Social housing procurement leads launch national trade body to facilitate collaboration
04 Jun 2024 Michael Lloyd
Procurement leads in the social housing sector have launched a trade body, called the National Housing Procurement Association (NHPA), to represent them.
The group has the vision statement of “transforming housing procurement”, and in time could lead to shared exercises.
Chief officer John Wallace, who is director of procurement at Clarion Housing Group, told Social Housing that the NHPA is a “community for housing procurement colleagues across the country” that will seek to provide leadership and a voice for the profession in the sector.
The organisation launched on 16 May, although it is not yet a legal entity.
Service offerings will include benchmarking and best practice, as well as competency development and engaging with government and national bodies.
Mr Wallace has been serving as the sector’s single point of contact for the Cabinet Office in preparation for the Procurement Act, which comes into force on 28 October.
Referring to the new trade body, he said: “It has to be customer centric, as you’d expect, and it’s a collaborative community. So at the moment, it could just be sharing ideas but ultimately, it might lead to doing procurements together and leveraging the increased size that we’ve got.
“It’s about innovation and transformation of procurement in the sector. And it’s about developing the capability of procurement colleagues in social housing.”
Alan Heron, director of procurement at Places for People and deputy chief officer of the NHPA, said: “The National Housing Procurement Association is being established to transform UK housing procurement through collaboration, innovation and sustainability; delivering high-quality, affordable homes that enrich communities and lives.
“This is a critical time for procurement in the housing sector, with significant legislative change coming in the form of the Procurement Act, which will present both significant opportunities and practical challenges for housing providers across the country. The NHPA aims to be a catalyst for change and support in the sector, enabling our organisations and the communities we serve to benefit from best-in-class procurement.
“The NHPA has established a council with representatives from Clarion, Places for People, Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing, Thirteen Group, and more. Places for People is proud to support the NHPA and its goals for collaboration across the sector.”
Service offerings will include competency development of technical and business skills, mentoring opportunities and increased access to professional development opportunities.
It will also offer benchmarking, collaboration, networking, market knowledge and market management, conferences, podcasts and forums.
The NHPA will aim to provide sector engagement with government and national bodies, and to influence the future landscape, as well as to leverage the scale of the association.
Developing the NHPA
Mr Wallace has been serving as the sector’s single point of contact for the Cabinet Office in preparation for the Procurement Act, which was passed into law last October.
Coming into force on 28 October this year, the act will introduce several changes that will mean both increased flexibility and administration for not-for-profit providers.
Across the country, 10 communities of practice were set up, chaired by one of the procurement leads in that region. These have been holding meetings with their housing association (HA) members to talk about the act, its changes and how it is being implemented.
As the single point of contact to government, Mr Wallace has been meeting those regional leads on a monthly basis. From these meetings, he started having discussions about how the social housing sector can maintain its approach beyond the introduction of the Procurement Act and the sector’s implementation for it.
From this, the NHPA was formed with those regional leads and all of the HAs part of those communities of practice coming together into a wider group to ensure the collaboration continues after the act is fully embedded.
Mr Wallace said that, so far, the association has formed a council which each regional lead has a role within.
Although the group has launched, it is not yet fully formed as it is not yet a legal entity and there are not yet any members as membership policy and finance policy is still being developed.
However, Mr Wallace added that from the communities of practice, around 250 HAs could join and from his single point of contact he was linked to 450 procurement colleagues across the sector that could join.
He said: “There are certain groups in place, but generally all of the procurement people in HAs are working in isolation, and we don’t come together to share ideas to raise the profile of procurement in housing to see what collaborative opportunities there are on a national basis. We do it regionally.
“The NHPA is aiming to use the resources out there across the country to really improve procurement in housing. And it’s not something that’s in place at the moment. So, although it’s been facilitated by the act and the changes that are coming, there is so much more we can do from a procurement perspective in the sector, by working more collaboratively together nationally.”
Mr Wallace added that, with changes to embed from the Procurement Act too, this would be a “slow process”, but that the noises from the sector were positive.
“We’ve had lots of positive feedback that we should do it,” he said. “But we’re not going to rush it. It needs to be done in a timely manner, simply because we are procurement people with day jobs as well, we’re all doing this in addition to our work in our own organisations.”
The Procurement Act
Mr Wallace said the sector is well-prepared for the new Procurement Act with “a lot of engagement, a lot of interaction, and a significant uptake of the training that’s coming through the Cabinet Office”.
He said the act has brought the benefit of increasing the status of procurement in the sector at a time when it is more important.
“[With] the economic pressures that are on HAs at the moment, good strong procurement is imperative because the days of significant surpluses have gone… and procurement could really help them alleviate some of those pressures.”
Look out for Social Housing’s newest in-depth feature, detailing how registered providers are preparing for changes under the Procurement Act, being published this week on Wednesday 5 June.