Anyone work for a Housing Association ? Is this a reasonable number of staff?

[MedievalMadness]

I live in a flat run by a small housing assoc (500 properties , mainly flats). It is absolutely chaotic with no department having any idea what other depts are doing/have done/need to do. To me there seems a ridiculous amount of staff. I'm wondering if this is because so many of them are ineffective, so they need more and more people to try run things . I've never come across a more ineffectively run organisation in my life. Nothing gets done without an almighty battle, there seem to be perpetual meetings, staff wandering around , appointments cancelled, forgotten , random people calling to do repairs at all times etc. There are the following staff:
CEO, director of operations, director of finance & resources, HR & resources manager, Administrator, finance manager, finance officer, housing manager, housing officer, community engagement officer, property services manager, compliance officer, 2 x compliance technicians , property surveyor/clerk of works, 2 x facilities coordinators,repairs operative , sheltered housing manager, deputy sheltered housing manager, 10 x housing support workers .

If anyone works for a HA or knows about them, does this seem normal for the size of the HA?

Does this HA start with an S by any chance

They've almost got more staff than houses 😂

Same here Apparently electric checks are important for tenants safety but water pouring through a light fitting (neighbour) isnt an emergency

Jennifer. Exactly this sort of set up. We have had this same scenario . Are you in flat 30 ?
Passivhous. Lol. It’s definitely getting to a 1:1 staff to tenant ratio .
Jennifer. No not an S. please don’t tell me there’s more than one like this .

@MedievalMadness Afraid so. The culture and attitude towards social housing tenants is bloody awful. Put social housing in the MN search engine and you will see it in all its glory

Sadly I would say this is standard and astronomical salaries as well.

I’ll have a look at social housing threads on here Jennifer It sounds like it’s going to make for depressing reading. Timeandtune I don’t think I’d want to know the salaries these bods are on. It wouldn’t do my blood pressure any good.

It sounds rife for takeover by a bigger organisation. I’d be surprised if they weren’t already circling.

I’m not sure if that would be likely to improve things or worsen them 3Peassuit

In Scotland a CEO of a small HA would be on at least £80k. Housing officers around £35- £40k

I know our local HA is spectacularly badly run. It's not a letter then a number, is it?

I work for a HA with 30,000 properties so a much larger portfolio and yes that seems a lot of staff....we have 2x facilities coordinators lol

Has it had a review recently ( a bit like offsets for HAs).

If there is water pouring through the light fitting is it a roof leak or from an upstairs neighbour?

And that's a ridiculous amount of staff. 125 properties I'd a reasonable amount to manage with one person handling complaints, repairs, contracts, lease queries, deposits etc. Possibly 1 assistant and usually at least 1 finance bod. So perhaps 12 staff for 500 properties for the day to day running of it. A decent property manager with an assistant should be able to handle their own compliance! Are they ARLA accredited?

It was a roof leak caused by their contractors who were doing a roof renewal Happened on a Saturday night and HA refused to come out so tenant called fire brigade

13 weeks for a roof renewal

Not my flat that had the water through the light fitting, but it was from the flat above theirs ELC

I didn’t realise there was an OFSTED equivalent for HAs 3Peas. I will go have a look.

Wanttobe. That IS so interesting. I’ve nothing to compare ours with which is why I started the thread, but the only reason I can think of for there being so many staff for such a small portfolio is that a lot of people can’t do their jobs .

ELC. It does seem a heck of a lot of staff and this thread is starting to confirm my suspicions . I don’t know if it’s ARLA accredited. I’ll see if I can find out. I’m just so sick of the state of the whole organisation and how everything looks so good on their website and in the stuff they put out in the local press, when the tenants are getting such a rough deal.

To give you an idea of a private company equivalent, I know of a couple around that size, and they have 3-5 staff. You will know if they are ARLA accredited if they have the mark on their website at the bottom. The property managers would have "MARLA" after their names on their email signatures if they email you.

Are they government funded? I can't imagine any private company could afford that many staff without running at a loss! A property manager depending on area would be on around £25k a year alone.

nine months to fit a kitchen

Was this for the actual work to be done or to be arranged and scheduled in?
To be fair to the HA there's nothing they can do about the leak without getting the roofers back. Emergency procedure would be to advise tenant to isolate the fuse to that light circuit and switch it off and use something to catch the water until the roofer can come back and make a temp repair.

So 30 staff for 500 properties, i.e. a ratio of 16.6 properties per member of staff? (Appreciate this is a simplistic model, but…)

The HA I work for has a ratio of 25 properties per member of staff (but we are much larger so will be some economies of scale).

Your HA still feels pretty top heavy though…

It's such a racquet the HA industry.

So what do each member of staff do with 25 properties? Is that covering absolutely everything from begining to end of tenancy?