Executive gave the following presentation, Appendix 5 – “Coastal
Housing Where Next?”
Staff – we held an all day staff event in late September 2014 to talk about our future, looking at
both the work and how we support and engage our people. The Coastal Away Day presentation
is in Appendix 6.
Corporate plan
Our new interim corporate plan “supports delivery of our purpose, and ensures we continually
improve”. The plan, submitted as part of the requested evidence, contains a detailed narrative
against which the management team deliver. We will be reviewing our plan in early summer
once our new Director of Homes, Communities and Services, and our Finance Director are in
post.
Achieving clarity of purpose
As a result of the work we have undertaken in 2014 we are clear that our purpose is to:

Sustain tenancies

Sustain communities

Sustain our local economy, and

Sustain Coastal
This is a whole organisation approach, working as one team that asks itself the question; “If
what we do doesn't contribute to purpose, why are we doing it?”
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Principles - We also have a set of principles which guide how we make decisions in the work.
We have specific principles for:

sustainable lettings

sustaining tenancies and communities

maintenance that matters

developing sustainable homes and communities

providing services to support Coastal, and

leading and improving in a systems thinking environment (our management team
principles)
These are contained in Appendix 7
We design systems to deliver against our purpose as described above. The rest of our
assessment is therefore split into four sections; sustaining tenancies, sustaining communities,
sustaining our local economy, and sustaining Coastal. For ease of understanding we describe
our innovative community intervention project as an introduction to the four sections because
it contains information and learning which is influencing all areas of our work.
Our community intervention project
This innovative piece of work was designed to fulfil a number of interlinked objectives

Embed the continuous improvement principles behind the Vanguard Method

Understand the likely impact of Welfare Reform on our tenants and our communities

Understand our Housing System from the perspective of a Community – a whole system
approach

Recognise how we can learn about and support community development

Introduce an “assets based approach” that sees tenants as people with potential, so a
resource with skills and talents, not a cost

Deal with demand from our tenants and service users proactively not reactively, and

Invest our resources where they can best make a difference in the community
The project involves working with Simon Pickthall from Vanguard and learning by talking to
tenants out in their communities. We have released a number of staff from their days jobs to
focus on this work and the project is being led internally by two relatively junior staff who are
also being trained up in this methodology; Kevin Hedges, our Applications team leader, and
Emma Denyer, our ADAPT Housing assistant. We have also made available a dedicated space
for the team, a “community intervention zone” on the first floor in our offices; staff from other
teams often drop in to find out what’s going on and what we are learning. This is a significant
evolutionary change process; by managing it “bottom up” so learning from tenants out in our
communities and staff “in the work”, we are achieving buy in, understanding of, and
commitment to the changes we are making.
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Fundamentally we are developing an “assets based” approach to community development.
We started to pilot this approach in the summer of 2014, talking to tenants in their homes in
Cwmfelin where we have approximately 200 units comprising a mix of flats and houses and
also a supported scheme and some low cost home ownership properties. First of all we
visited tenants and asked them open questions about “what maters to them in relation to
Coastal’s services”, and “what does a good life look like to them”, see appendices 8-9.
We also mapped community assets by asking tenants what skills and abilities they have. In
addition we used our business intelligence system to pull together all the data we already
hold on the area, analysing it from a number of different perspectives.
In addition we undertook a piece of work in Sandfields to understand demand and the
waiting list better. We asked questions to learn what maters to people on the waiting list,
we looked at a sample of applications, and the predictability of length of tenancies and
tenancy ends. The community intervention meeting notes for October 2014 in Appendix 10
summarise what we learnt and what we wanted to do next as we moved on to a wider piece
of work in Swansea. The staff team themselves decided that they wanted to roll out the
work into the whole of a team leaders “patch”, Swansea North East, and this will be
followed by embedding this approach into the remainder of our stock in the Spring.
During this transitionary period we are gaining more knowledge, challenging our
assumptions and changing our approach, and the community intervention team are learning
new skills. This initiative is wide ranging and is influencing how we think about and deliver
our landlord services across the board as described below.
SUSTAINING TENANCIES
We place the people who want to use our services at the heart of our work - putting the
citizen first - we design our systems so that we know our current and potential service users
and tailor our services and activities accordingly, for example by asking the “what maters”
and “good life” question”. Our services are designed flexibly and have the capacity to
respond to individual demand, therefore they are “shaped” in real time with performance
being measured in relation to the question - did tenants and service users receive the
outcome that matters to them? If we are unable for any reason to deliver the service that
tenants want, then staff feed back to their teams and managers so that we can review and
change our systems to better meet tenants’ needs and lead to better outcomes. Normally if
“things go wrong” we put them right either straight away or very quickly without recourse
to senior management, as a consequence we receive very few formal complaints. When
things “predictably” go wrong this is a system issue and we act on the system to resolve it.
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Contacting Coastal - Our tenant survey and our answers to the “what matters” question
indicate that tenants are happy that we are “are easy to contact, and respond in a timely,
efficient manner”. Because we have a generic area based housing management system
tenants have a relationship with their housing manager which means “we make it easy for
people to understand what to expect from our services and how to access them”. This also
means that housing managers are individually “accountable to our tenants and service
users”
Contacting us by phone - We know that 83.7% of our tenants contact us by phone; our
main phone line comes through to our housing services team and on average is answered
within 7 seconds. We have introduced a degree of specialism within the team so we now
have a general phone group, and groups looking after applications and lettings, and a
group looking after rents; maintenance calls are put through to our repairs schedulers. We
have good phone monitoring software and know that on average we only lose 2-3% of calls
and we follow lost and abandoned calls up as a matter of course. 82% of our tenants find
us easy to get hold of and 90.8% find us helpful, against benchmark figures of 75.5% and
86.1% respectively.
Use of texting – We have automated texting facilities, for example tenants can text
“Balance” and receive their up to date rent balance, or text “Repair” for us to contact them
to book a repair. We can send repairs reminders, text tenants about issues such as arrears
and communicate any major scheme issues such as , lift breakdowns, and heating
problems.
Our website - Our website contains a comprehensive tenants’ area. We have improved the
content of our website over the last year and the “bounce rate” that is people looking at
the welcome page and then going no further has halved over the last year. We also know
that the majority of traffic to the website now is from tenants accessing the tenants’ area.
We are in the process of security testing a web front end to our housing system that will
enable tenants to look up their rent balance, report repairs on line, look up repairs
appointments etc. Before this goes live we will test the prototype with a group of tenants.
Social media - We use a variety of social media and we publish our in house magazine
“220” so that we can “communicate information and advice in an appropriate, timely,
effective manner, readily understood by the communities we serve.”
http://www.coastalhousing.co.uk/Pages/Magazine.aspx
We will be surveying our tenants in February to make sure that our communications are fit
for purpose and that our tenants can contact us easily and through the channels that they
prefer. Our internal auditors have just completed an audit of our Customer Services
function; their report is very positive and is included within the list of documents
requested.
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We let homes in a fair, transparent and effective way and we manage our homes
effectively.
We are proud of our housing management and landlord services; our tenants’ surveys
performed in 2012 and 2014 were both very positive, particularly when looking at the
underlying data which shows that the levels of very satisfied tenants are materially higher
than the benchmark of our comparable peer groups (2012), and than the Welsh sector
average, (2014). Our tenants’ surveys are submitted as part of our evidence list.
In addition the Big Tenant Survey carried out across the UK by Housing Partners ranked us
second overall in the UK based on the question “are you likely to recommend your landlord
to other people”; the net promoter score.
However we are acutely aware that in the light of welfare reform unless we have a wider
service offer, we will not be able to help tenants sustain their tenancies. We need to
understand them more holistically, engage with them more proactively and offer better
support. When we talk about support we mean helping people to help themselves; so an
asset based approach. By facilitating Asset-Based Community Development we are ensuring
the sustainable development of our communities based on their strengths and potential. By
asking the question “What skills do you have?” we are assessing the resources, skills and
experience available in our communities, and helping the community organise itself around
resolving those issues that are most important there.
The work we have been doing throughout 2014 and continuing into 2015 is about realigning
the whole organisation behind this approach, not only because we believe we need to do
this to help tenants pay their rent, but more fundamentally because we believe it is the right
thing to do. Whilst this process is an evolutionary one, building on our culture and our
successes to date, it is still a major change programme. In early 2015 we rolled out the
community intervention work to Swansea North East; so the whole of one of our three team
leader’s patches, roughly one third of our stock, is now working in this way and asking
tenants “what matters” to them. This will help us to decide what structural changes we will
need to make, what new skills staff might need and how best we might support them to
learn these when we embed the approach across all our stock. There are also
complimentary initiatives running with Vanguard to embed our new approach.
Our waiting list, lettings and approach to homelessness
We are starting to work with applicants and future tenants on our waiting list, and our local
authority partners in a different way, to help “ensure routes into our housing are well
publicised, easy to understand and simple to use” We maintain our own waiting list which
was designed on the back of a lean review some years ago; we also let homes to tenants on
our transfers list and take nominations from our local authority partners. Both local
authorities are currently reviewing their approach to ensuring housing accessibility.
Swansea – in Swansea we are actively involved in the “Improving Access to Housing Project
Group”. This project aims to ensure that partners work together to deliver the homelessness
duty, and that there is a common access point for applicants as follows. All providers will:
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



provide information on availability on their website
ensure information feeds in to the Swansea housing council website
share potential applicant information with other providers for assessment, and
provide information on homelessness.
Neath Port Talbot – in Neath Port Talbot the local authority is working on developing a
Common Housing Register and Policy, and is considering moving to choice based lettings. We
are actively involved in this group, in particular to help with a systems thinking approach, to
share the learning from Swansea, and, to ensure that whatever system is adopted is lean and
fit for purpose.
Coastal – we are starting to have different conversations with people looking to access our
housing. Historically we have developed area based housing registers as we know that
generally speaking because people have networks and commitments in place, they can only
accept housing in specific areas. In addition we are now aiming to get tenancies right from the
start. What we mean by that is by having a full understanding of peoples’ circumstances we
are better able to support them, either directly ourselves or by working with other
organisations, and give them the right service, understanding that sometimes housing may
not be the best answer in solving their problems.
Homelessness duty - Who we let our homes to may be one of the most difficult decisions we
have to make, we cannot house everyone in housing need due to limited supply, and we have
to make these difficult decisions balancing degrees of need with how we best create
sustainable tenancies and sustainable communities. To “ensure that access to our homes is
fair and open” our housing team has developed a set of principles, our overriding principle is
that
“We will actively work with applicants and allocate tenancies to people where we can add
the most value”
Adhering to this principle consistently means that we can define what “fair” looks like in
relation to lettings, therefore “we give reasonable preference to those who are in greatest
housing need or are homeless and we work with other organisations to prevent and alleviate
homelessness maximising choice and sustaining communities”. We consistently work with
vulnerable and homeless clients, at the moment we are working with a prison leaver and a
long-term homeless person, using our new proactive approach to help them manage and
sustain a tenancy.
Nominations - In the last annual reporting periods the nominations received for Swansea
were running at 53%. The process is different in Neath Port Talbot because the majority of
nominations come from people in temporary accommodation etc., and also because of our
stock profile. In light of this the local authority accepts that the 50% target is hard to achieve.
We are working with them to understand the concept of sustainable tenancies, for example
we know that if a tenant wants to live in Neath, offering them a property in Sandfields, Port
Talbot, away from family and support networks is unlikely to result in a successful tenancy.
We are running the innovative Tenancy Sustainment Course in Neath Port Talbot, see
Tenancy Sustainability Scheme below, and this should result in placing applicants in a better
position to be able to sustain a tenancy.
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Homelessness and Voluntary partners - We also work closely with voluntary partners such
as Dewis and Swansea Young Single Homeless Project, SYSHP, to help prevent and alleviate
homelessness. We support Shelter Cymru’s activities locally and have provided speakers
for and sponsored their last two local conferences.
Preventing homelessness – In England and Wales in 2014 the number of tenants evicted
hit record levels largely due to welfare reform and benefits cuts. However because we
have a pro-active approach to housing management we act to prevent homelessness and
put support in place for those at risk of becoming homeless; only 23 tenancies in 2014
ended in an eviction; 15 due to rent arrears, 7 due to ASB and one due to deception.
Currently tenancies in Margam, Neath town centre and Mount Pleasant, Swansea are most
likely to fail, and we put more intensive housing management in place in these estates.
We also create balanced communities, in partnership with the local authority, for example
through our City Living scheme, which is sensitive to the need to support urban
regeneration, described further under “sustainable communities” below.
Getting it right from the start - To support our approach to fair and sustainable lettings we
undertook some experimental work in the Sandfields area of Port Talbot; we phoned
everyone on the waiting list in that area to understand them better and to ask them “what
matters”, to help us to make better decisions when letting properties and to “get it right
from the start”.
In addition one of our initiatives involves matching properties with potential tenants
sooner so that tenants can see properties when they become void. This means that
tenants can have input into decisions about whether they want to keep existing carpets,
curtains or any furniture or white goods that may be left in the property. Also they can
discuss with us what their expectations are with regards to redecoration etc. This means
that not only are we letting “homes we are proud of” but also that tenants are deciding
“what matters” and defining on a bespoke basis what “ready to let” means for them.
Overall this approach means that “we know and are responsive to people’s individual
housing support needs and help them to sustain their tenancies. This process is explained in
a flowchart for viewings: see Appendix 11.
Our tenancy sustainability scheme is a complimentary initiative. Launched in Autumn
2014 this is run in conjunction with Open Communities and Welsh Tenants. The
programme is the first of its kind in Wales and is targeted at prospective tenants who are
looking to begin a tenancy for the first time as well as existing tenants who are struggling
to sustain their tenancies, equipping them with all the skills and knowledge they will need.
All those who successfully complete the course receive a Tenants Accreditation Scheme
Award in Tenancy Sustainment and are offered an optional third day of IT Skills training.
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Specialist skills - We are learning that we need a variety of specialist skills to help tenants
sustain their tenancies. We have undertaken some initial training with Sian Williams from
the Toynbee Institute on financial inclusion. We work closely with the credit union,
especially Neath Port Talbot Credit Union and also helped establish Moneyline Cymru in
Swansea. We understand that we may also need money advisors in house and we will be
considering this further as part of our intervention work in Swansea North East. We
participated in a digital inclusion project funded by Communities 2.0 focussed on older
people, and have continued to invest in this post out of our own resources spreading the
work over a wider tenant profile. We are trialling a “digital inclusion hub” in the Waun
Wen Area of Swansea in an empty shop premises with Communities 2.0 and we will be
providing free training and classes to the end of March.
Measurement - To measure how a tenant that we are working with feels that they are
progressing and how we are supporting them to add value to their lives, we are beginning
to use the outcome star model. This data is kept on our web-based database Harmonia so
that we can measure trends over time and aggregate information at an estate based level.
Employability and Skills - We have created two new roles, Employability and Skills
Manager, and an Employability and Skills advisor so that we can focus on employment and
skills development with our tenants and build on the work placements we already have.
We are also looking at volunteering opportunities for tenants and are collaborating with
Shelter in their Western Bay project which creates opportunities for their service users and
our tenants to train as homelessness advisors. We are targeting initiatives for younger
people, for example we will work with Shelter to set up a Duke of Edinburgh Awards
Programme, commencing June 2015. We have also made links with the Princes Trust.
Tenancy Support Scheme - We continue to provide tenancy support services for tenants
with more intense support requirements such as mental health issues, substance abuse
issues, learning difficulties etc, some of this work being funded through relatively small
amounts, circa £200k in total, of supporting people monies. In addition we are increasingly
investing our own resources and mainstreaming support work for all but those with the
most complex needs. Our independent living assistants provide a peripatetic support
service for older people across all our stock. We continue to run the award winning ADAPT
scheme for partners in Swansea and more recently in Neath Port Talbot and we “ensure
that our adapted homes are available to those who need them”
We have roughly 500 homes where our tenants are supported by a variety of managing
agents, for example Swansea Young Single Homeless Project (SYSHP), Dewis, Community
Lives and Esgyn (now part of Gofal). Part of our work in 2015 is to work even more closely
with these partners and other third sector organisations such as Caer Las and Shelter so
that we can map out how best to use our resources collectively to provide the right
support for our tenants at the right time.
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Domestic abuse / violence
Coastal Housing is on board with “Raising Awareness of Domestic Abuse”. We have policies
and procedures on Domestic Abuse for both Housing (tenants) and Workplace (staff) which
are accompanied by the comprehensive document “Domestic Abuse - Guidance,
Information and Resources”. All staff receive Domestic Abuse Awareness Training run by
Calon DVS, Welsh Women’s Aid. For our documents on Domestic Abuse see Appendix 12
The approach we are now taking with our housing management is a more intensive,
proactive, support based service; in recruiting our new Director of Homes, Communities
and Maintenance Services we have deliberately recruited someone with a support and
asset based background to take our housing management service forwards. We are also
considering reducing the size of patches that our housing managers look after, and
concentrating more staff in these small area based teams. We have taken an outline
proposal along these lines to our November Board and will be working up the proposal in
more detail as part of the budget and resource planning process in early 2015. A diagram
depicting how we want housing management and maintenance services to work is
contained in Appendix 13.
Welfare reform
Across the sector welfare reform is one of the major strategic risks. In addition to the work
we are doing with tenants individually, we undertook an extensive tenant profiling exercise
in 2013 and that data is available in an easy to interrogate format on our business
intelligence system, Qlikviiew. We reported our progress in responding to Welfare reform
in the Welsh Government in October 2013. More recently the community intervention
project is allowing us to indentify people that may not previously have been identified as
being at risk. For example it has become clear that a life changing event triggers risk and
we need to be able to identify when this occurs.
Tenancy sign up - In relation to tenancy management at tenancy sign up “we make clear the
rights and duties of the tenant and landlord, and act to uphold these rights and duties in a fair and
responsible manner and we use the most secure form of tenancy compatible with the purpose of the
housing.” We also “support tenants to prevent arrears of rent and service charges arising and act
quickly to avoid arrears building up. We recover any arrears fairly and effectively, whilst helping
tenants to meet their due payments” As a result of our in depth work in Cwmfelin, we have a
better understanding of various “trigger points” that adversely impact tenants ability to
pay their rent; for example the initial costs of moving and furnishing a new home, a
breakdown of a relationship and changes in working hours for those in part time work or
on zero hours contracts. We are in the process of introducing new working practices so
that we are systematically alerted to these triggers and provide support to tenants,
including financial advice, as quickly as possible. When we are letting properties, as
described above, we are asking the “what matters” question so we can leave the right
furnishings in properties and we will be looking to do a wider piece of work so that we can
help tenants source recycled white goods etc.
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Roll out of universal credit - Neath Port Talbot is one of the areas where Universal Credit
will be commencing in February, 2015. Initially only new claims from single people and
couples will be included in the Pilot. We attend local DWP forums etc and information we
gain from the pilot will assist with the eventual roll out to all our stock; we will trial our
own Direct Payment Pilot later in the year. Because the roll out of Universal Credit is still
at a very slow pace this will enable us to change our ways of working with tenants in time
for the large scale switch over to Universal Credit.
“We manage our homes to ensure that they are in demand, maintained, modernised and
adapted, as people’s needs change and by doing so we keep empty homes to a minimum to
maximise the number of homes available and our revenue” The majority of our stock is in
good condition and in areas that people want to live. Where we have older rehabilitated
properties, for example in the Mount Pleasant area of Swansea, we have a specific
strategy where we will dispose of those which are least fit for purpose and have a
potentially high maintenance liability. We re-invest the proceeds in renovating and
reconfiguring other stock in the area, for example converting properties from a number
of bedsits into a smaller number of one bedroom flats.
Our rents are affordable to households on low incomes, take account of the costs of
managing and maintaining our houses, and enable us to service borrowings. We set,
apportion and collect rents and service charges in a clear, fair and accountable manner,
giving a say on the nature and quality of services we provide which are not covered by
rent. 83.8 % of tenants consider that the rent they pay is good value for money, All Wales
Tenant Survey 2014. However our stock is 1.1% (85p per week on average) over the
target rent band set by Welsh Government due to historic factors caused by the rent
benchmark regime because we have a high proportion of smaller properties, one and two
bedroom flats, within our stock. We will therefore not be applying the full rent rise of
2.7% and are taking a proposal to our Board in January which considers different options
we could follow to work towards rent convergence in accordance with the policy. The
maximum financial impact of these options is estimated to be around £37k so not
material in our overall budget.
Our rent roll gives us adequate resource to manage and maintain our homes and service
our borrowings. We consult with our tenants in relation to improvements which are
service chargeable, and make sure that we provide improvements and services that they
want at a reasonable cost. For example tenants support the installation of CCTV, parking
barriers etc and highly value our caretaking service which is largely service chargeable.
Housing younger people - We have also sought to respond to an increasing housing crisis
amongst younger people who can no longer get on the housing ladder, we are one of the
partners in the Welsh Housing Partnership joint venture and by the end of 2015 will have
acquired an additional 284 houses that are predominantly let to younger people and
families at intermediate rent. We are also at the early stages of establishing a lettings
agency, again very much aimed at providing a rental product for younger people via a
more responsibility run lettings agency with transparent costs and fair rents.
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We repair and maintain homes in an efficient, timely and cost effective way. “We
provide an efficient and effective responsive repairs service which meets the requirements of
our tenants”, our tenants survey shows that our tenants are happy with our repairs service,
85.3% compared with the all Wales average are satisfied with our service of which 61.6%,
compared with the average of 45%, are very satisfied. We are currently completing all our
repair jobs in an average of 5.53 days. Our 2012 survey showed we were out performing
our peer group less in relation to “attitude of workers” and “dirt and mess” less than in
other areas of repairs. One of the factors influencing our decision to set up our own repairs
team in 2013 is that this gives us better control over the work, informal feedback suggest
that tenants like the Coastal repairs team and performance in attitude and quality of work
has improved. We will be using automated texting to send a repairs survey to tenants
immediately after a job has been completed.
Building on the success of establishing a small multi-skilled team, we have also TUPE’d over
our electrical repairs contractors, bringing the size of our repairs team to 21. We have
recently put in place scheduling software integrated with our systems so that we can
allocate work more effectively and we have also introduced a repairs app. which means
that we can log repairs jobs in real time.
Our maintenance team have been working with Vanguard on understanding systems
thinking, being clear about purpose, fixing right first time and to the right quality at the
time convenient for the tenant, and developing a new set of measures. We currently fix
77% of jobs first time. Due to the success of this team we will be employing four more
team members.
Existing stock and WHQS
“We have deliverable and affordable plans for the lifetime maintenance and improvement of
our houses and we deliver maintenance programmes efficiently and effectively”. We have
met WHQS and 96.5% of our tenants are satisfied with the quality of their homes of which
59.5% are very satisfied, compared with the all Wales average of 82.9% and 44.6%,
respectively. We manage replacement works flexibly and sympathetically; for example we
will not carry out component replacements if tenants do not want them, typically older
tenants may not want the disruption. We have a comprehensive and detailed asset and
maintenance management strategy which was approved by our Board in November 2014;
the document is included within the requested documents.
Health and Safety
Gas safety – during 2014 we changed the way we programme gas servicing to a 12 month
‘rolling’ cycle of services with the aim of commencing the service 4 weeks before it is due.
There are also changes around the number of letters that are sent out before taking legal
action and forming closer working relationships with the Housing department to try and
achieve 100% compliance. We report gas servicing statistics to the Board regularly, our
most recent report (December 2014) showed up-to date gas safety certificates at 99.62%.
We have also just implemented a gas safety app which means our contractors can now
update our system with the up to date CP12 (gas safety certificate) at the point the test is
complete. For further details see our Gas Servicing Process provided as part of the
documents requested.
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Fire Safety - We have surveyed all of our schemes comprising communal areas and all have
an up to date fire risk assessment (FRA). THE FRA has either been undertaken in-house (on
smaller schemes or properties) or by external consultants for larger and more complex
schemes.
We are also working closely with Mid and West Wales Fire Service (MWWFS), and we
regularly discuss schemes and scheme related risks with them. In 2013 Coastal partnered
with MWWFS to work on new lettings. On new lets Coastal provide the Fire Service with
tenants details and they arrange a home visit where they assess the tenant’s risk and
discuss and offer fire safety advice to the new tenant. On some of our larger city centre
schemes we have recently invited residents to meet the Fire Officer and Housing Manager
who participate in a ‘Q & A’ session with them. The Officer also visits individual flats if
tenants are vulnerable or have particular concerns. For further details see our Fire Safety
Policy provided as part of the documents requested.
Asbestos - All our schemes containing communal areas have had an asbestos survey
undertaken on them and details are updated on our asbestos register. Our system allows
us to tell staff or contractors where asbestos may be present on their work order so that
they have this information before starting work.
We will be undertaking asbestos surveys on our older properties, that is those built before
2000, and we have a rolling programme to complete this over the next 3 years. For further
details see our Asbestos Policy provided as part of the documents requested.
Legionella - We perform legionella surveys and have reports on all our schemes that
contain centralised hot and cold water storage systems and we have upgraded the storage
systems in some of our older schemes. For further details see our Legionella Policy
provided as part of the documents requested.
SUSTAINING COMMUNITIES
We engage with others to enhance and maximise outcomes for our service users and the
community. We know, from the results of our tenants’ survey, and asking the “what
matters” question, that tenants believe that “neighbourhoods, where our properties are
located, are attractive, well-maintained, safe places to live, where people want to settle and
stay and provide a good quality of life for our tenants and their neighbours” Simply put our
tenants think that we are a good landlord. Our community intervention project, described
above, is about how we develop a whole organisational approach, working closely with our
partners, to delivering proactive support services for our tenants and communities.
Anti-Social Behaviour
We are proactive in dealing with incidents that could develop into anti-social behaviour.
These issues are dealt with by our Housing Managers quickly and holistically and not in
isolation from other tenancy issues. Therefore there is no passing on of responsibility and
issues are predominantly “nipped in the bud”. Seven tenancies ended in eviction in 2014
due to ASB issues.
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Collaboration and Partnership Working
Coastal tends to work in informal partnerships rather than formal collaborative
arrangements. We engage in partnerships when by doing so we can better deliver our
services to tenant, so a demand led approach, and we have a reputation for being an
excellent partner to work with;
“When asked about their experiences of working in partnership with Coastal Housing,
interviewees were almost exclusively positive. The organisation was variously described by
its partners as open, honest, helpful, accommodating, accessible, friendly, professional,
flexible and supportive”, - excerpt from our stakeholders survey.
For more on partnership working and stakeholders see “Coastal Housing Group Partners'
Perception Study 2014” our stakeholder survey included within our documents requested.
We engage with all relevant parties and organisations and embrace the principles of
partnership working to enhance our delivery, and we work collaboratively, and form
appropriate alliances to develop and deliver enhanced services, managing risks
appropriately and protecting our housing assets. One recent example of engaging with
others to enhance and maximise outcomes for our service users and the community is
Coastal’s involvement with Walsingam and Keyline Builders Merchants to renovate a garden
and develop vegetable patches, flowers beds and a patio area at the Willows, a scheme
which supports people with learning disabilities. The vegetable patches and other new
additions will provide the nine supported residents with a fantastic environment to grow
plants and food, which in turn will support skill development.
Our work supports the Local Authority in the delivery of its strategic housing role and we
have a strong relationship with Local Authorities in the geographical areas where we
operate, that enable us to find effective solutions to local issues, and improve outcomes for
communities. For example Coastal has also worked with the local authority and Swansea
Young Single Homelessness Project (SYSHP) to design a new supported living scheme in
Gorseinnon for eight service users supported by SYSHP. Coastal has worked up the design
and will be developing a bespoke scheme having helped SYSHP with their community
consultation which was successful in being granted planning permission and winning round
local residents despite some initial opposition.
Community Decline
We have a very small number of estates in the Neath Valley area which are remote. One of
these is Bron Allt, Crynant an estate of 56 flats in the Dulais Valley. The flats are of a good
quality, but there was very little demand. As a response we established a tenant
management co-operative, there is now a good community spirit and flats are easier to let.
We have agreed with the local authority that 2 bed flats in the scheme can be re-designated
as 1 bed with a study to alleviate bedroom tax issues.
LIFT Programme - Also in the Neath Valleys one of our schemes, Ynys Lee, is in one of the
Communities First areas covered by the LIFT programme. As not all the flats are in demand
in the scheme we are in the process of undertaking the business planning for changing the
use of one of the blocks of flats on the estate to a biking centre to take advantage of Afan
Forest Park’s mountain bike trails. We are being supported by CHC’s building enterprise
programme in terms of business advice and are working closely with the local Communities
First representative. We are currently forecasting that we will deliver training outcomes,
work placement opportunities; preparation for full time employment opportunities and
potentially 8 jobs, for details see Appendix 14.
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City Living - We also create balanced urban communities; where we are engaged with
urban regeneration, especially in Swansea City centre, we have developed in partnership
with the local authority the “city living” scheme which aims to bring people back into
work or ensure employment is more sustainable by facilitating easy access to city centre
jobs.
Health Strategies - We have developed the NPT Local Health Board Surgery, and more
recently we have started to engage with the Chair and the senior team of ABM ULHB to
explore opportunities for working together. The Health Board are particularly interested
in using our knowledge and relationship with our communities to ask health related
questions which will help them in delivering on preventative health initiatives and we will
be meeting with them to discuss how we might progress this in early 2015.
Managing a Housing Development Programme
We build and renovate homes to a good quality - We build good quality housing which is
sustainable and meets the long-term needs of the area in which it is to be built and of
existing and intended residents; our proposals for new and renovated homes demonstrate
financial viability and represent value for money now and in future. We consider risks and
manage them to protect our core housing activity.
Coastal has a large development programme in Swansea and Neath Port Talbot, is
contributing to the WG agenda of increasing the supply of affordable housing, and has
developed a specialism in complex mixed use urban regeneration schemes. We built 216
homes during 2013/14 and will build at least a further 139 by 2017. Pennant Homes built
13 homes for sale in 2013/14 and is committed to building a further 22 new homes by
2016. Our financial viability judgement states “The level of committed development
included in the forecast is within our expectations of what the Group can achieve and is
sufficiently funded. There is a track record of the Group delivering schemes of a similar
size in the past to those currently being undertaken.”
As a result of our successful track record Coastal is the preferred partner with the local
authorities in Swansea, Neath Port Talbot and Bridgend town centre for their Vibrant and
Viable Places and People programmes.
Environmental Sustainability - Coastal took part in a Code 4 pilot for sustainable homes
in building its scheme for over 55’s in SA1, Harbour Quay and we continue to work closely
with Professor John Littlewood at Cardiff Metropolitan University in the department of
ecological built environment research and enterprise. We make sure we create
sustainable communities and our development decisions are taken in close liaison with
our housing managers and also our Board who take a long term view of how we create
and sustain communities, for example we will take into account factors such a proximity
to schools, public transport routes etc when thinking about where we might acquire
development sites. Our development department work closely with our finance team in
terms of working up financial viability of schemes and ensuring also that we can meet the
cashflow commitments of development spend as and when they fall due.
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Our development department are currently working with Vanguard to look at
development as an end to end system and how we can best learn from decisions we
make about design, materials and components so that we “build right first time” and do
not create medium or long term liabilities for our maintenance department. This review
involves talking to tenants about what matters to them about how their homes are
designed; and we are looking to embed tenant engagement as a natural part of the
process in terms of project reviews, ensuring feedback is sought through meaningful
dialogue and interaction with residents rather than sending out questionnaires. We will
also use this information as evidence to feedback into any WG DQR review process.
We provide fair and efficient services for owners
We sell houses fairly and efficiently through Right-to-Buy/Right to acquire schemes and
we provide fair, efficient and effective services to leasehold and shared ownership
owners. In addition to our rented products, we offer a range of other housing options,
including building for outright sale, Homebuy and leasehold schemes. All these options
receive the same services at the same cost as our rented tenants.
Right to Buy and Acquire - Applications to buy are dealt with by Pennant, our “for sales”
subsidiary. Pennant determines whether the applicant is a qualifying person and the
property, a qualifying one. Pennant will instruct the valuer and obtain details of service
charges, if any, and long term maintenance and will make the offer in accordance with
the regulations.
We also have our own scheme “Disposal of Housing Stock to Sitting Tenants” for
tenants who want to purchase their home but whose property is not covered by the
right to buy or acquire schemes. This scheme sets out the criteria which have to be met
for us to consent to the sale.
Leasehold owners – We have two leasehold schemes in Swansea, Oaklands Court and
Runnymede, with 25 and 32 leaseholders respectively, and we have established
relationships with the residents of those schemes. Each of the leasehold schemes has a
residents’ committee whose role is to advise us on the effectiveness of services; to
determine how services should be delivered; to provide feedback on repairs; and to
ensure that provision is cost effective and reasonable. We have also sold properties
under the Right to Acquire, 20 of which are flats sold under lease
Shared ownership properties - historically we provided houses for shared ownership,
thirty of which remain and they are scattered throughout our stock. We also built and
sold 80 shared ownership apartments for older people at Mariners Court in SA1.
Homes for Sale - Pennant Homes is currently building houses for sale and Homebuy at
Parc y Dderwen in Pontardawe, and Maes y Ffynnon near Cross Hands.
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SUSTAINING OUR LOCAL ECONOMY
We improve economic, social and environmental circumstances in the local community.
We aim to promote community regeneration as well as physical and urban
regeneration; we know that much of our stock is located in areas of high levels of
poverty and multiple deprivation including some of the Communities First areas, and we
believe that it is important for Coastal to play its part in alleviating poverty and
inequality, and sustaining and growing the local economy as this will in turn benefit our
tenants and our communities.
Urban Regeneration and Commercial Property
We are specialists in urban regeneration and our flagship regeneration scheme is Urban
Village Swansea. As well as 76 social housing flats, including 10 wheelchair adapted
units, we have built seven new retail units and circa 40,000 square foot of office space,
part of which now provides the location for Coastal’s main office. We have been
successful in attracting the Evening Post and the Community Interest Company,
Indycube to the office space and we have successfully filled all the retail units, five on
commercial terms and two with meanwhile use occupants. Our commercial property
portfolio now stands at roughly £10m on our balance sheet and we have been
successful at letting units at good covenants, therefore maintaining balanced sheet
values.
Supporting new local enterprises - As part of the High Street regeneration initiative we
offer new independent local businesses favourable terms to bring activity and
employment back to the area. For example we offer progressive rental structures and
have adapted individual shop units in Urban Village to suit the needs of the particular
shop owners such as Raspberry Cakery, where we helped with the fit out and even
painted the ceiling pink for free.
Jobs and training - We employed a Targeted Recruitment and Training Co-ordinator to
ensure that we maximise the community benefits derived from development and
maintenance contracts. We are one of the five housing associations that took part in the
pilot of the Value Wales toolkit for measuring community benefit. To date for every £1
spent as a result of a contract we have created a return of £2 community benefit in the
local economy. In 2014 we created 101 opportunities including placements, job
opportunities and apprenticeships. Building on this success we have just created the
post of Employability and Skills Manager which will more explicitly target opportunities
for work experience, training and apprenticeships and job opportunities at firstly our
tenants and secondly our local communities. This role will be supported by an
Employability and Skills Advisor. We also employ a Community Inclusion Manager to
address the more complex issues in our communities, for example taking forwards the
work in the Afan valley LIFT area in our estate in Ynys Lee, and promoting our Tenancy
Sustainability Scheme.
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Innovative community engagement and support - In addition we are working with the
artistic and social enterprise community in the High Street in Swansea as part of our
creative cluster initiative linked to the Urban Village. We are lead partner, working in
conjunction with Volcano Theatre, in the successful Ideas People and Places project
located in the High Street which is funded by the Arts Council. We are also taking
forwards an initiative to develop the old Iceland store in High Street as a community
resource for which we have sourced free business advice support from Community
Housing Cymru’s Building Enterprise scheme.
SUSTAINING COASTAL
We make sure our purpose is clear and we achieve what we set out to do knowing who
does what and why, and we live public sector values, by conducting our affairs with
honesty and integrity.
How we align the organisation behind purpose and our values is described on page 5. Our
values were elicited through a series of workshops with staff and Board.
We demonstrate good governance through our behaviour - Our governing body exercises
proper control over our activities, and acts in the best interest of the organisation and its tenants
and service users. We are independent from other bodies and operate in line with an appropriate
constitution.
Governance
Coastal’s Board are supportive of CHC’s code of governance and their Chief Executive has
contributed towards it development. Coastal has put in place a governance strategy and
improvement plan, which, amongst other things, has resulted in the formation of the
Governance and Remuneration Committee. This committee meets quarterly and had its
inaugural meeting in September 2014.
Coastal has processes in place for the recruitment of new Board members and we
recently recruited the new Treasurer through an open recruitment process. We have
updated our skills matrix and believe that we have the right skills mix to meet the
demands facing the organisation over the next few years. The Board is also diverse in
terms of age and also gender, with seven female members and four male members; there
are three tenant members one of whom is our Vice Chair.
We undertook one to one reviews with all Board members in 2014 and developed a plan
based on the feedback. Our committee structure enables the Chair of the Governance
Committee to take the lead on Board performance and improvement. Board
performance is crucially also about Board culture; as a result of a number of away days,
strategic risk workshops and close involvement in the recruitment to a number of senior
posts our Board has got to know each other well and is able to work as a cohesive team
ensuring that everyone’s skills and capabilities are being fully utilised. There is a
constructive relationship between the Chair and the Chief Executive and the Board and
the wider management team, with an appropriate balance of challenge and support.
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Board renewal has largely happened naturally due to the needs for new skills or members
standing down for personal reasons. Currently are Board members have served on average
circa four years. We have a Board succession policy in place which balances the need to
refresh the Board whilst maintaining the necessary skills mix appropriate for managing our
strategic risks.
Our Board has responded to the recent consultations in relation to governance; Coastal has
a track record of attracting a good standard of Board members including those with legal
and financial skills and is not intending to pay Board members or have the Executive on the
Board.
Tenant involvement and participation in governance
We currently have three tenant members on the Board. In line with our ethos of a more
‘person centred’ and ‘asset based approach, we see tenants as a wealth of resources with
skills and talents to be tapped into and used to their full potential. Therefore we want to
develop an approach that supports tenant participation by working with tenants who are
naturally active in their communities. These are people who typically have the skills that we
would be looking for, they know their local areas and communities well, have established
contacts and links, and are interested and engaged in their neighbourhood.
We want to create a “road-map” that gives these tenants a chance to get involved with
Coastal in a number of ways which would give them an opportunity to gain experience of
different facets of the organisation. This would be a platform that allows tenants to come
together to really make a difference to a wide range of services. Tenants are ideally placed
to identify gaps, opportunities, and duplication in service delivery, and contribute to service
improvements. They could then use the experience of this involvement as a platform for
applying to become a Tenant Board member. This bottom up, community led approach to
tenant participation complements our systems thinking approach to involvement and
creates a natural progression path within Coastal to Board membership.
Group Structure - Our group structure supports the delivery of our purpose and efficiently
manages resources for the benefit of tenants, service users and the wider community. We are
explicit about interdependencies within the group, have clear and separate identities, control
potential conflicts of interest and ensure our assets are not put at risk by subsidiaries.
Diversification into other activities
Coastal Housing Group has one subsidiary, Pennant Homes, which is a non-charitable RSL,
through which the Group provides its sales and low cost home ownership; Pennant employs
the staff engaged in direct sales. Pennant has its own Chair but the Boards are run coterminously. The relationship between the two organisations is clear; the activities of the
subsidiary are managed so as not expose the Group to risk, and our financial information
shows the activities of Pennant on a stand-alone basis as well as showing the results of the
combined entity, so that the Board can ascertain that Pennant is viable in its own right and is
not putting the assets of the parent at risk.
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Public sector values
We are open about what we do, publish balanced information about our activities and
provide information on request, in an accurate, timely and efficient way unless there are
justifiable reasons for withholding it. We publish a substantial and engaging tenants’
magazine, 220, that also goes to stakeholders. We publish a simple annual report with
essential information about the organisation and comprehensive information is available
on our website, www.coastalhosing.co.uk
We make extensive use of our social media; we have 2,386 followers, and growing, on our
active twitter account, @coastalhousing, and an active and informative Facebook account,
https://www.facebook.com/CoastalHousing
We regularly hold open events for the public and our new open plan offices are designed
to welcome visitors. We welcome both positive and negative feedback and use every
opportunity to learn from others. In 2012 we invited Academi to carry out a study of our
communications via an “organisational raid”. Over twenty public sector managers spent
three days interviewing staff and stakeholders, and came back with recommendations on
how to improve communications which we have since adopted, for example creating more
ways of communicating “company” messages, through staff away days, and the creation of
the staff intranet. We held a successful stakeholders event in September 2014 to
communicate the results of our stakeholder survey and our future plans, and are
incorporating the feedback into our corporate plan.
We have an open culture, with members of the public, tenants and stakeholders such as
councillors able to speak directly to the people who are responsible for the area of work.
They are also able to speak to senior staff directly. We have good systems of information
and are able to retrieve information quickly.
We are also part of the All Wales Continuous Improvement Community, run by Welsh
Governments Academi, and will be hosting a ‘Learn and Share’ event in May or June for
other public and private sector organisations to give them an insight into our latest
systems thinking initiatives.
Equality and diversity
Our activities and services reflect the diversity of the communities where we operate, are
free from discrimination and promote equality of opportunity.
Our current community intervention and new way of working means that we understand
who our customers are and what matters to them. This means that we are able to provide
accessible and appropriate services and resources, individually tailored to meet people’s
needs within the communities we serve.
Our communities are designed to accommodate households of different sizes, ages and
economic status. New developments have a range of property types. For example at
Cwmfelin we have provided one and two bedroom flats, bungalows for disabled people
and two, three and four bedroom houses. Some supported accommodation is provided in
the flats, where people who are wheelchair disabled are supported by Gwalia.
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Where we let to people in work their take home pay is below the average. In Swansea in
2013/14, 53% of households housed in general needs housing were in employment and
their average take home pay per week was £279 against an overall average in Swansea of
£427 per week. In Neath Port Talbot the 40% of general needs tenants were in work and
their take home pay was on average £259. We are learning that significant numbers of
these people, whilst in work, may be in more financial difficulty and have problems with
budgeting, than tenants in receipt of full housing benefit. This is because of the
unpredictability of their incomes caused by zero hours contracts or periods with no work.
We are therefore able to put services in place to support this group of tenants.
We ensure that we “reflect the diversity of the communities”, by for example measuring
the lettings made to BME households. We know that there is a demand, particularly from
Asian families for houses in and around the City Centre and we have converted some
HMOs which we no longer required, so that they are suitable for occupation by large Asian
households. Over the past 3 years over 3% of allocations were made to BME households.
We work with a number of support organisations and provide flats and houses in the
communities in which people wish to live; where they feel safe; and where they can
receive family support
Equality Impact Assessment - We are committed to ensuring that the way we work does
not discriminate against anybody. Coastal is a member of Tai Pawb and our Head of HR has
recently joined their Board. Because equality impact assessments generally focus on
assessing policies, and Coastal is not a policy led organisation, we are working with Tai
Pawb to develop a methodology to perform equality impact assessments in a systems
thinking environment. In other words we want to be able to assess what actually happens,
rather than what a policy says should happen; we will be looking at how we provide
landlord services on the ground, especially focussing on how we deliver “what matters”
and how we respond to the “good life” question.
We treat the Welsh and English languages on the basis of equality.
We are able to provide our services in Welsh and English. We have Welsh speakers
available among the staff across departments and we hold a register of Welsh speaking
staff including what level their ability to read, write, speak and understand Welsh is. We
run continuous Welsh lessons for staff and we are supporting some of our staff to
undertake exams this year. We are surveying our tenants to make sure that we have up to
date information to tell us what language they choose to communicate in and what their
preferences are for written and verbal communication.
Leadership, culture and staff engagement - Our culture supports the delivery of our
purpose and outcomes, innovates, seeks new ideas and evaluates learning from others.
Good governance also depends on leadership, clarity of purpose and engagement of staff
in delivering our purpose and outcomes. Focus on purpose is described in pages 5-6 above.
With clear purpose our culture empowers staff to take ownership and try new things to
deliver better. Staff are encouraged to learn through the work and through engagement
with the sector and by application of continuous improvement methodology supported by
the Vanguard method, for example:
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
‘Check’: The What and Why of Current Performance

What are we here to do? – what matters to tenants

How do we know if we have done it well? (employees make decisions based on
knowledge)

How do we currently do it and why do we do it that way?
Applying the Vanguard method ensures that “the whole organisation is aligned to delivery
of its purpose”, can work innovatively across boundaries and “has the capacity skills and
tools to deliver successfully”
Coastal describes itself as an innovative and learning organisation and supports our staff to
innovate, try things out and not worry about the fact that things will occasionally go
wrong, but rather to learn from it; a no blame culture. Our stakeholders, in the 2014
survey, support this view with the word most commonly used to describe Coastal being
“innovative”.
Coastal is open to learning from other organisations, for example we visited Bromford
Group to learn about “the Bromford Deal” and we visited Wales and West and hosted and
visit from Wales and West to talk about their directly employed repairs service and job
scheduling, applying systems thinking to the development process, housing services,
welfare reform and arrears management, and implications for management behaviour of
working with systems thinking. We also carry out informal benchmarking from time to time
with our peers, for example in relation to maintenance performance.
We have participated in the Times 100 Best Companies to work for survey for the last
three years and have just received our results for 2014. We have retained our two star
status with a marginally improved score from the previous year. We will be analysing our
results and put a programme of workshops in place to improve further where we have
strength and address any areas where we are less strong.
We are a financially sound and viable business. We are adequately resourced to meet
current and future business and financial commitments. Our financial viability judgement
for 2013-14 is a pass. The document states that “Our judgement of the Group’s financial
viability remains unchanged from last year. The Group has adequate resources to meet its
current and forecasted future business and financial commitments.
We have a robust financial management framework.
Financial management at Board level - Key financial reports such as the management
accounts are produced monthly with the quarterly accounts being presented to and
approved by Board. These show a detailed variance analysis against budget and a forecast
spend to the financial year end. The quarterly management accounts pack is a
comprehensive document; the supporting pages to the accounts show what the factors
influencing the numbers are through a combination of further numerical analysis and a
clear narrative. This is an evolving document to make sure it contains adequate detail for
the Board to understand the financial position and performance of the Group, what the
risks are and how they are being managed.
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We have run financial training sessions with our Board to help them to understand and
interrogate the information. We also have people with specific financial skills on the Board,
our Treasurer is a qualified accountant with experience in the not for profit and supported
housing sector, and the Chair of our Governance and Remuneration Committee, the Chief
Executive of Swansea Building Society, has extensive experience in financial services and
treasury management.
Overview of tools for monitoring financial performance - For measuring and monitoring
financial performance, viability and liquidity over the short to medium term the Group
relies primarily on management accounts, cashflow forecast including projected gearing
forecast over a three year period, lenders covenant compliance reporting, treasury
reporting and the 5 year business plan.
Asset Register - Coastal recognises the importance of an up to date asset register. The
Register ensures that all the assets of the Group are identified and listed. In addition it is
reconciled to Land Registry title records in order to ensure that changes which arise from
for example charging property as security for release of private finance, or releasing
surplus security from lender’s portfolios, are properly reflected. Title plans are also
embedded into the Register in order to facilitate easy identification. Because the register is
integrated into Coastal’s rents system, other information such as tenure type can also be
reported at the same time, making the register a very powerful management tool. The
valuations which arise as part of loan agreements are fed into the Register in order to
provide a comprehensive valuation of the Group’s property.
Over the longer term the Group uses the 30 year plan to inform our views about borrowing
and capital and interest repayment profiles and the impact of the development
programme over the medium to longer term.
Risk Management
We can identify and appraise risks and prudently manage those risks.
Our strategic risk register, strategy and policy are contained in the requested documents
list. The Group’s Board and management team annually take part in a Strategic Risk
Workshop facilitated by Zurich Risk. The results of this exercise are contained in the
Strategic Risk Management Report. As a result the Group has identified key high level risks
which if unmanaged could impact on the Group’s ability to deliver its strategic priorities.
The current risks, in order of perceived risk, are:
1. Welfare reform – particularly the inability to identify vulnerable tenancies and support
and sustain tenancies
2. Local authority reorganisation
3. Engaging in merger activity, either forced to step in, or through restructures, which
jeopardises our own business
4. Failing to regenerate the High Street effectively
5. Inability to deliver the product mix as per the development strategy
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6. The Regulator does not understand our way of working and forms negative view of
Coastal
7. Failure to demonstrate good Governance to the Regulator
8. Maintaining longstanding stakeholder relationships with a virtually new management
team in place
9. Delivering refreshed vision and direction for next 3-5 years and having the right
management team with the skills to deliver
10. Shortage of free, uncharged, security
11. Data protection failure
12. Health and safety failure in relation to gas, fire, asbestos, legionella
13. Getting whole organisation understanding of the need to balance social purpose with
commercial activity and skills
14. Risks of not ensuring developments are sustainable and built in the right locations to
the right design – change in demographics and markets
15. Inability to recover from a major incident
Strategies for mitigating identified risks - The Group actively focuses on managing down
these strategic risks by considering current performance and looking to make strategic
interventions to deliver sustainable performance improvements. Our progress is reported
to Board on a six monthly basis, and the detailed report prepared for our November 2014
Board meeting, is included in the list of documents as requested.
Sector risks facing Housing Associations in Wales
Sector risks identified are financial and non-financial.
Financial risks - The following risks have been addressed by the Regulator as part of the
financial viability judgment process, income (including Supported Housing), liabilities
(existing debt and new debt), accounting issues (new standards), costs, pension costs, and
differential inflation rates. In Coastal these risks are managed down and controlled by the
robust financial management framework described above.
Non-financial risks – Our approach to these is described within the assessment. Hyperlinks
to the relevant sections are provided below:
1.
Governance
2.
Risk Management
3.
Welfare reform – but also see throughout the assessment as have a whole
organisation approach to tackling tenancy sustainability issues caused by welfare
reform
4.
Managing a Housing Development Programme
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5.
Diversification into other activities - we have a “for sales subsidiary” Pennant– see
Diversification into other activities – we also have a commercial property portfolio,
see Urban Regeneration and Commercial Property
6.
Existing stock and WHQS
7.
Community Decline
8.
Over-stretch and stagnation – we are successfully managing the challenges of a large
development programme – see Managing a Housing Development Programme –
Stagnation is not considered a risk
9.
Service risks:
 Welfare reform – see above
 Health and Safety sections on fire, gas, asbestos, and legionella
 Tenant participation, engagement, accountability – these are referenced
throughout the document, also see Our community intervention project,
SUSTAINING TENANCIES, and Tenant involvement and participation in governance
 See Existing stock and WHQS for delivery of WHQS, quality of work and customer
care
 Our waiting list, lettings and approach to homelessness – through to p14
 Anti-Social Behaviour
 Domestic abuse / violence
 Equality and diversity
10. Collaboration and Partnership Working
Value for money - We achieve value for money in delivery and procurement, to make best
use of our own and public resources.
As set out in our corporate plan Coastal aims to sustain tenancies, sustain communities,
sustain our local economy and sustain Coastal. Coastal has a “Value for Money Strategy”,
which directly supports our corporate objectives. Value for money savings will be used to:
 reinvest in sustaining tenancies and service improvements,
 reinvest in our stock,
 reinvest in our communities and local economy,
 reduce financing costs of delivering new homes, and
 make capital repayments on loans, and by doing so
 sustain Coastal.
Value for money methodology - The drive to pursue and achieve value for money is both
explicit and implicit in the way we work at Coastal. Achieving value for money is not
something that is considered separately from the day job, it is an integral part of it. In
practice a number of interlinked practices support the delivery of value for money:
1. lean systems thinking,
2. engaged empowered staff and an entrepreneurial culture,
3. a collaborative governance model,
4. pro-active relationships with stakeholders,
5. procurement, and
6. treasury management
For full details of our Value for Money Strategy and Value for Money Outcomes see
Appendix 15.
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Financial Probity
Our activities demonstrate the highest standards of financial probity.
Financial probity is about ensuring that financial transactions are conducted in a principled,
legal, prudent, effective and transparent manner. Measures in place to ensure this are

the Association’s Governance Structure and the oversight of the main Board, the
Finance and Development Committee, the Governance and Remuneration
Committee and the Audit Committee,

the Associations Code of Conduct which governs the overall conduct of Board
members and staff,

the Group’s Financial Regulations and Standing Orders and underlying policies and
procedures,

contracting with internal auditors, to confirm that these standards and systems are
in place and are working as intended, and

specifically maintaining the Association’s Audit Committee which receives these
reports.
Our external auditors attend Board meetings at the beginning of each audit to discuss
audit plans and audit risks directly with members, and when the audit is complete to
report extensively on their audit findings and present and discuss the audited accounts.
Our internal audit plans are designed to focus on risk and operational performance.
DG on behalf of Coastal - 30 January 2015
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