Skills & Projects Benchmarking Clubs
Benchmarking club members agree which measures and performance indicators it would be useful to compare, and use the web-application to record details of their own performance and produce comparative reports.
Meetings take place quarterly and tend to concentrate on one or two issues, with members taking responsibility for preparing and leading a discussion where they have particular knowledge and experience, or perhaps where their performance appears to be much better than the rest of the group.
Benchmarking clubs are an opportunity to meet up with colleagues from similar organisations facing similar challenges, to network, share ideas and to learn from each other.
Clubs are encouraged to organise and service their own meetings, with flexible additional support from Skills & Projects. Members like this approach as they see that they are not paying for something they can do for themselves and they have some choice in how they use the support we offer.
Below is a list of the clubs we currently support.
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National club that includes all subscribers to Skills & Projects benchmarking
Club Website
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The Solomon Group consists of seven London-based small RSL’s. The group was formed as “The Solomon Project” in 1998 under the banner of more than a than a Benchmark Group. It has a clear mission of “a long term commitment to open sharing and co-operation for the benefit of tenants and other stakeholders”.
Over the years the Solomon Group has become a model of collaborative strength. This has allowed members to preserve and develop the advantage of being small RSL’s that are close to and responsive to the communities they serve.
In real terms some of our achievements include:
- Annual staff conference
- Regular meeting s of the chief executives
- Regular meetings of practitioner groups
- Shared training events
- Joint procurement
- Sharing of policies and good practices
- Joint tenant events
- Events for board members
- Joint annual reports
- Collective responsive to consultation documents
- Staff secondments
- Joint service reviews
The Solomon Project is a number of things. We are certainly more than the sum total of our respective housing associations. We are passionate about our customers. We are committed to equality as employers and service providers. We are good partners – to each other and to anyone else who wants to work with us. We are nimble on our feet and responsive to change. So we are not daunted by future challenges – wherever they come from.
Club Website
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In London the BM320 group has now grown to 14 members of small housing associations in London. The BM320 is a self-selected group of interested associations from the G320 group, amongst which there are two other benchmarking groups.
During the last year we have met to discuss good practice and recent relevant social housing issues including changes in regulation and proposed changes to law. In 2010 we shared our first reports to tenants with each other so that we could compare the different ways each had approached producing these reports for the first time.
We have also spent time on the salary survey, comparing how we carry out fire risk assessments, the cost of insurance and our policies for writing off former tenant arrears. In addition we have undertaken some cost comparisons outside of meetings by email.
We look forward to a year of further comparison and analysis so that we can further improve the way we do things at each of our associations.
Club Website
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SWBM is a benchmarking club for smaller associations operating in the South West of England. The original members of the group had a long history of working collaboratively and sharing good practice but there were practical issues for our smaller organisations in collecting and analysing data.
Establishing the link with SPBM in 2007 has simplified the mechanics of data collection and analysis, allowing the group to spend time discussing how best to improve performance across a broad range of operational areas.
Club Website
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SHAPE is a south east based benchmarking club with a current membership of 13 smaller associations. Formed in 1999 the group has been a model for other groups with its own terms of reference and conditions of membership. Performance information was collated in-house until 2009 when group members recognised the benefits of having access to wider comparative datasets and signed up to SPBM.
Shape is an acronym for smaller housing associations pursuing excellence. Current chairman Nigel Wood said ’Our members have made extensive use of the PI data to help us concentrate on the areas where we need to improve and also give context to the figures we include in our annual reports. On October 6th we held our annual staff conference where workshop sessions focussed on operational topics and all staff shared good practice. We want staff throughout our organisations to recognise not just where they do well now but who they can contact to help them do even better in future.’
Club Website
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The South London Federation of Small Housing Associations (SoLFed) is an alliance of five small housing associations operating in south-east London. It was set up to share skills and good practice, jointly commission services, carry out agency work for each other, undertake collective housing development, and pool property development skills.
The alliance gives its members opportunities to reduce costs by negotiating cheaper maintenance contracts, improve services by sharing skills, increase efficiency by sharing good practice, and access some of the advantages open to larger housing associations through economies of scale. Member organisations draw on a wider range of specialist skills than they could afford individually, but without losing their unique identities or the flexibility that comes from having a small, focused operation.
We joined SPBM in 2010.
Club Website
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Not all SPBM subscribers meet regularly as part of a club.
We encourage our members to get together and compare performance and exchange ideas with other similar organisations, and we will actively help members to set up clubs that enable this to happen. However it is not always possible.
Club Website
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The North West Small Housing Association Group consists of over 20 small housing providers from across the North West. The Group aims to raise the profile of the smaller housing provider and show that they have an important role to play in a diverse housing sector.
The Group meets every 3 months and aims to promote and serve smaller housing providers from across the region by offering an opportunity for members to exchange best practice and identify the opportunities and challenges available to the smaller housing provider.
This year the North West Group has organised three excellent conferences for its members, a Governance Conference, a Staff Conference and a Tenants Conference (free for tenants). The North West Benchmarking Group set up in 2010, is one of a number of working groups looking at the different aspects of housing and in particular the performance of small housing associations within the sector as a whole. The aim of the group is to identify and share best practice and expertise through benchmarking and to demonstrate the value of retaining the independence of individual members.
The Group chose SPBM to collect and collate the key performance indicators agreed by our members and the first full benchmarking report was published in June 2011. Evidence taken from the benchmarking report clearly shows that the smaller provider can match and often improve on the services provided by larger providers. One example of a service where the smaller provider can be seen to excel is Tenants Satisfaction. The report demonstrates that the smaller provider consistently scores in the upper quartile when tenants are asked:
- If they are satisfied with the services provided by their landlord
- If they are satisfied that their views are taken into account
In the long term the aim of the group is to forge links with other benchmarking groups across the country, which can only lead to better services and value for money for our tenants.
Club Website
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This small group was initially formed by the Chief Executives of a number of Christian based Registered Providers who had been meeting for a while to exchange ideas. Each of the Registered Providers were similar in that despite their relatively small size they had a significant geographical spread of services and worked with ex-offenders and other vulnerable groups, albeit to different extents.
Skills & Projects were asked to support the group’s benchmarking exercise and the first full benchmarking report was published in July 2011.
The group is keen to welcome other similar registered providers into the group, especially those which are geographically dispersed and work closely with ex-offenders and other vulnerable groups.
Club Website
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We are a group of seven BME-led London-based housing associations that had been meeting on an ad hoc basis for several years. We joined SPBM in 2011, not least to benefit from the co-ordination, facilitation and reporting services that we require to ensure we meet and compare performance on a regular basis.
Club Website
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The YHBM Club is newly established in 2011. Our eight members are all small housing associations and other housing based organisations that provide services to their local communities in the Yorkshire and Humber region.
Ultimately the club aims to demonstrate the expertise and value of small, independent housing organisations, and our ability to deliver excellent, customer-focussed, value for money services.
We work together to improve our performance, value for money and efficiency by sharing best practice and innovation and by benchmarking our performance both within the club and against national and regional performance indicators (our membership of the Club also gives us access to the resources and good practice generated by HouseMark). The Club is facilitated by SPBM, who collect and collate the key performance indicators agreed by our members. We received our first full benchmarking report in June 2011, and now meet quarterly to review our benchmarking information.
In the longer term the aim of the group is to forge links with other benchmarking groups across the country to help us deliver even better services and value for money for our tenants.
Club Website
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The aspirations of older people are changing and increasingly sheltered housing providers face issues of lettability and stock condition. To help meet these and other challenges a number of smaller providers have come together, with the support of Skills & Projects, to form a benchmarking group.
We first met in May 2011 and have had a further meeting since. In a short time we have:
- Agreed the group’s terms of reference and the indicators to be benchmarked
- Completed a performance report for 2010/9
- Held a workshop, led by Archadia Architects, on making studio flats attractive to potential residents
- Had good practice discussions on a number of service areas.
The group will now meet quarterly.
The meetings are a fantastic opportunity to obtain ideas from other organisations to improve performance and services.
The agreed discussion topics for the good practice meetings over the next twelve months include:
- Delivering value for money
- Understanding and responding to the different needs of sheltered residents
- Involving sheltered residents in the management of their homes
- Maintenance services
- The funding of support services
Club Website
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This newly formed group at present consists of four small providers.
The group aims to share good practice and discuss opportunities to share services or to fund initiatives in partnership with others.
The group believes that small providers have an important role to play in the region and can demonstrate that despite their size these organisations can punch above their weight particularly when it comes to Tenant satisfaction levels!
Our short to medium term aim is to increase the membership of the group and then focus on providing excellent levels of service to our tenants whilst demonstrating that we are value for money.
Club Website
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