Curo News

Making Curo’s leadership vibrant and diverse

Mon, 14 Dec 2020 08:47:46 Z

A blog by Curo Chief Executive, Victor Da Cunha

I have been wondering how I can demonstrate more clearly my personal commitment to supporting a much-needed change in our sector’s leadership profiles – a cause that, for me, is very close to home.

It’s not a thing I talk about, but I have my own stories of glass ceilings and of discrimination which I have navigated over the past 28 years. Stories of polite refusals, ‘thanks for the feedback’, enormous effort and steadfast resilience. All so I could, despite the odds, achieve my ambition, aspirations and the potential I felt I had.

It’s the story of many other first-generation immigrants, of poor secondary education and a basic lack of life chances at the start. That said, I feel lucky because mine has been an ultimately successful story and I’m grateful for how things have panned out.

I feel very privileged to have had a number of senior roles within a sector that I love and that I’m proud to be part of. But it hasn’t been an easy journey, not at all, and I know that many other talented people still, sadly, haven’t been given the chance their talent deserves. Let’s be clear, we are less as a sector than we could be because we are missing out on their talent.

It shouldn’t be this way, not in 2020.

Amongst everything else, the past year has reminded us that racism and other forms of discrimination have not yet been defeated. In the wake of Grenfell, and the prominence of the Black Lives Matter movement, I feel more than ever that I must leave the sector (not yet, but when I retire!) richer in diversity at Executive and Board levels than it was when I arrived. Social housing sector has a duty to lead the way on equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) because our wider social purpose places greater expectation on us to be a beacon than other sectors.

I have been honoured to be involved in the National Housing Federation’s (NHF) National EDI group. It’s a group of diverse people, made up of colleagues from all across the sector. Together the group supports the NHF in its attempt to influence change; helping us to become more vibrant and diverse at all levels, so that we more accurately reflect the communities we serve.

For too long we have seen EDI as a project, not a means to competitive advantage, anchored in our values, culture and practices. In the new year, the group will release resources and share best practices to support these aims.

In one of its first actions though, the EDI Group published an Insights report which reminded us that, despite many efforts, our Executive and Boards are not as diverse as the rest of our colleagues or the communities we serve. It’s a sad reality.

The Insights report also reminded us that our EDI data is not collected consistently and that gaps continue to hinder better debate, analysis and decision making. One of my favourite sector colleagues says this and the awkwardness of the conversation hinders us from being sufficiently curious or brave. I agree. The simple fact is that we need to redouble our efforts and role-model the change without being defensive.

So, I want to pop my head over the parapet to say what I will promise to do over the next six months to show leadership in this space at Curo. Our Chair, Liz Potter, will do the same from a Board perspective too in the new year. This is because above all things, actions count much more than words, no matter how small. Taking small, quick steps allows us to show and then celebrate progress and build momentum. Imagine the amplification if we all committed to action?

My three first public EDI commitments are:

1. I will publish the diversity characteristics of Curo and put them on our intranet and website – openly comparing our workforce to the communities we serve;

2. I will publish the pay gaps not only for gender, where we have some work to do already, but also for people of colour employed in our business;

3. I will encourage a conversation within my organisation about our diversity characteristics and our pay gap(s) – so we encourage open-minded curiosity and begin to plan for inclusive change over the next few years – including thinking about the role of targets.

In July 2021, I’ll publish more but for now I hope these serve to create a discussion and inspire others to commit to their own. It is only if we each individually prioritise action, and are held to account, that change will happen.

We are all collectively the sector and we are not as diverse and vibrant at Leadership levels we should be and as our sector’s wider social purpose requires.

Fixing The Social Housing Stigma

Fri, 28 Dec 2018 10:44:41 Z

I’ve been reflecting on the “stigmatisation” of the social housing sector – highlighted as a core issue to solve in the Housing Green paper 2018 – and digesting many of the responses.

I’m pleased there’s a focus on this important topic; it’s long overdue, certainly at a political level. There’s been much discussion about how we got to this point, where social housing tenants and the sector are suffering from a profound image problem. But the analysis seems to have missed the bigger picture, focusing on the symptoms and not the root cause.

In my view there’s a real danger that Government will try to solve this challenge by thinking about the tenant enquiries in MP’s mailbags and not the real source of the problem. If they do that, we’ll have missed a massive opportunity; an opportunity that may never come round again.

The green paper specifically references MP’s case work issues as a reason for stigma existing – for example, the way complaints are handled. It’s probably true that this is what politicians hear about most frequently, but if you take a longer term perspective it’s obvious that it’s not the real root cause. Other examples cited, such as repairs taking too long, or the lack of resident involvement in decision making, are similarly not the core issue in my opinion.

While they’re all important and landlords need to do more work on them, they’re not the reasons behind the public’s perception of social housing. If we don’t understand how we got here, then the easy way out will be for regulation to focus on the wrong things and we won’t get wholesale change. In fact, stigma will continue to grow.

The fate of Housing Associations is inextricably linked to that of our residents. We’ve been on the same journey as tenants, navigating a maze of policies and rhetoric for years. There are some who would like to split housing associations away from their tenants - to say we’re on opposite sides - but that’s simply not the case. We know we’re not perfect, but individual examples of poor service are not a true measure of the sector’s interconnection with the people it serves. The best organisations stand shoulder to shoulder with their residents, supporting their needs and defending their rights.

So how did we end up here?

The ‘stigmatisation’ of the social housing sector really got traction in the 1980’s, with the introduction of Right To Buy. Councils were prevented from building new social housing, the proceeds from RTB were not ring fenced for new social homes, and so a decline begun.

With housing becoming more and more limited, lettings policies were changed to move allocation systems away from housing a wide range of "working poor" to focus mainly on the most vulnerable.

Over a number of years, ‘needs’ based letting policies slowly chipped away at social mobility. Other regimes worked in parallel to further residualise and create mono tenure neighbourhoods. Housing Benefit was capped and made harder to access. Supporting People funding was decentralised and cut. Specialist housing services were shut down in huge numbers and vulnerable people were effectively prevented from moving outside their borough boundaries; not for work, not for their care, not for anything.

People on the waiting lists started waiting years. Others were placed in costly temporary accommodation and B&Bs. A period of renewed investment in the social housing sector in the 1990s and early noughties was welcome but the cuts returned more aggressively after the credit crunch.

It was during this time that it became common to hear mainstream politicians and the media talking about ‘workers and shirkers’. The word ‘fairness’ was weaponised, and used to justify the reduction of support for the most vulnerable. This political rhetoric was used to promote home ownership as the only viable and desirable solution for ‘hard working families’.

Social housing tenants were stereotyped and so were their landlords. They were portrayed as the problem. In fact social housing was said to encourage ‘low aspirations’ and was promoted as housing of last resort. Grant funding for new affordable homes was effectively turned off and Government investment was switched to ‘aspirational' home ownership products.

This is how it was until the 2017 General Election when, for the first time in two generations, people voted with housing in mind. That, coupled with the tragic events at Grenfell Tower, changed media and political conversation and brought the question of stigma to the fore.

That’s why I don’t believe that the sector’s ‘stigma’ can be addressed by organising a few street parties or by focusing on what’s in MP’s constituency in-trays. The problem has been a long time in the making; if you want to change the reputation of the sector and its tenants one needs to respond to the policies which have created it over the past 30 years.

The issue has four pillars:

the gross under-supply of affordable homes;
unbalanced letting policies which fail to house a wide spectrum of low income people;
a lack of funding for vulnerable people who need support to lead independent lives; and finally
a political rhetoric which associates social housing with low aspiration.

Address all those and - in time - perceptions will change.

If politicians want to put an end to stigma then these are pillars they must address. My ask is that they really think about the bigger picture and resist the temptation to focus on simply regulation and case work.

Comment via LinkedIn.

What happens to Housing Association surpluses?

Thu, 06 Sep 2018 15:25:52 Z

There’s a mixture of confusion and misrepresentation about Housing Associations – or HAs – when it comes to our surpluses and what we do with them. Sadly that confusion has caused some - particularly those who don’t know us well - to question our motives, our charitable status and our social purpose. This is deeply disappointing, because in my view those concerns are totally unfounded.

Social purpose remains at the heart of everything we do, and we’re finding more efficient and commercial ways to deliver new and better homes in the face of reduced government funding.

Surplus is not cash

At first glance, HAs can look like cash-rich organisations. We report positive and growing annual surpluses and reserves. However a ‘surplus’ is not the same thing as ‘cash’ - just like the word ‘reserves’ does not mean we have a stock pile of unspent money sitting in a bank account.

It’s also important to remember that, unlike publicly listed companies, we don’t pay dividends to shareholders; all our profits are reinvested back into the organisation.

So why, to the untrained eye, do our accounts look like we’re sitting on cash? While it’s true that the annual surpluses in our accounts reflect the balance once you taken all ‘expenditure’ away from all our ‘income’, not all of our expenditure is the same in accounting terms.

This is because when we spend money on something that prolongs the life of a property (say a new roof) or generates new rental income (a brand new home) it must be ‘capitalised’ for accounting purposes. In other words, the cost must be spread over the life of that home. So, if you spend £100k to build a new home and you think it will last you 100 years, then you would have to record that you spent £1k every year for the next 100 years. I know… not intuitive… not cash.

HAs that invest heavily in existing homes, or build new ones, can often spend far more than their annual income. This year, for instance, we have budgeted to spend £63m more than we receive from rents alone, so that we can build new homes.

Good landlords invest for the future. When we do, our spending leads either to new affordable rental homes or extends the life of homes we already own. Importantly, this investment money doesn’t normally come from the rent we receive, it comes mainly from private loans which need to be repaid, just like a mortgage.

Why is it essential to post surpluses?

If surpluses don’t give a simple snapshot of the actual spend on homes and services, why is it so important for HAs to post them in their accounts every year?

Well, there are two very important reasons why we have to record a decent surplus.

The first is that we have to in order to meet loan conditions. In our case, a mortgage of £366m. In fact we have to generate a surplus greater than our total annual loan repayments to remain compliant. The bigger the loans we have, the larger the surplus we need to make because of these conditions. This is very important. Without external loans from banks and other long-term investors, we would not be able to build new affordable housing, since Government grants no longer cover the full costs.

The second reason we have to generate surpluses is that we need to be able to cover unforeseen eventualities: sudden policy changes, economic downturns, contractor bankruptcies or non-payment of rents. If we assumed that all our income was always going to be received, or that all our costs would remain the same, we would almost certainly come a cropper. Good stewardship requires us to manage financial risks responsibly.

Curo is today a £100m turnover charitable business with ambitions to build thousands of new homes for local families over the next five years. To do this, we need to continue to manage our finances well. It’s only by posting annual surpluses that we can continue to build more affordable homes and make a greater contribution to solving the UK’s housing crisis. So surpluses should not be seen as a distraction or mission creep, rather they should be seen as a fundamental ingredient in today's world and the only way we can fulfil our social purpose longer term.