Full circle in housing allocations

The Housing and Property Law Daily web site reports that Stoke City Council has replaced its choice-based housing allocation system with a more needs-based system following a review by an external consultancy. It reports that the Council has implemented a new process from today (31/5) that allocates properties on a needs basis.

The HPLD site quoted from an article in This is Staffordshire, where the council’s cabinet member for housing, Gwen Hassall, stated:

"The move will mean that those people in greatest housing need will be helped more quickly and effectively as the new system will be more streamlined.

"It will save the authority money while putting those customers in greatest need at the heart of the processes.

"Customers who do not qualify for local authority housing will be given advice and assistance to suit their own particular circumstances."

HPLD also quoted from the council’s website:

“The Choice Based Lettings system will be taken away. A more personal property matching system will take its place. The customer will still choose where they want to live, but instead of placing bids on properties, people will be invited to discuss their housing needs with a Housing Needs Officer. The Housing Needs Officer will then work to meet the customer’s needs in the best way possible.”

Time will tell whether the changes work for the citizens of Stoke, and we hope they do. For those of us around when choice-based letting was piloted in the mid-late 1990's and then gradually introduced across the country, it's interesting to see the allocation process go almost full circle, back to a stated "needs" based approach, albeit with a retained choice element.

The quotes about customers being "invited to discuss their housing needs" and officers trying to meet them "in the best way possible" mirror almost exactly reports written throughout the 1970's and 80's as we moved on from time-served waiting lists in (sometimes doomed) attempts to better reflect changes in demand, social structure and national political direction.

What goes around comes around, the saying goes. What doesn't seem to come around though is an increase in the overall quantum of good quality, affordable housing that keeps pace with household creation, continued reductions in existing stock and that also addresses the continuing impacts of the restrictions on market access to first time buyers (and second time buyers in a new trend we read) in the private housing market.

It seems that both portfolio holders and housing needs officers in Stoke and many other places are still left rationing a scarce and increasingly valuable resource through a variety of allocation systems that aren't intended to and will never address basic supply-side problems. Neither will further diversification of tenure models properly address the deficit either.

We remain a country where renting is more often about a meeting a need rather than a desire and purchase a desire that is failing to meet all needs.

The Single Data List

In case you missed it in April, go to the list of data sets required for 2011/12 from councils by Whitehall, i.e. the Single Data List.

http://admin.localgov.co.uk/his_localgov/view/images/uploaded/Image/

Thesingledatalistforcentralgovernmentdepartments.pdf

There is a commitment from the SoS for these demands to be significantly reduced so that councils can "focus on protecting frontline services, focus resources on local priorities and meeting the needs of their communities without the spectre of new top-down data demands"

Encouraging insight

A challenge for us in our practice as leaders, managers, advisers and coaches:

"Make visible, what without you, might never have been seen."

Robert Bresson, Filmaker.

A simple truth...

A thought both to challenge and sustain us:

"If someone comes to you and asks for help, and you can help them, you're supposed to help them. Why wouldn't you? You have been put in the position somehow to be able to help this person."

Gil Scott-Heron

NB If you buy any music this week, buy something by the late, great, Gil Scott-Heron.

A thought for colleagues in complex situations

"We do not see the swim we are in, we do not understand its meaning, nor do we see how our experiences are shaped by the form and function of that swim. Without that “seeing” we are at the mercy of the swim.

To see systems or be blind to them? The costs of blindness are clear. Who knows what possibilities “seeing” holds for us?"

Barry Oshry; Seeing Systems

Not-for-Profits face a "perfect storm"

Some interesting findings from a recent IPSOS MORI poll on behalf of the Charity Commission:

"Despite high levels of trust (in charities), and 7% saying their trust and confidence in charities has increased over the past two years, one in ten (11%) say that their trust and confidence in charities has decreased.

The most common reason for this decrease is media coverage about how charities spend their donations (response given by 28% of those whose trust has declined).

Indeed, ‘ensuring that a reasonable proportion of donations make it to the end cause’ is the most important factor affecting trust and confidence in charities (42%).

People are more likely to trust charities generally if they, or close friends or family members, have benefited from them. However, people are not always aware of being beneficiaries of a charity - fewer than one in three (30%) say they personally or have close friends or family who have used the services of a charity. However, when prompted with activities that charities might provide, around nine in ten (93%) say they or close friends or family have used these services."

The report is quoted in an article by Zoe Williams in today's (26th May) Guardian which describes how, at the point where not-for-profit organisations seem to be central to the delivery of a plank of government policy, there is a "perfect storm" affecting their sustainability: fast dwindling reserves (which were not huge in the first place), a growing need for their services (as public services contract), local authorities and government paying less for services delivered by not-for-profits, and a limited capacity to withstand the financial challenges of discontinuous change.

There is a range of developing negative impacts on the employees in this sector, including pay freezes and cuts, job cuts, and a growing number of organisational closures as the 'storm' develops. The article also suggests that large commercial companies are beginning to hoover up contracts and employees, undercutting rates and rendering TUPE of limited protection. As one of the 'masters of the universe' who work for outsourcing behemoths said to me many years ago, "TUPE protection only lasts 24 hours if you know what to do". The Guardian article mentions the 25% job-change threshold that presages pay-cuts for transferring employees.

Not a hopeful picture, and one that provides really deep challenges to not-for-profits to find new and effective ways to continue to respond to change and engage their employees, clients, service users and other stakeholders in meaningful work to identify and sustain their positive core, i.e. their core values and beliefs, best ways of working and their most effective relationships, during these challenging times. Using strengths-based development approaches for individuals and teams and seeing the world through appreciative eyes might be a way into this. Not the only way, but a way that experience and science shows is yielding sustainable outcomes in a range of environments.

The Open Channel cuts the cost of supporting managers

I am delighted to be writing about The Open Channel which is launched today. This new venture, in which I am collaborating with Janet Dean, hits the internet just three months after we conceived it in the Millennium Galleries Cafe in Sheffield.

Over the past six months many of us with long experience across the public sector and in public, private and voluntary partnerships, have been challenged to think afresh about what we need to do to make sure we retain the best and change the rest across all our public services.

However you view the politics, change is inevitable and resources are in short supply. Janet and I believe we need to think about a more responsive and cost effective way to build skills and capacity across the public sector and amongst those partners in the private, voluntary and community sectors who share the challenge.

We are motivated by our deep beliefs in the strengths of people and our interest and skills in networking and social media. The Open Channel aims to create and support a community of people who work with communities and across organisations to provide excellent public services in whatever form is best.

The concept of The Open Channel is to provide easy access to knowledge, support and networks which will help individuals, organisations and communities tackle really difficult problems today. By making use of web links, social media, email, Skype, teleconferencing and webinars we are offering a choice of face to face or 'virtual' online support. This enables users of The Open Channel to tailor the services they need to meet their budget without compromising on quality.

Our focus is on organisational change and our core products are Action Learning, Developmental Coaching and Appreciative Inquiry- all three building on the strengths that people have already. Our knowledge and skill base is wide, capturing the issues across the widest definition of public service. We assure the quality of our Services by working only with associates whom we trust and value - they are the best in the field in our opinion.

If you are interested in what The Open Channel has to offer, please look at the website and contact us personally to find out more. If you don't need us now, remember us for the future, and today, just tell a friend.

Prime Minister talks of "health not sickness"

Listening today to the PM's speech on NHS reform, he spoke of a health service being more focused on "health and not sickness." I presume he meant the health of individuals, of communities and of the nation as a whole perhaps.

Whilst millions of words have and will be written about NHS reform, this short phrase is an interesting take on how we can view not only something as gargantuan in scale as the NHS, but much smaller entities, such as our teams, services and organisations.

Setting this apparently positive frame on the proposed NHS reforms suggests that when thinking about our organisations and their 'health', there is great merit and good science to support inquiring into its good 'health', e.g. what is life giving and what works well. This is what Appreciative Inquiry (AI) calls the "positive core" of our organisations. It can be a counter-intuitive position to take when starting out on organisational change, particularly in hard times, yet for many organisations and their constituent teams, this positive framing provides a release from the top-down, deficit and problem-centred nature of so much change, i.e. the study of failure and problems.

A wide and growing variety of public, voluntary, community-based and commercial organisations have experienced the power and liberation of positive energy when using AI. AI never ignores what isn't working, rather it asks us to concentrate our efforts differently, to start our inquiries in an appreciative mind and capture what works well, and then build on that to create new directions and eradicate weaknesses and problems along the way.

What we inquire into is fateful and we will always find more of what we choose to inquire into - so, would we rather inquire into and find examples of great service and resilience, or failure and unsustained change. I posit this as a stark choice, 'though in reality it will be more a matter of emphasis and balance.

Peter Drucker wrote that the role of leaders is to align the strengths of their organisations, rendering weakness irrelevant. Not necessarily easy, but a statement of intent, of hope and potential for liberation from yet more 'solutions' to problems - problems that nevertheless seem to return with depressing regularity.

This appreciative stance might not work every time, but surely to take the appreciative route at least offers a credible alternative to methods that seem to provide only short and medium term palliatives to the wicked issues of public policy formation and public systems management.

The NHS has great stories of success, particularly during its renaissance of recent years, providing deep evidence of a positive core. Concentrating reform on health and not sickness could deliver yet more great stories and also protect that positive core, without which reform will founder in the longer term.