East Midlands Knowledge Network: Routes To University Expertise

 

Trent and Dove Housing

Governance Programmes

Trent and Dove Housing
Description and aims

Trent and Dove recognised the need to develop a programme in partnership with other housing associations and ALMOs, by engaging with the HE expertise of the University of Derby. There have been several learning and development challenges as the nature of this type of organisation has rapidly changed. One of the crucial areas was governance. Proper accreditation and qualification is now a prerequisite of being a Board Member of these social enterprises and many people did not have the required level of expertise.

About Trent and Dove Housing

Trent & Dove is a not for Profit company limited by guarantee. It was set up specifically for the purpose of accepting the transfer of around 5700 properties from the East Staffordshire Borough Council.

How the project is being undertaken

Experience showed that the root cause of association failing was inadequate governance, whether large or small, mainstream or BME. This necessitates a training based solution to retrain existing employees and enable the recruitment of suitably qualified individuals. The required training package had to be specifically built to fit the market needs. This meant a partnership development was the ideal solution. The University of Derby had the academic skill and Trent and Dove the content knowledge. So the two organisations worked together to create the programme for Trent and Dove and could then be introduced to the market at large.

Impacts and benefits

This custom programme created by the key involved parties produced an ideal “product” where all the ingredients from both the supplier and client perspective were built into the programme from day 1. All the relevant staff in Trent and Dove are now trained and accredited.

Trent and Dove now have the level of Governance skill and qualification necessary for them to operate effectively in the social housing arena. The University of Derby has a Governance Training Programme that is marketable to all social housing enterprises. The partnership development of this programme means that it is precisely what the customer wants and has been delivered as such.

For more information about the project

If you would like to hear more about this project, please contact University of Derby Corporate.
Telephone: 0800 6783311
Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

University

University of Derby

Academic Lead

Barbara Richardson

Contact

University of Derby Corporate

0800 6783311