The Hyde Group, one of the UK’s leading housing associations came to us in 2018 with a desire to articulate and place a value on the positive impact they bring as a social housing provider.  Knowing that social tenancies offer so much more than just a place to live, Hyde wanted this to reflect the true value of a tenancy – the difference a social tenancy makes in people’s lives – and not just a statement of provision.

To understand the reality of what a social tenancy means, we ran workshops with Hyde’s staff, carried out in-depth interviews with staff, residents, police and local authorities and thoroughly analysed Hyde’s own data and understanding of the impact of their tenancies on residents, their families and wider communities.  From there, we applied research findings from a wide variety of other recently-published studies across the sector in order to estimate an economic value.

This work is summarised in a report, ‘The Value of a Social Tenancy’, which has gained a wide audience in the housing sector and amongst policy makers across Government departments including the Treasury.   Following the launch of the main report we helped Hyde to develop an impact measurement and management framework. We and Hyde are continuing to engage with other housing associations and providers of social housing to encourage wider adoption of the Hyde model as a common framework for talking about impact and influencing change.

Choice Support is a social care charity working across much of England to provide the best possible support to people with learning disabilities, autism and mental health needs.  The charity has recently merged with MCCH – another charity providing similar services but in different locations.  The merger was a sensible and a successful one, but a year or so on, the charity realised that more needed to be done if it was to realise its full potential for positive impact.

Through a series of structured workshops, we helped Choice Support to think differently about who they are and what they are trying to achieve for – and with – the people they support.  Thinking about those people as active citizens first and foremost, we were able to make sense of some of the barriers to positive impact that were being experienced in a sector where commissioned care packages to drive too much of the decision-making.  By agreeing and socialising a set of ambitions or desired futures, we brought a plethora of good ideas, pilot projects and good practice into open discussion across the organisation, much of which was known to be valuable, or had been successfully trialled, but lacked a mechanism for scaling up or formalising into ‘the way things are done’. We and the team from Choice Support we were able to co-develop a framework for improvement activities which would ensure that improvements were integrated into the core operating model, successfully replacing outdated practices.  Most importantly, it became clear that a shared vocabulary, approach and ambition towards the people that Choice Support works with was crucial to the success of any improvement activities.  Choice Support is now well on the way to building this new approach and is embarking on a set of key improvement projects that fit within its new framework.

CITB is the Industry Training Board for the construction industry. It is a registered charity and public body, created under the Industrial Training Act. Its role is to encourage training and to build a safe, professional and fully qualified workforce in the UK construction industry.

Following a strategic review, CITB decided to divest certain of its direct delivery activities, including its qualification awarding organisation (CSkills Awards) and the Construction Plant Competence Scheme (CPCS). Our team helped CITB to assess the potential value of these businesses, and to plan and implement a strategy for the divestment of the businesses that achieved a balance between fair financial value and achieving a sale that would create long term sustainable benefit for the construction industry. Our team led the marketing of the business, and supported the negotiation of both of these transactions through to completion, providing strategic advice to the CITB project team throughout the process.