Housing Plus – Development Review

Approach

Housing Plus commissioned a Development Review from us. Broadly the key tasks associated with the project were:

• To review the structure of the development team and the roles within it, benchmarking against other organisations and considering delivery capacity linked to the tenure mix and programme size.
• To review the development approval and gateways processes, comparing with other organisations and providing best practice advice around governance and risk.
• To complete linear modelling on approved schemes, to provide assurance on the practicality of the gateways in operation.
• To interview key members of the approvals team to gain their insights into what schemes have worked well and what less well. Consider what approvers are seeking in successful schemes and what concerns they may have relating to schemes that are rejected or deferred.
• To review the format and inclusions of the reports that are presented for approval.

Outcome

The report findings were presented to Housing Plus Group’s Executive Team, enabling extensive informed discussion and debate.

The findings enabled Housing Plus Group to identify processes and approaches that were impacting on their competitiveness in the market. The benchmarking findings also enabled them to identify clear value for money targets.