Does red mean dead?

Not-for-profit, probably-for-loss, taskforcing, enabling, empowering, scrutinising, regulating, planning for real, reality planning, consultation, participation, change management, managing change, low demand, high demand… all right, I made up one of the above.

If the truth were told, we in housing are not actually that keen on doing anything. We want to be, but we are much happier with inventing loose jargon than taking action – seeking to create a framework for strategic partnering at a community-based level is a lot less frightening than really getting stuck in to a community.

And we are more comfortable still as members of a working group considering how best to begin to seek to create a framework to… well you know the rest.

The fact is, it is grim round here – and in some places it is going to get grimmer.

So never mind whether you’ve holisticised, partnered, or created an enabling climate for frameworking; you do not want to be sticking anybody’s money, least of all your own, into places that are going irretrievably backwards against that most important of all performance indicators: grimness.

You have problems when you manage 20,000 homes and their development has been rooted in a commitment to regenerating marginalised areas, yet it is becoming painfully clear that regeneration has not always turned out to be quite the success you expected and a big fat chunk of those homes are located in the borough of Grim.

They are not the sorts of problems that leave you in a comfort zone from which you have sufficient leisure time to consider seeking to create a framework, but the sort of problems that are screaming at you, “deal with me now!”

Our brief was hard-nosed asset management through analysis of our portfolio and of the neighbourhoods where it is located – what should we keep, how should we keep it and what should we divest?

What was needed was a set of tools to enable a rapid but comprehensive assessment of all the stock and neighbourhoods concerned. To work out what direction they were going in, where we could confidently continue investment, where we felt confident of successful intervention to justify investment, and where we felt it was time to move on.

Like many RSLs we had, over the years, built up a portfolio as diverse in nature as it was in location. Our management and monitoring systems reflected this history – properties were grouped by year of acquisition or dwelling type, with limited reference to geographical or community links.

Housing officers’ patches reflected the same dilemma, with limited development of real ‘ear to the ground’ local knowledge.

We needed to be able to consider our homes in logical groupings, so we regrouped them by neighbourhood.

We worked with local staff, residents and contacts to define neighbourhoods, sometimes through formal boundaries such as electoral wards, but more usually by reference to places where people shopped, worked or socialised.

The result was undoubtedly flawed but a massive improvement. Instead of thousands of different unrelated property groupings we now had all our stock grouped within 300 recognisable neighbourhoods.

Each then needed an asset management plan. Resources were limited so we knew we could not successfully intervene and invest in all those neighbourhoods. To move forward we had to paint a picture of those neighbourhoods and our stock and then we could work out what we could do and where.

Grimness was gathering in dark, rain-filled clouds around us so we needed to make some hard decisions quickly, to get the facts and slap our judgement on the line. We went for a three-pronged approach. The devil’s trident comprised:

• a set of performance indicators for each neighbourhood,
  
• a neighbourhood condition questionnaire for completion by all relevant staff, and
  
• a summary of our latest residents’ survey by neighbourhood.

The result was a set of neighbourhood reviews, culminating in a ‘traffic light’ grade for each and a short strategy. Of course, more detailed research was needed before we implemented big decisions, but at least we had an approach in place to measure the grimness, count the pennies, and take us forward.

So how did we decide if a neighbourhood was Green, amber or red?

And what did those grades really mean? That the neighbourhood was going somewhere or going nowhere or that it was not a place where we could play a useful role?

The starting point was the performance indicators. We trawled the guidance (no shortage – there are plenty of folk seeking to create frameworks for neighbourhood measurement, believe me) and then agreed to go our own way, keeping it simple (simplistic, if you like – I’m not apologising).

We developed 11 indicators, six ‘internal’ ones (voids and repairs costs, etc) and five ‘external’ (housing benefit dependency, property value, educational achievement, deprivation and crime).

Each had an agreed threshold – if breached the indicator turned red. Two or fewer red indicators made for a green neighbourhood; three or four show amber, and five or more a grim (red) neighbourhood.

We put these results with the findings of our questionnaires and residents surveys, and adjusted the final traffic light grade where those findings suggested that the indicators might be unsafe.

And there we had it – flawed, artless and ripe for the amusement of any Institute of Applied Seeking to Framework Studies that cared to wave its bulging good practice guides in the winds of academic wonderland. But it gave us a start. A logical, manageable, measurable picture of our portfolio that embraced more than just the stock we managed.

It gave us a feel for the frustrations, aspirations and living conditions of the communities who live there. That picture is being regularly updated to give an early warning of dangerous trends.

Now the hard bit. Grimness has bitten hard, along with rent restructuring and a host of other individual pressures, which together are building up like a boiler, occasionally slipping the engine into reverse, frustrating the future and limiting the game.

Some of those red neighbourhoods may be convertible to pink and on into amber until one day we slip through a bright green ‘go’, to a land crackling with the confident chuckle of happy residents who cannot just spell sustainability but see it writ large in their children’s examination results.

But some of those neighbourhoods cannot be turned around or, even if they can, this association has not got the resources, presence, or capacity to play a leading role in all of them.

So some of those strategies hurt, they hurt us and they hurt our partners and somehow we have to minimise the hurt to those who live there. There’s a lot of talking to be done, about stock rationalisation, of the future of great swathes of sad terraces, and of exit strategies.

You have to be brave because there are too many influential people still clinging to redundant homes in lost areas.

What is needed is a realistic and ethical approach, rooted in a deliverable, open strategy. Get it right and in many neighbourhoods we can continue as a major force in providing quality homes, with a leading role in regeneration and in improving residents’ lives. Get it right and we can be confident of a healthy future.

It is all too easy to be sucked into focusing on estate management at the expense of the bigger picture. You can offer ideal homes, but if they are in places where people do not really want to live they may as well be leaky ridge tents.