Board assurance: a toolkit for social housing providers

With the ever-changing social housing landscape and increased pressure on funding and diversification of role, more than ever the fulfilment of these responsibilities requires effective arrangements for risk management, control, governance, value for money and the robustness of the quality of data.

The board is responsible for ensuring that it understands the key risks being faced and how they are being managed, but most importantly should be seeking assurance that this is the case, the board needs to continually challenge its understanding and routinely ask: ‘Do we really know what we think we know?’

Most social housing providers know the risks that they face and know the controls that they have in place that keep those risks to an acceptable level. But how do they know those controls are doing the job they should be? This is where the use of a board assurance framework can help.

We have assisted many clients, across all sectors, to develop assurance frameworks to suit their needs, but most of all to ensure they are better positioned to understand and mitigate risk and achieve their objectives.

Our board assurance toolkit includes practical tips on the development and establishment of a board assurance framework and our preparedness assessment will help you take stock on your assurance preparedness, measure the progress being made, as well as highlighting the areas that need to be developed further.