Almost 20 years in finance at the NHC
We spoke to Yvonne Surtees from our Finance Team about her time at the NHC and how the culture and focus on wellbeing makes it a great place to work.
What is your job title and how long have you worked at the NHC?
I started working for the NHC over 19 years ago as a Finance Assistant. In my early career the NHC supported me with my studies and helped me achieve an AAT Accounts and Payroll qualification. With experience and knowledge gained at the NHC I progressed my career to Finance Officer, and then on to Finance & Payroll Manager.
How would you describe the culture at the NHC and what has changed in the time you’ve worked here?
The flexibility the NHC offered when I first applied for the position was a big draw as I had a young family. As the years have gone by the NHC has become more flexible with agile working and has implemented the wellbeing programme promoting work/homelife balance – as well as mental and physical wellbeing. The wellbeing group arrange regular walks and other various activities during works time, this helps provide a good balance.
Our executive leadership team are approachable and supportive to all staff members and for me personally this is a high priority from my employer. Promoting positive and safe environment and allowing staff to be part of the corporate plan and core values really helps bring the workforce together.
Leading the NHC’s HR and wellbeing work for almost 20 years
We spoke to our HR and Wellbeing Manager, Kay Wiseman, about how she has developed her career at the NHC and some of her highlights.
What is your job title and how long have you worked at the NHC?
I have been with the NHC for over 19 years and started my career as an Administrative Assistant. As the NHC expanded, an opportunity arose for me to pursue a career in human resources and with the support of the NHC I gained a master’s in human resource management, and I am now HR and Wellbeing Manager.
What has been a highlight from your time at the NHC?
I have had many highlights throughout my time with the NHC, the most recent was with the help of our staff led wellbeing group we achieved the Gold Better Health at Work award which recognised the NHC’s commitment to promoting health and wellbeing to colleagues and our members.
How would you describe the culture at the NHC?
The NHC has a positive, flexible, and supportive culture with employee health and wellbeing at its core. The agile approach to work really helps me and my family’s needs.
What do you like to do outside of work?
Outside of work I like to spend time with family and friends, I also enjoy walking and going to the gym.
Proud to contribute to something meaningful
We welcomed Rosie Beckford to the team earlier in the year. She is a Procurement & Contracts Officer, working for Consortium Procurement, our commercial arm which delivers compliant, practical, and efficient procurement for public sector organisations.
Rosie shares her experience so far.
What attracted you to your role?
I really enjoy the variety of the role – no day or procurement solution is the same and it is very important to me to work in an environment where I am continuously learning.
I am proud to work for Consortium Procurement and Northern Housing Consortium – they have a brilliant organisational model, and I feel like I am contributing towards something meaningful.
Describe your typical day?
I work with members to manage the call–off process for frameworks and dynamic purchasing systems.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?
The most valuable thing you can give someone is your time.
What do you like to do to switch-off?
I’m always content curled up with a book, a cup of tea and my cat. I also love long walks and spending time in nature.
How would you sum up working for the NHC and Consortium Procurement, in three words?
Interesting, positive, collaborative.
Bursary boost for artist’s new business
Sarah’s story
As a disabled artist starting up my own business, accessibility is important.
I was struggling to meet client and contractual needs and having to do way harder work by fingerpainting and editing on my phone screen. This meant it took a lot longer and was a lot more difficult to create and edit images than necessary, but I worked with what I had at the time.
Northern Housing Consortium via Livin Futures offered a £500 bursary and I applied for a drawing tablet to make it easier to edit, modify and create work to the professional standard required.
I was so pleased when I was successful with being approved for the bursary as it is very important that disabled individuals have access to accessibility when it comes to doing the jobs we have built a trade in.
This tablet won’t just make it more accessible to create stickers and meet client specifications, but it also allows me, as a disabled artist to modify and create art with ease.
Having successfully achieved a contract with a stock image website, I found it exceptionally difficult to meet their requirements of the contract without the correct software.
I would like to say a huge thank you to Lisa Newham from Livin Futures and Northern Housing Consortium for helping my business visions come to fruition.
A cut above the rest
Livin Housing customer Kimberly Bell shares how an NHC Unlocking Success bursary has helped her get her hairdressing back up and running in the North East.
I would like to thank the Northern Housing Consortium for awarding me the £500 bursary which has been very useful in my ambition to once again become a self-employed hairdresser in the North East.
I recently relocated to the North East, due to personal circumstances. I had previously been a well-established self-employed hairdresser, where I had regular clients and income. I recently secured a part time role at a local bar, as I felt this would help me to meet new people, and try and attract potential customers to my hairdressing business.
Livin Housing listened to my circumstances and understood I was eager to get back into hairdressing and mentioned the NHC Bursary. This was an opportunity which I wanted to go ahead with, and I was extremely happy to hear that my application had been accepted.
When I received the £500, I ordered supplies to help me start back up. I have since been able to get new clients in my area and have started back up as a self-employed hairdresser.
Thank you once again to all those involved.
Building the Future of the North
Building the Future of the North is our new offer to government to work together over the next ten years to transform communities and enable thousands more northerners to live in good quality homes.
Patrick Murray, NHC Executive of Policy and Public Affairs explains more about the offer and his hopes for the future – both long and short term.
Why is the 2024 general election crucial for housing in the North?
We desperately need a long-term plan for housing. For decades, and under successive Governments, the country has failed to deal with the housing challenges we face, whether it’s a shortage of genuinely affordable good quality homes, or the significant number of older, colder homes in the North, or communities that have been overlooked by Governments wedded to a London-dominant economic model. Given that a good, stable, affordable home in a great community underpins good health, employment and educational opportunities, and ultimately a good life, we can’t afford to continue like this.
The Government might well change hands for what would be only the third time during my lifetime, and certainly the first time where housing is being featured in the campaign. The challenges are enormous, and there is a lot of work to do to get the next administration – whoever it is – to understand how those challenges play out in different parts of the country, especially the diversity of markets and communities we have across the North.
But there is a real opportunity here, and much to build on with the great work the sector already does and the progress made in devolution to Mayoral Combined Authorities over recent years. I’ve been in local and central Government and I know that you just can’t fix something this complex and interconnected on the ground from a distant, silo-ed Whitehall.
If you were in a lift with the next housing minister, how would you pitch NHC’s Building the Future of the North offer?
We can help you deliver real change on your priorities across the North. There is so much potential to make a real difference to people’s lives and communities across the North. Whether that’s building up to 320,000 homes across brownfield land, or creating 77,000 great new green jobs across the North and helping meet Net Zero, or making sure everyone has a decent home across social and private rented sectors, we are your partners to deliver.
So, work with us. Provide us the long-term certainty, unleash the power of devolution to deliver across the diversity of markets in the North, and have a sensible conversation about what’s needed to tackle so many challenges within the resources available, and let’s build that real partnership. Do that and we’ll push everything we can to deliver your priorities.
What changes do you want to see over the next ten years?
Building the Future for the North sets out what we think that long-term plan for housing needs to look like in the North. There’s some tweaks we can make quickly to make existing funding go further, such as changing the rules on how we use affordable housing grant for regeneration schemes, or embedding and building on positive changes to how value for money is measured across Government funding programmes.
But the big stuff needs that long-term approach. A £4.2bn investment over ten years for Combined Authorities will unlock land for up to 320,000 homes on brownfield land. Long-term certainty over affordable housing grant and rents, and funding for Net Zero will unlock our ability to plan effectively, achieve efficiencies, line up supply chains, work with training providers to create new jobs, and ultimately deliver what’s needed.
We also desperately just need to rebuild capacity in local authorities. We heard from residents in our Pride in Place work how important basic services are in underpinning flourishing communities. We know that planning capacity has been disproportionately hit in the North. And we can’t tackle poor standards in the private rented sector without investing in enforcement. So, a sustainable funding settlement for local Government and some targeted pots will go a long way.
And devolution absolutely needs to be at the heart of this. There’s so much potential to achieve a real step change by joining things up across places. There is real ambition and momentum around Mayoral Combined Authorities that we can unleash by working in partnership.
And what are your hopes for housing in the north over the next 50 years?
That the housing crisis is a distant memory. That we’ve finally escaped the already broken, over-centralised economic model that has held productivity back in this country for too long. That all places across the North have been able to unleash their full potential, with everyone getting a fair start and fair chance, and with real opportunities to build a good life in flourishing communities, no matter where you live.
Heartwarming Homes – working together to make a difference
The NHC, Placeshapers and Tpas came together to launch the Heartwarming Homes toolkit, to support housing providers to engage with residents about energy efficiency improvements. The project came about following the NHC’s Social Housing Tenants’ Climate Jury and Placeshapers and Tpas research Residents’ Voices in the Net Zero Journey. Both pieces of work had similar themes around importance of effective communication and engagement with residents.
Project lead Kathy Thomas explains more about Heartwarming Homes.
Tell us a bit more about the toolkit:
The Heartwarming Homes toolkit is an easy to navigate website which guides social housing providers through the process of communicating with residents about energy efficiency projects from start to finish.
There are some useful resources, such as template letters, a video tour of a retrofitted home, and template FAQs. However, it’s much more that – if you want to successfully engage with residents you need to look at your whole process, not just the materials you send them.
I worked with a group of tenants, and they were passionate about the need for tailored one-to-one engagement with residents, with someone they know and trust. Everyone has different circumstances, and you need to account for this. We looked at things from a Behaviour Change Perspective, so the toolkit identifies what potential barriers are to having work done, and how these can be overcome.
What do you think are the most important lessons from the toolkit?
That a ‘one size fits all’ approach to engagement doesn’t work. Having dedicated customer engagement officers and offering tenants tailored support, for example a loft clearance service for those that need it, requires additional investment but it’s well worth it. It will pay dividends in terms of customer experience, and those residents will share experience with neighbours, friends and family. It also helps avoid costly delays which come with not being able to access peoples’ homes.
Heartwarming Homes sounds a collaborative project, can tell us a bit more about who you worked with?
It was very collaborative – the original idea for the project came from the NHC, Placeshapers and Tpas, but a wide range of organisations and individuals were involved in the development and delivery.
As mentioned, I worked with a tenant advisory group which included people who had been involved in the other pieces of work and some new faces too. The insight they gave was invaluable. I also worked representatives from the social housing sector who shared what was working well, and lessons learnt. It was important to get input from both perspectives.
All this was overseen by a steering group, which alongside the three lead organisations included representatives from Department of Energy Security and Net Zero, the Carbon Literacy Project, Yorkshire and Humber Climate Commission and West Yorkshire Housing Partnership and more.
Has the toolkit been a success?
The website’s had over 9,000 hits and this keeps growing which show’s it’s being used by the sector. Prior to launch we did a test and learn phase with a wider group of sector representatives and residents and the feedback was positive. The message was clear that the toolkit would be used, and the advice was realistic to implement.
What meant most though was the feedback from residents. I’ve pasted a couple of examples below.
“It makes such a refreshing changethat it’s written in ‘speak easy’ language, it’s understandable. It makes it sound totally different to most of the stuff I’ve read before that’s been put out.”
“It takes away any sense of “them and us” which people sometimes have at times of change. It allows opportunities for questions to be asked.”
What have been your personal highlights?
I worked with a very supportive manager and was given the freedom to take the project in the direction I felt was right.
I also stepped out my comfort zone and ended up speaking at dozens of events about the project. It was a real confidence booster and has helped me develop new skills.
Find out more about Heartwarming Homes at https://heartwarminghomes.org.uk
Meet our Matthew
NHC Member Engagement Officer and GEM programme graduate Matthew Johnson shares his experience of joining the housing sector, and what the challenge and opportunities are.
What’s been your highlight?
The highlight from doing the GEM programme, was meeting others from across the sector. I interacted with a range of different colleagues in housing and a diverse range of staff from different organisations. From Policy Officers to Housing Officers, our fellow GEM students were the highlight for me. Talking to others who had just came into housing and their ideas for the sector through the activities we did was really insightful.
What’s the biggest challenge in housing?
For me, it’s capacity and resourcing. In the housing sector there is new regulation being introduced that housing providers are having to react to. Improvements in housing quality, creating better neighbourhoods and safer communities are some of the great areas of work housing associations are investing in to improve the lives of their tenants. However, this, along with the changes in regulation from the Regulator of Social Housing and the Housing Ombudsman means that housing providers are being asked to do more and more which there may not be resources to fully facilitate. This, along with recruitment difficulties (particularly in trades skills) and funding restrictions, means there may be difficulties around capacity and resourcing in future.
One thing I’ve learned:
My main takeaway from GEM is that the housing sector is changing and the relationship between tenant and landlord isn’t as straightforward anymore. In the past, it seems that the relationship was more transactional, there was a tenant who paid rent to a social landlord and in return, they had a house. Conversations in the sector are changing as to what exactly a “home” is. Ideas such as 20-minute neighbourhoods and the necessity of green spaces are changing what social landlords are being asked to do for their tenants. The idea of “placemaking” is a lot more prevalent and is leading the sector to look at what they can do for their more.
What I’m excited for:
I’m excited about the election. Maybe “excited” isn’t the right word, but I’m interested to see what the future of housing could potentially look like. I think regardless of who wins, there will be a slew of ideas coming forward about housing in the coming months, and social housing is going to be a large part of it. It’ll be interesting to see what is implemented post-election.
