Welcome to our Annual Report 2017/2018
2017/2018 was a fantastic year for Tai Pawb. Early last year, we spoke to just under 100 members, stakeholders and partners to help us shape our work over the forthcoming 4 years. The result was our brand new strategy which re-focused our thinking and prepared us for the unprecedented future social, economic, and political challenges.
A renewed staff structure meant many new dedicated and value driven staff members joined our expert team. We launched our brand new, prestigious equality and diversity accreditation, the QED Award, and commenced a new, innovative programme of work in the private rented sector – the Open Doors project.
Our new purpose of Inspiring Wales to be a Fairer Place to Live is now driving all our work with clear priorities aimed at truly advancing people’s housing rights and increasing fairness in the housing system.
This year was markedly different for us in terms of moving beyond working within the policy frameworks of the Equality Act and engaging with the Human Rights and Future Generations agendas as a proactive and propositional organisation. Our aim was to truly and co-productively shape the change we wanted to see and make it happen together with our members, partners and stakeholder.
We hope you enjoy reading this year’s report showcasing our key highlights
Janice Bell - Chair
Alicja Zalesinska – Director
Our Purpose
To inspire Wales to be a fairer place to live
What We Do
We promote equality and social justice in housing
We work positively and constructively to advance equality and reduce prejudice, discrimination and marginalisation related to housing.
What Drives Us
Belief in social justice – we believe that all people have the right to access good quality homes in safe and cohesive communities.
Passion for equality and diversity – we believe that what we do is more than a job. We are passionate about changing people’s lives for the better, especially those that are marginalised.
Commitment to inspire change – we interact with people in a way that leaves them feeling equipped, empowered, motivated and supported to do things differently.
Focus on solutions – when challenging ourselves and others to recognise problems we strive to be constructive and seek practical solutions. We focus on positive and proactive action.
Our members – we work collaboratively with our members, listening, supporting and challenging them to ensure equality and diversity is central to the work they do.
Advancing Rights and Increasing Fairness
Increasing the provision of accessible housing
- We made a significant contribution to the EHRC Inquiry into Housing and Disabled people, having influence on the renewed focus on accessible housing in Wales. We developed a toolkit on housing and disability for Welsh councillors on behalf of the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
- We raised awareness of key housing accessibility issues and solutions in the housing press, through our Good Practice Briefings and a strategic seminar.
- We helped shape Action on Disability, the new Welsh Government framework outlining government commitment and action on independent living of disabled people
Race Inequality
- We worked closely with refugee organisations and other partners to drive improvements in asylum accommodation in Wales, including providing evidence to the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration
- We helped our members consider the implications of key housing and equality policy developments via regular briefings, updates, our newsletter and WHENetwork.
Socio-economic inequality
- We launched Closing the Gap: a report analysis the Gender Pay Gap in Welsh Housing Associations which highlighted key issues and solutions and was launched at CHC leadership conference.
- Our Well-being of Future Generations Act briefing event offered our members an opportunity to consider the links between equality, housing, the well-being goals and the 5 ways of working – keeping members up to date with the current equality policy agenda.
Fostering Excellence in Equality and Diversity
QED
The QED Award, launched this year in Cardiff and Llandudno, is the culmination of many years work towards a quality standard for housing associations to review and help them improve their work on equality and diversity. This prestigious accreditation provides a comprehensive, Wales-specific framework for reviewing and improving the equality and diversity impact of organisations across governance, services, access, involvement and culture.
- We worked closely with Melin Homes to develop the QED process and they were on track to become the first Welsh housing association to achieve the award at the end of 2017-18.
- Melin has already seen an impact from their work with a change in staff culture, increased board and tenant engagement, and a thriving equality and diversity working group.
- We started the process with 3 more RSL’s and are pleased to have agreements in place to work with many more to make a real change
Membership
One of the key pieces of work for our new Member Relations Manager was to update the membership structure in terms of member categories, benefits, and fees. This was completed by the end of the reporting period with brand new membership packs created and sent out to all current and prospective members for 2018-19. We believe this new offer enhances what has been done before, with clearer and more defined packages for each category of membership, and pricing bands that better reflect that some of our members have merged into group structures. This new membership structure offers great value for money which has been clearly highlighted in each package.
We recognised both the importance and challenge of recruiting local authority members, many of which have had year on year budget cuts. With this mind, we froze the membership fee for local authorities with stock and reduced it for local authorities that had transferred their stock, in order to make our offer as enticing as possible. Partnership with local authorities is vital due to the influence they have over local housing planning and policy and we are keen to continue to engage with them.
60 members:
- 19 affiliates
- 34 housing associations
- 6 local authorities
- 1 community group
Training and Consultancy
Tai Pawb delivers high quality training on equality and diversity issues tailored for the housing sector. We’ve worked this year to expand our pool of Associates to deliver this training, working closely with them and using their skills and experience to update and design new courses.
This year we delivered 25 training sessions to over 200 people including:
- Unconscious Bias
- Breakfast Briefing for Contractors
- Equality & Diversity training for frontline staff
- Equality Impact Assessments
Attendees rating their knowledge as ‘good’ or ‘very good’ rose from 23% before the training to over 90% afterwards,
We also delivered a number of pieces of bespoke consultancy, including analysis of benchmarking data for RSLs in North Wales, supporting Linc Cymru to incorporate equality and diversity considerations into their procurement process and carrying out policy reviews for several of our members.
Helpline
Our helpline is available to all of our members and is a direct way of contacting us with a question related to equality and diversity. This year we took 39 enquiries, including:
- Questions about definitions and terms to use on equality monitoring forms
- Changes to immigration housing eligibility regulations
- Request for advice on accessible communications and advice on consulting tenants
Events
Tai Pawb has continued to deliver high quality events for our members this year. The new team has worked hard to ensure excellent speakers from many different sectors to ensure that we are guided by best practice in related fields. While we of course value our colleagues in the housing sector, we have made an effort at all of our events to bring in voices from the third sector and from experts by experience to offer different perspectives.
- Following the publication of our strategic plan, our events directly reflected some of its priorities: race inequality, accessible homes, and Well-being of Future Generations. The strategic plan provides a useful structure to plan our work, and planning for next year’s events has also picked out key themes for us to work on.
- We wanted to explore new areas and different venues around Wales, so this year we visited Cardiff, Newtown and Merthyr Tydfil, with plans to work further afield in the future. We hope this will allow us to increase opportunities for members to attend and for us to meet colleagues from across Wales to share experiences and local challenges.
- We were delighted to welcome delegates from 56 different organisations working in housing and the third sector, 92% of which rated these events as ‘Excellent’ or ‘Good’.
Running an Innovative and Proactive Organisation
Communications
The appointment of a full time Communications and Marketing Officer has had an immediate impact on the way that Tai Pawb has been able to express itself and increase awareness of the vital work we do.
- 5,000 people viewed pages on our website this year with nearly a fifth of these being linked directly via social media.
- We have seen our messaging become more coordinated and consistent across the year which has helped increase both the number of followers, and the impressions and engagement for each tweet.
- We are also beginning to embrace more videos and graphics to engage with our followers and get our voice heard in a more effective way.
Open Doors
In July 2017 Tai Pawb launched its brand new and innovative private rented sector project ‘Open Doors’. Official launch events were held at the end of September 2017 where we took the project ‘on the road’ and visited 15 different venues across the three local authorities where we are working, engaging with 257 people.
Following our launch we attended and presented at a number of events and conferences to promote our project and its aims including Landlords Forums in Cardiff, the Vale of Glamorgan and Merthyr Tydfil, the All Wales People First Annual Conference, the Cymorth Cymru Homelessness Symposium and a Student Housing Advice event.
We set up and recruited members for our Advisory Group, and launched our online hub. We were successful in recruiting tenant and landlord champions for the project, and our champions have completed a number of activities including attending events with us, sharing their experiences through video and writing blogs which have been included on our online hub.
We also worked with Housing Studies students from Cardiff Metropolitan University, who will be undertook research for us as part of their assignments, which will be used to help us write tenant and landlord guides.
To the end of March 2018, we have achieved:
- 6 tenant champions, 4 landlord champions
- 102 tenants reported increased awareness of their rights and responsibilities through accessing outreach services and training
- 341 tenants were able to access information on their rights and responsibilities on online hub
- 13 landlords noted they felt more confident in letting to diverse and vulnerable tenants following using project services
- 65 landlords reported an increased knowledge of the requirements of equality legislation following using project services
- 37 landlords said that they knew more about their own legal responsibilities on equality and diversity, and were better able to apply the equality knowledge following training
- 62 landlords said they felt more confident following attendance at events
New Friends and Neighbours
We took a big step this year moving to a new office space to share with Cymorth Cymru. We’ve been delighted with the outcome as not only are we both reducing costs in challenging economic times, but have also been able to collaborate and share ideas and experiences.
We’ve been able to keep our services distinct and relevant, and also support each other in our shared aims. A huge thank you to Katie and the whole team for making us feel welcome and having lots of fun (and cake) in our new office.
Policy Reach
We further developed our policy and public affairs capacity, investing in a political monitoring resource, extending our relationships with politicians and influencers as well as joining a number of new forums to help embed the voice of housing and equality rights, including the Strategic Equality Plan Board and Budget Advisory Group on Equality.
Finances
Income
- Investments £1,774
- Other income £11,492
- Membership Fees £55,145
- Tai Pawb Events £6,334
- Charitable Activities £289,708
TOTAL £364,453
Expenditure
- Charitable Activities: £331,619
- Other: £0
Total: £331,619
THANK YOU
A big thank you to all of our members, stakeholders and board for their support and partnership this year.
An extra thanks to Martyn Jones who left us in April to take up a new position as Chief Executive of Learning Disability Wales. Congratulations!
Helen Taylor, Samantha Morgan, Ruth Nortey, Gemma Watkins, Dr Mwenya Chimba and Frances Beecher stood down from the board this year and we thank them for their guidance and experience during their time as trustees.
Board
- Janice Bell
- Jonathan Conway
- Mark Jennings
- Matt Kennedy
- Michelle Reid
- Mutale Merrill
- Robin Staines
- Sarah Prescott
- Stuart Epps