Posted 12.06.2020

Investing in our Governance

Many housing associations have moved away from voluntary Board membership and now pay their Board members for their time and contribution. 

Our Board has been discussing whether to take this step for a couple of years and have considered the views of our partners and tenants as well as looked at what other organisations have decided. We have listened to the arguments for and against and know that some people held strong views and some were concerned about what making payments would do to our ethos and values. 

Earlier this year the Board met and took the decision to pay Board members, the issues that convinced us were as follows:

  • The role of Board members is a very responsible one, involving decisions that affect thousands of people living in our homes, our staff and the communities in which we work.
  • The risks facing organisations are significant, whether that's the risk of running a landlord service, developing new homes or dealing with interest rate changes or even pandemics.
  • We need our Board members to put the time in and to really understand what we do so they can scrutinise performance, support improvements and challenge ideas, we also need them to be accountable for their own high standards of performance.   
  • We need to attract the best people we can to join our boards and are increasingly having to compete with other organisations who pay their Board members. 

We took this decision at the start of the current pandemic crisis and decided to delay implementation. So for now our Board members are still working voluntarily, we will review the timing but are planning to start paying our board members in September 2020. 

We are currently advertising for two new board members, one of the vacancies is for a tenant member, you may be interested, if so please take a look.

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