On the 19th June, Convene sponsored the 2025 Housing Governance conference, NHF’s annual event for governance teams and board members. We’d like to thank the NHF and all those in attendance for making this such an engaging and informative conference.
Housing Governance is the ‘essential event for the evolving governance role’, offering the chance to network and discuss governance issues and best practices within the sector. This year’s event explored topics like board recruitment, the effects of mergers, leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) and championing residents’ voices.
The day began with a talk on the last 12 months of the new government, and what this means as a new chapter for social housing. This discussed the highlights of the Spending Review, and long-term housing strategy.
This was followed by a talk on regulatory judgements a year on, exploring key lessons and takeaways from what we know so far.
There were then a series of breakout sessions, which looked at topics like navigating mergers in the current climate, organisational competency and learning from complaints, maintaining board vitality through board effectiveness, and fraud prevention in social housing.
After this there was another series of breakout sessions, including a roundtable on learning from inspections in practice, a talk on establishing partnerships and corporate projects, a conversation with Dan Hawthoron on building safety that looked at the Grenfell Tower Inquiry, and a talk featuring Convene’s own Arturo Dell and GovernWith’s Fi Mercer on understanding and interpreting governance data to make effective decisions.
In this talk, Arturo and Fi discussed data as a tool for good governance, regulatory expectations around decision-making and how to use data to drive the right decisions and behaviours.
We here at Convene are dedicated to bringing you the best possible assistance in your governance practices. Our Board portal is designed to ensure that before, during and after your Board meetings, your workflow is streamlined and seamless.
However, Convene is more than just a Board portal. With our partnership with GovernWith we are bringing you the next step in Board technology. Our AI Powered suite looks to help you not just in meetings, but in all aspects of your governance journey.
For our new Governance Review module, GovernWith is bringing their expert knowledge on contemporary governance and review capabilities to aid in the evaluative process.
GovernWith specialises in online Contemporary Governance Review & Development programs, each tailored to meet sector-specific regulatory obligations. The platform supports Boards, Executives and Subcommittees in achieving high-performance governance teams.
With this new module, you can access essential content and tools to manage regulatory compliance obligations and enhance contemporary governance organisation-wide, year after year.
When discussing GovernWith at the conference, Fi Mercer said “there was exceptional engagement because of the need for assurance. The incredible time invested by CoSecs means there is a significant appetite for doing this within the housing sector, specifically considering it’s tailored for housing content-wise. From a compliance and contemporary perspective it gives them satellite data for the board and the assurance they’ve got the right skills by using a nonsubjective skills matrix.”
Our Board management software is the all-in-one governance system your organisation needs, ensuring both effectiveness, and compliance.
During lunch there was a talk offering guidance on the requirements to meet the Governance & Financial Viability Standard, and a law commission update. After lunch, there were more breakout sessions.
These breakout sessions featured a roundtable about risk and assurance in governance, a panel on fostering EDI from the board to the ground, a talk on whether your organisation is sustainable, and a talk on AI discussing the opportunities and risks for boards to consider.
This was followed by a talk on how to engage residents in formal governance structures, which discussed the role of tenant engagement.
The final talk of the day was on navigating governance challenges, looking at setbacks and strengths. This talk discussed strategies for improving governance and maintaining regulatory compliance, and future planning to ensure your governance structure actually works.
It explored how regulatory judgements can be a great catalyst for organisational change, and the importance of regulatory compliance being hardwired into the entire organisation. It also looked at what Arturo and Fi discussed in the previous breakout session, the importance of data for regulatory compliance. Kate Dodsworth, Chief of Regulator Engagement for the Regulator for Social Housing, spoke about the downgrades organisations are seeing from V1 to V2, and the need for more assurance and more of a focus on risk.
We’d like to thank the NHF and all attendees for making this such an enlightening conference on housing governance, and the challenges and opportunities the sector faces.
If you’d like to know more about Convene, and our partnership with Governwith, you can book a demo today to start your contemporary governance journey.
