In our new regular series, we seek the views of sector experts on a key housing issue. First up, we asked HQN trainers and associates:
What are your thoughts on Michael Gove’s plan to make it compulsory for all housing managers to have a formal housing qualification? Will it ensure that tragic incidents such as the Grenfell fire or the death of Awaab Ishak never happen again?
Ian Parker
HQN Housing Finance Network associate
It’s unclear at the moment who the qualifications will apply to. Many colleagues I’ve worked with in DLOs had technical qualifications (eg, electrical, health and safety) but not professional housing qualifications. Will they now have to get one?
Just because you’ve got a qualification doesn’t mean that you’re actually able to do the job – that’s dependent on a combination of attitude, empathy and professionalism.
If you’re qualified and you miss something does that mean you’ll be subject to a claim against your professional indemnity insurance?
All staff working in the sector as part of their job need to ‘keep their eyes open’ and report anything that looks unusual and/or dangerous. Also, someone needs to regularly review all the issues that are reported and identify if there are serious risks occurring that could undermine the business – otherwise known as making sure that the left hand knows what the right hand is doing.
It shouldn’t just be the role of those employees that hold a professional qualification – everyone needs to be engaged in ensuring that customers and staff are safe and receiving the best service possible.
Colin Heyman
HQN Equality and Diversity Network associate
I don’t think it’s possible to ensure incidents such as Grenfell and Awaab Ishak never happen again – unfortunately and tragically, there will always be human error.
What’s required to maximise the chances of preventing them aren’t academic qualifications but personal awareness and interpersonal skills. For example, a key issue in both these tragedies was that housing people didn’t listen properly or believe the people concerned. I suspect the lack of listening skills was combined with conscious or unconscious bias which resulted in the discounting of what people of colour and people from working class backgrounds were saying, and not thinking their views important.
In my view, formal qualifications exclude certain people – people who aren’t good at formal learning, people who don’t have qualifications from this country that would allow them to sign up, people who are dyslexic or neurodiverse to name but a few. There are many people out there who would make excellent housing managers that would be unable to pursue such a career if a qualification was a prerequisite for doing the job.
Tahira Hussain
Specialist equality and diversity trainer
On the qualifications, I’d suggest this should be a pathway for good practice and not necessarily compulsory as it indirectly discriminates against a raft of very experienced housing professionals who have the necessary skills, knowledge and expertise to excel in their role regardless of whether they have a piece of paper.
Gove is disconnected from reality. Fancy words and ticking boxes for brownie points isn’t going to save lives. Transparency and accountability will! Tragic incidents such as Grenfell and the death of Awaab Ishaak were certainly preventable if relevant parties had done their due diligence and adopted an inclusive, risk-averse approach.
A commitment to, and good practice in, safeguarding would’ve prevented these tragedies and an academic qualification really won’t cut the mustard.
Michael Guest
Specialist tenant involvement trainer
I welcome the announcement and the plan. I think it’ll go some way towards equipping the sector with the required knowledge and professionalise the sector to better serve people living in social housing. However, it won’t of itself equip the managers with the skills and behaviours that need to go with knowledge – a lot needs to go into the provision of programmes to put this into effect. Many established managers may be resistant to the need for this and it’ll require a period of preparation to get people on board.
Debbie Larner
Specialist professionalism and building safety trainer
Interesting! Taken as a measure on its own, it’s hard to see how introducing mandatory qualifications for senior housing managers and executives will address the professionalisation of the housing sector. Qualifications are a valuable and important way to gain context, knowledge and a broad understanding of housing management and the operating environment, but they don’t focus on the skills, attitudes and behaviours needed to demonstrate professionalism in the round.
And what about frontline staff? We know that they interact with tenants on a day-to-day basis – maybe they should be a key focus when we’re looking to develop our people? That said, we need to remember that the introduction of mandatory qualifications are only one piece of the jigsaw – they will be introduced alongside new regulatory standards on competence and conduct. As yet, we don’t know the detail on what these will be, how they will be demonstrated or who they will apply to.
The tragedies mentioned can’t simply be put down to a lack of training, qualifications or knowledge – it’s much more complicated than that. Anyone who watched some of the witness statements from the Grenfell Tower Inquiry heard testimony from qualified and trained housing staff. It’s about culture, attitudes and behaviour. We need to stop making assumptions about people who live in social housing and basing our decisions and actions on these stereotypes. We need to listen and take the views of tenants seriously and act on them.
Roger Jarman
HQN regulation associate
Michael Gove is right to make it compulsory for managers in social housing to have a minimum set of housing-based qualifications. The CIH professional qualification has always been a ‘desirable’ attribute as far as employers are concerned. Never an absolute requirement.
Housing has never been seen in the same way as teaching, social work, health care or other professions. In those sectors a set of qualifications were needed before a teacher could set foot in a classroom or before a social worker could make an assessment about a child’s care needs. In housing, staff could work in the sector with no qualifications directly related to the service being delivered.
Gove’s initiative has given the profession a significant boost, but CIH and others involved in educating housing managers must not miss the opportunity the government’s new approach offers. The training needs to be geared to the laudable ambitions set out in the 2020 Social Housing White Paper. There needs to be a relentless focus on ensuring the best possible services are delivered to the tenants and residents of social landlords. An understanding of the financial and legal framework of the sector will be needed. Asset management will also be a key element of the revamped training of housing managers.
But more – much more – needs to be focused on the development of customer service skills. That will be the goal that CIH and others must achieve if the government’s objectives are to be met – and tenants and residents get the responsive and respectful service they deserve.
Nancy Witham
Specialist housing trainer for customer-facing roles
I don’t think the sector necessarily needs formal qualifications unless it’s for technical roles like the compliance team, but what I do feel is really important is that housing changes its recruitment process. What I mean by this is that most departments currently recruit on behaviours, and there’s no assessment of housing knowledge required to get the job. However, as soon as they are in post they are expected by the tenants and the business to have this knowledge immediately, which we know is learned over time.
This would be my approach:
- Full induction training relevant to their job role before they officially start in post
- Any frontline member of staff who has contact with the tenant needs repairs and maintenance training. Regardless of whatever issue they need to discuss with a tenant, a repairs issue is likely to come up
- All staff need general health and safety training covering the five fundamentals
- Training on specific housing legislation related to their role – I’m gobsmacked by the amount of staff that don’t know basic legislation such as Section 11 Housing Act 1975, the Decent Homes Standard and the Homes Act 2018.
Richard Paris
Specialist housing law trainer
Read any of the legal cases like Lara Tate-v-L&Q (18 November 2020), TRX-v- Network Homes Ltd (19 May 2022), watch any of Daniel Hewitt’s documentaries in his Surviving Squalor series or look at any of the Housing Ombudsman’s severe maladministration findings to realise that it’ll take more than compulsory training.
The social housing sector has been stuck in a closed inward-looking silo for years. The members of the professionalisation review panel are part of the problem. They may change the language we use but won’t change the culture in social housing. What proportion of the estimated 25,000 senior managers in housing have a relevant qualification already? Yet the mistakes continue.
Horror stories like that of Peabody resident Sheila Seleone or Awaab Ishak in Rochdale suggest multiple system failures, a lack of accountability and transparency, poor governance by boards and councillors, CEOs, directors and senior management teams.
Will CPD point chasing or virtual training courses change the culture?
Laura Bouttell
Specialist cross-sector leadership trainer
It depends on what the qualification covers. Michael Gove says that both Grenfell and the death of Awaab Ishak showed the “devastating consequences of residents inexcusably being let down by poor performing landlords who consistently failed to listen to them”.
Unless listening skills are taught as part of the qualification (and how to retain those listening skills when you’re under extreme pressure, bombarded by difficult decisions and huge workloads while balancing the books) then a qualification isn’t necessarily going to help the situation.
A qualification that doesn’t address unconscious and conscious biases, as well as empathy fatigue, is going to be lacking too, because they are real issues that face housing teams every day. It might not sound nice to say it but if we’re going to improve things, we have to be honest.
I don’t think it’s a lack of knowledge that’s a problem here necessarily. It seems to me like it’s more an issue of a lack of resource and a lack of personal skills training. Any qualification must deliver real world, pragmatic benefits for the money and time invested. If it’s going to be a load of theory and models that are difficult to put into practice in the real world, then it might be just another burden on housing professionals.
Insist on training, absolutely, but in my mind the training would be better focused on developing the people to be able to do the right thing in the difficult circumstances in which they invariably find themselves.
From my perspective, the culture of the organisation is often at the centre of tragic events. The organisation must foster a culture of psychological safety so that its employees can speak openly about issues and know that they will be heard and, more importantly, listened to when they speak up.
Creating a culture like this comes from the top – from leaders being open to feedback from their employees and willing to admit that they can do things better. I’d focus training on the personal skills of the leadership team and develop their ability to listen and receive feedback non-defensively and then trickle this down through the workforce.
Helen Muir
Specialist leasehold and shared ownership trainer
I think studying for a formal housing qualification will be useful for managers that are new to the social housing sector or newly promoted into a management role (assuming that they don’t already have a qualification).
For those working in leasehold management, rather than housing management, however, they will need a specialist leasehold qualification (eg, IRPM) rather than a generic housing management qualification.
For existing, experienced housing managers I don’t believe that a formal housing qualification will benefit them or their organisation and is likely to be seen as just gaining a ‘piece of paper’ to tick a box. I can see some experienced managers being resistant to this.
Although technical training will always have a place, I believe that ensuring that organisations manage staff well is more important. Staff members should meet the competencies for their role, have the correct values and attitudes towards their customers and be performance managed to ensure these are attained and maintained.
I think that in many organisations people management skills, coaching skills etc are lacking and performance management policies and processes aren’t always followed by managers.
