Transforming lives together Strategy.pdfOur Value for Money (VfM) Strategy for 2017-20 has been...

Value for Money Strategy 2017-20

Transforming lives together

July 2017


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Contents

Advance: VfM Strategy 2017-20

How it fits together 3

Introduction, scope and purpose 4

What VfM means for us 6

Governance and reporting 9

Staff, customers and VfM 10

Regulatory and external environment 11

—3—Advance: VfM Strategy 2017-20

How it fits together

Staff, customers and VfM

Helping customers to live better lives is key and our staff agree. Staff have told us how we can help them to deliver more VfM.

VfM is good business sense. We are regulated by the HCA and operate in a challenging financial environment.

The diagram below shows how the elements of this strategy come together to ensure we remain focused on delivery.

Value for Money

Introduction, scope and purpose

This strategy applies to all that Advance does in order to help us deliver excellent services with limited resources.

What VfM means for us, our approach and how we will achieve it

We want to do more for our customers, do it more effectively, use our resources in the best way possible and control our costs.

Governance and reporting

Everyone has a part to play and our Board have overall responsibility. We will support our staff to deliver more VfM and have a reporting plan

to guide and monitor what we do.

Regulatory and external environment

Section 1

Section 2

Section 3

Section 4

Section 5

—4——4—Advance: VfM Strategy 2017-20

Introduction:

This strategy applies to all that Advance does in order to help us deliver excellent services within limited resources.

Scope:Our Value for Money (VfM) Strategy for 2017-20 has been developed through a process of consultation with customers and staff and sits alongside our Strategic Plan 2017-20.

It is vital that we deliver excellent services to our customers, aligned to their individual needs, in an efficient way for us to remain competitive as a provider of services in this challenging economic environment.

Our customers are principally people with disabilities and mental health conditions, who live across a wide geographical area. We deliver a range of services that enable our customers to live a fuller life. Our aim is to deliver quality services for our customers whilst remaining competitive in terms of the cost when compared to other service providers.

Purpose:

The purpose of this strategy is to: • Express our approach to VfM over the next three years

• Identify key VfM goals and objectives • Shape an effective VfM action plan

• Set out the supporting framework of governance and reporting

VfM permeates across the whole of Advance and the various strategies that we employ to meet our aims, the most significant in this context being our Strategic Plan, Procurement Strategy and Asset Management Strategies.

Our vision and valuesIntroduction, scope and purpose


Our approach to VfM is built on our PRIDE values:

Partnership - we work in partnership with our customers and build relationships with others that help us serve our customers better

Respect - we treat our customers, colleagues and others as we would like to be treated

Innovation - we are keen to try new things – especially when we can make things better for our customers

Drive - we do the right thing at the right time and everything we do is driven by our customers’ needs

Efficiency - we make best use of our resources, maximizing efficiency, so we can deliver the best services for our customers

PRIDE


What VfM means for us

In summary:

We make best use of our resources, maximising effiency, so we can deliver the best services for our customers.

What VfM meansHelping our customers achieve their ambitions drives everything we do. To do this a strong VfM strategy is really important to help us use our resources of people, houses, money and systems in the best way possible.We are not seeking to operate at the lowest unit cost. Our vision is to deliver the best quality housing, support and employment services to enable our customers to live the lives they choose, achieve their personal goals, feel valued and know their voices are heard.

This ‘best way’ in more traditional approaches to VfM is typically based on pursuit of the ‘3E’s’ of economy, efficiency and effectiveness. Our strategic goal is to pursue these, but for us and our customers, as concluded from our consultation process, the effectiveness of what we do is very important. We are aiming to transform lives whether that is helping customers to find a place to live, supporting them in their daily life, helping them find a job, or a combination of all of these.

The value we deliver to our customers often has benefits for society as a whole; the Social Value. That might take the form of gaining employment, reduced hospital admissions, reduced reliance on benefits, and positively engaging our customers in their community. In the period of this strategy we will focus on refining our social value methodology so we can better demonstrate the positive impact of our work. It is still very important that we are financially efficient so that we can generate capacity to invest in improving our existing homes, building new homes, and in service innovation and business improvements, so as to increase our effectiveness going forward.

Our approach to VfM

Our Strategic Plan 2017-20 sets the overall direction for the organisation. Delivering our services in ways that demonstrate value for money lies at the heart of this, and the approach of this VfM Strategy is to support and enable its successful completion.

We have given consideration to the requirements placed upon us within the HCA VfM Standard and additionally considered other areas that we felt were appropriate to our organisation and what we need to achieve in the future. Our approach has also all been influenced by the staff and customer consultation undertaken. This consultation helped re-confirm the actions and plans in this strategy.

Additionally, the HCA has issued analyses of Unit Cost data for us, and other larger providers, and we are mindful of these analyses in our approach to VfM. Alongside this, the Efficiency Working Group of the National Housing Federation is piloting a set of indicators for the sector to use, the sector scorecard, and we are keen to see how that develops.

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How we achieve VfM

Our VfM goal is to deliver excellent services and be financially sound, as expressed in our strategic objectives in our Strategic Plan 2017-20. To support this goal, we have identified our key VfM objectives to be:

1. Actively manage our assets and the returns achieved to support our Strategic Plan 2017-20- including delivering our Asset Management Strategy to improve both the financial performance and the quality of our housing assets2. Actively manage the costs of delivering our services, and the associated social and environmental outcomes - including delivering our ambition within our ICT strategy to deliver cost-effective technology solutions by targeting user-friendly, fit-for-purpose systems developments that build on investment to date and deliver improved value for money3. Involve and support our customers and staff, at an appropriate level, in VfM4. Have robust and sound governance practices in managing VfM.

Over the life of this Strategy our delivery of VfM will be demonstrated by a series of Business Performance Indicators (BPI’s). The relevant VfM objectives are noted in brackets.

• Customer satisfaction to exceed 85% (1)• All services achieving at least ‘Good’ CQC rating with 30% of those re-inspected achieving

‘Outstanding’ rating (1)• Each year we will set aside an agreed proportion of our surpluses to improve and expand

our housing stock. At least 25% of this ‘internal fund’ will be spent on improving homes for existing customers (1)

• Effective workforce plans in place for 100% of services – delivering to agreed recruitment, retention, training and development BPI’s (1,2)

• Achieve cost savings of £1.2 m per annum (by 2019/20) across the organisation (2)• Reduce central overheads from 13.6% to 12% of income (2)• Bring housing costs down to peer group level and ensure all housing assets have a positive net

present value (1) • At all times maintain a ‘V1/G1’ rating from our Housing regulator, the HCA (4).

There is a strong inter-dependency between the various strategies that we use to support our Strategic Plan 2017-20. These also have a relevance to achieving our VfM goal and support our VfM objectives as follows (supporting VfM objective noted in brackets);

• Procurement strategy (2, 3)• Asset Management strategy (1, 3) • ICT strategy (1, 2, 3)• Customer Engagement and Marketing strategy (3).


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To evidence our commitment to our Innovation value we have created an Innovation Fund. This allows staff and customers to bid for funds to help research or develop a new idea or a new model of service delivery that makes things better for our customers.

VfM objective Actions and plan

1. Actively manage our assets and the returns achieved to support our Strategic Plan.

• Our updated Asset Management Strategy (AMS) sets out the actions that we will take to address properties or schemes that are not providing an adequate return.• The AMS sets out the actions that we will take in respect of the energy effiency and sustainability of our properties.*

2. Actively manage the cost of delivering our services, and the associated social and environmental returns.

• Over the life of this Strategy we will develop and report upon clearly defined measures of the wider Social Value that we deliver.*• Customer satisfaction, complaints and compliments processes are fully reviewed.*• We will address assets and services that have high costs and where there is no corresponding additional value being delivered to customers.• We will benchmark the costs of our services against similar providers and act upon that benchmarking so that we deliver services in more cost effective ways.

3. Involve and support our customers and staff, at an appropriate level, in VfM.

• Guidelines for engaging customers on VfM related topics are in place.*• Guidance to staff about VfM and how it applies to their job is in place.*• Routine internal VfM communications are in place.*• VfM case studies are prepared and shared.*• VfM related articles feature in customer communications.*• Business cases will be created and presented for all business decisions meeting an agreed criteria.

4. Have robust and sound governance practices in managing VfM.

• Our internal VfM Action and Reporting Plan is embedded in all aspects of our work.• We actively participate in benchmarking.• Our Business Assurance function carry out a review of our VfM actions.

*Actions which were specifically reinforced by customers and staff during the consultation process.


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In summary:

Everyone has a part to play and our Board have overall responsibility. We will support our staff to deliver more VfM and have a reporting plan to guide and monitor what we do.

The Board of Advance have responsibility to ensure the development of an appropriate and challenging strategy, monitor the effective delivery of VfM within the organisation through our internal and external reporting processes, and for seeking assurance as to our compliance with the HCA VfM standard.

Led by the Director of Resources, the Group Management Team has responsibility to implement the strategy and to continue the integration of VfM in to the processes and culture of the organisation, providing routine reporting mechanisms up to Board level. Importantly, GMT must demonstrate best practice to staff by making VfM considerations explicit and second nature in how they work.

All staff are responsible for looking for opportunities to improve VfM in their day to day work. For example, they might identify opportunities for savings in items procured, or evaluate investment options considering the potential social and environmental value delivered, and to always be alert to opportunities to improve our efficiency and effectiveness.

We also encourage our customers to speak out and let us know, for example through satisfaction surveys, about areas where we have delivered good VfM or where we have fallen short of their expectations. Working together in this area, for example through our National and Regional Forums, will be particularly important as we strive to identify, track and set targets for the assessment of Social Value.

We also participate in sector best practice information and networks. We recognise the importance of such groups and we will continually assess the value that these, and other potential memberships, offer us. We recognise the specialist nature of the services that we provide and consequently seek to compare ourselves with similar organisations so that comparisons are relevant and helpful.

Advance maintains a Risk Map as part of its governance procedures and within that delivery of VfM is included as a Corporate risk. This reflects the status that we assign to achieving good VfM and is one of the ways that we manage this area.


Governance and reporting

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Staff, customers and VfM

In summary:

Helping customers to live better lives is key and our staff agree. Staff have told us how we can help them to deliver more VfM.

As part of developing this strategy, we consulted with customers and staff in a series of five workshops across the country.

We have mapped the key conclusions from the customer and staff consultation into the action plan that is being created alongside this strategy. These key conclusions are summarised below;

Staff • The workshop re-enforced the actions around our approach to Social Value. This features in reporting, staff awareness and asset management and introduced a new action around developing Social Value measures of the value that we deliver

• The workshop introduced an action into the VfM plan on recognising compliments

• The workshop introduced a new action around improved recognition and communication of our VfM acheivements

After successfully delivering this strategy, staff should see the following changes;

• They are better engaged, satisfied, and more motivated as we get better at delivering and reporting on the value we deliver to our customers

• VfM is ‘seen’ more on a day to day basis as it becomes even more embedded in what we do and how we operate

Customers• The workshop introduced customers to our actions and progress on our approach to the Social Value that we deliver and it became clear that Social Value was a key priority for them

• The workshop introduced a new action around working more closely with our customer engagement team to communicate with customers in line with their preferences

After successfully delivering this strategy, customers should see the following changes;

• We deliver more efficient and effective services to help them live better lives

• We are better at reporting on the social value that we deliver and the positive impact we have on customers lives

• We have better and more consistent information on our customer’s satisfaction, complaints, and compliments. They will also see improved reporting by us upon this data and the actions that we take as a result.


—11——11—Advance: VfM Strategy 2017-20

In summary:

VfM is good business sense. We are regulated by the HCA and operate in a challenging environment.

We are regulated by the HCA , and we are required to comply with the HCA’s VfM Standard and report on an annual basis a self assessment of our compliance with the standard.

In 2016 the HCA further embedded the VfM standard into their regulations by making an explicit statement that it “now consider[s] compliance with the VfM standard as an integral part of [their] programme of In Depth Assessments (IDA’s)”. They also released analyses of unit costs using published financial data and have made their expectations clearer on the delivery of VfM. Importantly, the VfM standard also encompasses the social and environmental value as well as the financial cost of decisions.

We need to be able to better describe the value that we bring to our customers and this is a key focus of this strategy.

The VfM Standard requires us to:

• Have a robust approach to making decisions on the use of resources to deliver our objectives, including an understanding of the trade-offs and opportunity costs of our decisions

• Understand the return on our assets, and have a strategy for optimising the future returns on assets – including rigorous appraisal of all potential options for improving value for money including the potential benefits in alternative delivery models - measured against our purpose a objectives

• Have performance management and scrutiny functions which are effective at driving and delivering improved value for money performance

• Understand the costs and outcomes of delivering specific services and which underlying factors influence these costs and how they do so.

We operate in an increasingly challenging environment. The impact of welfare refoms leading to ongoing rent reductions and the introduction of the Local Housing Allowance (LHA) cap in 2019/20 present long-term challenges for supported housing providers. We are also seeing the need for commissioners, national and local Government to procure support and employment services with a decreasing budget – but to the same high standard.

The delivery of a strong VfM strategy, more than ever, is vital if we are to be able to deliver services to our customers for the long term.

Regulatory and external environment

www.advanceuk.org T: @Advancetweets F: AdvanceUK.org 0333 012 4307Advance is the trading name of Advance Housing and Support Ltd. Registered Office: 2, Witan Way, Witney, Oxon, OX28 6FH.

Registered under the Industrial & Provident Societies Act 1965, Reg. No. 21143R. Advance is registered with the Homes and Communities Agency No. LH0280 VAT. Registration No. 902936329


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