Acuity has agreed a benchmarking partnership with HouseMark that we believe will bring significant benefits to subscribers of both organisations.

New services for members

While our work supporting clubs and individuals from smaller housing associations continues as before, our members now have access to the housing practitioner resources and networking that is available through HouseMark, with performance data from our Smaller Providers Benchmarking (SPBM) system being copied into HouseMark’s PI Tracking database.

HouseMark’s data validation and definitions ensure comparison of apples with apples.

HouseMark is the leading source of cross-sector cost and performance data for social housing, providing performance and efficiency improvement services to over 900 members. If you are an SPBM member and want to find out more about the new HouseMark services you are entitled to please get in touch.

Response to the new partnership has been extremely positive, and we have new clubs and members throughout England. The message is clear: against the backdrop of uncertainty about regulation and tough economic conditions, working with your peers is an extremely effective way of meeting the challenges ahead.

Diana Kingdon, Chair of the NHF National Smaller HAs Group  describes SPBM as “An excellent service that enables us to compare our performance with peers and groups of smaller associations as well as nationally. Easy to set up and record data, well set out reports, and a wealth of information through the link with HouseMark”.

Small specialists

The new broader comparative framework, combined with access to the HouseMark resources, means that we are increasingly working with smaller specialist organisations, who have struggled in the past to find a peer group.

If you are a small, specialist organisation without a ‘club’ of obvious peers, we will aim to find you a similar group of organisations to provide you with useful comparative reports against which you can measure your own performance. You can also plug straight into the national network of good practice and peer support through HouseMark.

Show me the data

We have always encouraged our benchmarking clubs to promote the fact that they are engaged in performance improvement and to publicise their successes. We are now taking that a step further.

Our members have expressed concerns that smaller housing associations performance data is not published anywhere or, worse, that the Tenant Services Authority website suggests that smaller providers have somehow failed to provide performance data.

Our SPBM website will soon provide the opportunity for tenants and other stakeholders of smaller housing associations to compare their landlord with others both nationally and locally.

We hope to develop this service in future to help our members meet the regulatory requirement of reporting to tenants on their performance, and that this will lead to a greater level of involvement of residents in benchmarking and the scrutiny of housing providers.