The Board Charter

Our communities:

1. Community investment is core to our role as a social housing organisation and central to our social purpose.

2. We commit to owning, investing in, and celebrating our community investment work and its impact.

3. We will work with the Centre for Excellence in Community Investment to help maximise and measure the impact of our work, as well as invest in the people who deliver it.

How we’re going to deliver it:

4. Our community investment strategy will be underpinned by an action plan, and the appropriate resources, people and skills to deliver on our objectives.

5. We will ensure residents are at the heart of community investment, co-creating service design and involved in scrutiny and review.

6. We will be part of our communities, with Board members leaving the boardroom to see community investment delivery first-hand.

How we’ll demonstrate it:

7. We commit to a methodologically robust and rigorous measurement mechanism to evidence the impact of community investment activity, for example by participating in the Centre’s impact measures project.

8. We will publish key measures of success in our annual report to facilitate transparency and accountability.

9. We will be leaders and advocates for community investment, both in and outside of the housing sector.

Download a copy of the Board Charter pledges

We are asking social housing providers to take two steps:

• First, to tell us you support and want to adopt the Board Charter.
• Second, for your Board to formally sign and adopt the Board Charter. We will then award you the Charter Mark.

We’re sure you’ll have some questions about the Charter and have answered some of those that we’ve already been asked. If you have any more, please contact us.

We’ve also prepared some sample Board papers that explain why the Charter is important, the benefits of adopting the Charter, and what you need to do to sign up. Please feel free to download them and adapt them for your own use.