What drove this merger?

PCHA was established in 1969 and owned around 270 general needs homes in the London Borough of Bromley. BECHA was formed in 1965 and owned around 134 homes located in the neighbouring borough of Bexley. Both organisations had a similar history and legacy and had worked together as peers for many years. With similar stock profiles, a shared ethos and values and a strong focus on residents, we were natural partners.

In early 2022 BECHA considered its future as an independent housing association. This took into account a range of factors, including the future costs of maintaining high-quality housing and management services, as well as the lack of financial or organisational capacity to withstand future unforeseen challenges. As a result, the BECHA board engaged Campbell Tickell to carry out an options review and considered the full range of strategic options, from continuing as is, to a transfer of engagements. It concluded, taking into account the factors above, that it would not be able to remain as an independent, autonomous housing association in the long term. The BECHA board formally resolved to seek a partner association to take forward its work and, after a beauty contest, selected PCHA as its preferred partner.

For both parties this was a meeting of hearts and minds and provided a genuine opportunity for us to safeguard the interests of all our residents into the future.

What difference will the merger make for residents of the two associations?

This merger was largely driven by the desire to improve services to residents across both organisations and it has undoubtedly created additional resources to invest in our homes and services. The merger has allowed us to restructure the organisation to strengthen our frontline services for residents so we can deliver a more proactive and holistic service to residents across the both boroughs. We have created two new roles, Head of Customer Services and Head of Property Services, to help drive up performance and increase resident satisfaction – these roles would simply not have been affordable beforehand. Additionally, we are confident residents will benefit from more accessible services and increased resident and community engagement.

What challenges do you envisage integrating the two organisations (e.g. cultural differences), and how will you seek to overcome these?

It was vital that the combined organisation could deliver appropriate services from the first day of operation. To this end, extensive resources were committed to deliver an effective transition plan in the three months prior to merger. The transitional arrangements were aided by the decision to use PCHA’s systems and to transfer data, rather than try to integrate both organisations’ existing systems. In this respect, we provided extensive training opportunities for the BECHA staff to familiarise themselves with PCHA’s systems prior to going live.

Most importantly, we started work on merging the organisational cultures by bringing both teams together pre-merger and developing a training plan to embed PCHA's culture and approach. I always talk about the team being on the PCHA ‘bus’ as a way of embedding the organisational culture, including our vision and values, to ensure the team know what direction we are heading in and what part they play in reaching our destination. To celebrate the merger we have a literal bus as a reminder!

Two months in and the transition has been pretty smooth so far. Inevitably, there will be teething problems and other challenges along the way, but we have a clear integration plan which we are working towards and feel prepared to deal with whatever lies ahead.