Social housing and social enterprises both aim to provide social value and the new Public Services Act may provide them with the opportunity to unite
housing.
Are housing associations and social enterprises primed for partnership?
Social housing bodies are proving an increasingly viable option for social enterprises to buddy up with; a growing number are already either setting up their own social enterprises or capacity building social enterprises to add social value to tenant services and the wider community.
This trend is likely to intensify when the Public Services (Social Value) Act comes into force in January 2013 which could prove a goldmine for savvy social enterprises that position themselves wisely.
Under the act, all public bodies in England and Wales will have to consider how the services they procure improve the social, environmental and economic landscape.
This, hopefully, will lead to all procurement being conducted in a more social enterprise friendly manner.
Mark Richardson is author of the Green Light report which examines the relationship between housing associations and the wider social enterprise sector. Green Light, set up by the National Housing Federation, Groundwork UK and the Aspire Foundation, is a project to create sustainable jobs using the interplay between both sectors.
Richardson says out of the 1,200 housing associations in the country, "there are getting on for 50 who are doing some fantastic work with social enterprise and another 200 or so that are wanting to do more".
"The Social Value Act will require housing associations to consider wider social value when procuring services and there are four main ways in which housing associations can engage with other social enterprises," he says. "They can buy from social enterprise, they can partner with or capacity build existing social enterprises, or they can start new ones."
But he says the biggest barriers to buying from social enterprises are overly bureaucratic procurement processes, a fear of EU regulations and the difficulty finding suitable social enterprises operating at sufficient scale.
"The last point is why capacity building is so important. By using some of the skills and resources within the housing associations to help other social enterprises scale up and professionalise, they not only create social value but also ideal trading partners.
Academy4housing in London is a training and employability social enterprise launched in January 2012 which has utilised the professional resources and expertise from housing associations to flourish.
It evolved from Thames Valley Housing Association's successful internal training centre and provides both vocational and ad-hoc housing training. While being an independent, standalone organisation, its key partners are Thames Valley, Shepherd's Bush, Gateway and Sentinel housing associations which each own a 25% stake in the organisation.
Academy4housing currently provides apprenticeships and professional qualifications for both staff and residents of the key partners but has expanded to attract a further external 20 housing association and local authority customers since its launch.
"The aim of the academy is to provide access to training for the residents," says managing director Andrew Craig. "If we make any surplus from our vocational element, that's invested on the side of the residents."
As a company limited by guarantee and registered charity, it fits the classic social enterprise model in that income raised from its fee-paying professional courses will, once a surplus is made, subsidise free training for their social beneficiaries - the tenants and residents.
Using the partnership model means that Academy4Housing can deliver economies of scale when costing training courses for its staff members.
However, acting as an independent social enterprise that can trade with housing associations rather than an enterprise still under the wing of a housing association - as is the case with several in the sector - is key to its success, says Craig. He believes that social enterprises that are part of organisations, "can get lost".
As a separate entity, he says, the social enterprise can grow at its own pace and avoid unnecessary bureaucracy. "If it was integrated, we probably wouldn't have achieved as much as we have in terms of the programmes we've put together," he says.
Housing associations as facilitators of social enterprise can be witnessed in a novel scheme called Accord Addventures, set up by the Accord group of housing associations in the West Midlands to encourage its unemployed residents to set up social enterprises or business ventures themselves.
Accord Addventures is a worklessness strategy launched in 2011 to tackle high levels of deprivation and unemployment mainly in the Black Country and Birmingham.
Some 70% of Accord's residents are economically inactive which is why AA forms a central part of the Group's business strategy 2011-16. Rise, which stands for Residents into Self-Employment and Social Enterprise, was set up in May 2012 as part of AA by former enterprise manager William Lilley.
"We've developed a distinctive approach to social enterprise," he says. "We're trying to encourage our residents and the broader community to take the lead themselves in setting up initiatives and that's our philosophy. We're very passionate about that."
Rise, a form of resident-facing fiscal sponsorship, exists to, "sponsor and support social entrepreneurs" and is an incubation programme for early stage or pre-start up local enterprises both of a commercial and social nature.
It provides a free umbrella of support to kick-start would-be entrepreneurs' social mission including seed capital of up to £1,000 for equipment, access to free support and mentoring, incubation and office space, access to back office functions such as marketing and communication support and a network of entrepreneurs.
"The point is to help residents overcome the barriers to setting up an enterprise," he says.
Rise aims to support ten resident ideas/enterprises this financial year and at the moment is working with six.
Lilley believes it is the mission of encouraging residents themselves to become social entrepreneurs that is the most unique and pioneering aspect of Rise.
He says he would advise other housing associations to support and empower residents within their own social enterprises before taking on the labour of developing a proprietary one.
Lilley adds that there are also liabilities involved with housing associations setting up social enterprises of their own. "Housing associations setting them up have to really assess whether they have the resources, the capacity, the skillset to do it - that's why we've tried to support others in the first instance rather than go off and set up 20 social businesses that we've all funded and set up and where if they run into financial difficulties, we just bail them out - it's not the approach we want to encourage!"
A chink is opening up for social enterprises to harness the expertise of housing associations, prove their social value and develop a symbiotic relationship for the future.
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Posted by Anita Pati
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