During tough financial times in the social housing sector in Wales, making the most of resources to achieve better services for tenants and residents isn’t just value for money, it’s good business sense. But don’t rush into thinking this means, cost cutting and greater inefficiencies.

We’ve recently heard a lot of discussion in the social housing sector in Wales about value for money (VfM). The Regulatory Board for Wales has made a commitment to proactively support and enable housing associations to deliver better outcomes for tenants, customers and communities. To help do this they have asked the Regulatory Advisory Group to lead a thematic review on Value for Money in order to understand how associations are using VfM to drive service improvements to tenants and maximise social returns and social impact.

This week we have also seen the launch of a joint CHC and HouseMark Cymru publication which provides a really useful practical guide to VfM for the sector. As VfM discussions continue and as VfM gets embedded into working practices we need to think about how to provide opportunities for tenants, residents and service users to be involved. Tenants are commercially aware and seek value for money in every area of their own lives, which includes demanding the best in terms of VfM from their landlord; this can be real incentive for tenants to participate.

This could include defining, monitoring and assessing VfM as well as in setting VfM Service Standards. Tenant Scrutiny, Inspectors, panels, focus groups and co-production approaches can all have a big part to play in making sure landlords offer and deliver VfM services to all in their communities. I’ve recently delivered some training workshops around value for money (VfM) and the role of tenants which have prompted some great discussions and ideas. One message that keeps coming through is that cost is only one element of measuring value and return on investment should also consider social, as well as simple financial measures. When you think about the real difference Social Landlords make in their communities, measuring social impact can help landlords demonstrate the true value that their services deliver.

However this more ‘softer’ measuring isn’t always easy and often is not what the sector is used to doing. It can be more straightforward to simply look at the 3 ‘E’s: economy (cost), efficiency and effectiveness. During our workshop sessions we looked wider than the 3 ‘E’s and the social value of VfM by using our ‘VfM assessment tool’. The tool helped to explore and consider the equality, environmental and ethical value of service delivery. This enabled tenants to come up with evidence to really demonstrate the value of a service and most importantly ideas as to how VfM could be improved. Given that tough financial times will continue, optimising landlord’s resources to achieve better services will be essential. Tenants need to be part of how this is achieved and given opportunities to work with their landlords to define and demonstrate value of money.