The Solomon Project – More than a Benchmarking Group

Background and purpose

We are committed to demonstrating that small associations can remain responsive to specific needs and client groups while also delivering service excellence at a competitive price. Formed in 1998, we represent very diverse client groups, many of whom have special needs. Our stock largely comprises small developments and street properties and includes hostels, sheltered housing and facilities for care and support.

The group comprises:

Agudas Israel Housing Association
Hornsey Housing Trust
Innisfree Housing Association
Shian Housing Association
Sir Oswald Stoll Foundation
Waltham Forest Housing Association

Solomon Project Chief Executives

Membership of the Solomon Project is a key part of our commitment to quality, innovation, the pursuit of best practice and the achievement of the principles and objectives of "best value". Member associations have signed up to a long-term commitment to co-operative working for the benefit of our tenants and other stakeholders.

Progress

Members of the Solomon Project meet quarterly to oversee a work programme. The programme also involves additional meetings to pursue initiatives and explore issues in more depth. Our current and planned work goes well beyond benchmarking. The Solomon Project is committed to responding to what the benchmarking tells us by working together on innovative and possibly radical initiatives that retain our individuality while building on our collective strength. In recent years, we have formed sub groups to look more closely at operational issues.

To date we have:

Agreed a work programme each year of areas where we want to scrutinise and improve our performance on cost and quality.
Developed a comprehensive performance database that up-dates and significantly expands upon the Regulatory Statistical Return and Financial Performance Indicator Return.
Analysed comparative costs and performance and the correlation between factors that the database and supporting graphs show. This has helped us to focus on the key areas for fundamental review, both individually and collectively.
Compared policy and practice on a range of issues and learned important lessons from each other’s experience.
Carried out two activity based costing exercises that provided reliable information on central and support services costs and the ‘prices’ of key services such as repairs commissioning, rent arrears control, housing needs administration, allocations and lettings and tenancy management. These costs and "prices" are being derived on the basis of common definitions within the group so that they can be compared on a like for like basis.
Held regular joint training sessions on key operational issues.
Held two very successful joint meeting of the Boards of all the member associations to cement our long-term commitment, raise awareness and make progress on the implementation of the best value framework.
Held three events for members and senior staff focusing on governance.
Held five joint staff conferences which have now become a regular, annual fixture.
Started working more closely with SolFed, a South London based group of five associations. We have held "master classes" for the Chief Executives and have joined together to submit joint responses on government consultation documents.

The five SolFed associations are:- Ekaya, Housing for Women, Lambeth & Southwark HA, New World HA and Southwark & London Diocesan HA

Future plans

Amongst our future plans we propose to:

Explore the potential and practicalities for the joint procurement of services such as insurance, internal audit and information technology.
Set up a common web-site.
Use the strength and cohesion of Solomon and SolFed to validate and improve our individual and collective performance.

Relevance to best value & continuous improvement

The diversity of our organisations is helping us to challenge what we do, why we do it and how we do it. This has been a particularly valuable part of the work of the Solomon Project and is an essential part of identifying services for review.

As a peer group we are able to compare reliable performance and cost information that is derived on a consistent basis. This also helps us to engage staff in the process by making ‘best value’ more relevant to their own working experiences.

Our work programme includes the need to consult tenants both as individual organisations and collectively as the Solomon Project. The Service Statements of the member organisations can then have a common basis of reliable and comparative information while still reflecting the diversity of the client groups.

It is our explicit aim to establish whether there are elements of our services where we do not compete effectively on price or quality so that we can jointly explore the options for service procurement to feed into our Performance Plans and Performance Reports. The advantage for the Solomon Project is that these options include mutual support for continuous improvement, joint commissioning and internal purchaser/provider arrangements.