In this episode of the People in Housing Podcast, we’re joined by Karl Linder, Assistant Director at Arc Consultancy, to explore the evolving world of compliance and building safety in the social housing sector.

With over 30 years’ experience across housing associations, local authorities, and consultancy, Karl brings a unique perspective on how the sector has changed, especially post-Grenfell, and what it takes to build and maintain safe, compliant homes.

Thank you so much for coming on the People In Housing podcast. Do you want to start off by introducing yourself?

I’m Karl Linder, an Assistant Director for Arc Consultancy. I've been there for about two years. And the good thing for working for somebody like Arc, is you get a good helicopter view of the sector and all what's going on at the moment. So thank you for inviting me along.

It's great to have you on. So, I guess, obviously a good place to start is how you actually got into social housing?

As with most people that work in social housing, I don't think many people are at school saying, “I'd love to work in social housing”. I left school when I was 17. I did one year in the sixth form and I left because all my friends decided to leave. There wasn't a lot of career planning that went on.

Didn't know too much.

Then I left school and I applied for two jobs. One to become a Chartered Accountant and one to become an Architect. And I got the Architect's job. So that’s how I got construction.

It decided your fate.

I worked there and I went to college and I got my ONC and my HNC and then the market fell out of the new build sector in the early 90s, and I ended up being unemployed. I was 21, I was unemployed, it was great. My friends were just coming out of university, so I dossed around for a couple of years.

Yeah, you enjoyed it.

And then finally I sent my CV to an agency and they got me a job as a Building Inspector, it was called at the time, at Birmingham City Housing Department. So I worked in Newtown, Lozelles and, Aston.

At that time it was very run down. It was still very internalised. The service was the DLO. So it was a challenging environment to work in, challenging properties that hadn't been invested in. I have to say though, as far as a learning experience, it was great.

A good way to start off your career.

And then I ended up doing two years at the Disrepair Litigation team based in Botteville Road. You can probably tell from my accent, I'm a local Birmingham lad.

I think 1998. I went and worked for a housing association called Mercy as a Surveyor. I got my first manager's job there. I was Maintenance Manager and that was 2002.

And then I've had various jobs within the social housing sector on the housing association side. The last couple of roles I had, I did asset strategy for 11 years at Viridian, which is now part of Southern Housing Group. So I used to commute to London three times a week, to Clapham and various other places.

Living that London life.

And then I worked for Hanover and then when they merged with Anchor, I ended up on the Anchor side of things. And that was up till 2023 when Arc kind of approach me. Do you want to come and work for us? I haven't regretted it for a day. It's probably the best place I've ever worked.

You get a load of different experience speaking to a lot of clients. You use your brain a lot because you've got to think of solutions. So I'm loving it. And for the last year I've been working in Northampton in Compliance for NPH. So I've really enjoyed that. But I'm still doing few projects for Arc.

A bit of both and things as well. Oh, amazing.

Going into that role for a year, I can imagine you might’ve done a bit of  recruiting. In terms of assets and compliance. What do you feel like the biggest challenge has been in terms of getting the right people into the sector?

I think post Grenfell obviously there's been a big focus on fire. But I think generally in compliance, there's been a big focus on the big six and other areas as well, like radon and servicing fire equipment and all that sort of stuff on the compliance side. So there's been a big focus on that and there's been a big professionalisation around systems. Processes, making sure as well, you've got the people not only with the right attitude. Attitude's really important. But they also need to have the right skills and they need to have the right qualifications. If you're in charge of a particular piece of compliance, like gas, you need to understand all the legislation.

Absolutely, of course.

I think one of the other challenges, and this is true across the sector, is the cultural mindset around compliance. If you don’t have that certificate or fire risk assessment, and you don’t fully understand it or carry out all the necessary remedial actions, then you’re simply not compliant. A lot of organisations I’ve worked with over the past two years just haven’t had the right systems, processes, or software to manage this in a pragmatic way, focusing on where they actually need to around remedials.

Yeah, of course.

So you mentioned in terms of things from Grenfell and obviously of course there is  going to be that lower skill set because obviously it's such a new thing. How do you feel that the industry is sort of tackling that at the moment?

The government has really pushed hard on professionalisation, and it’s now spreading throughout the sector. On the compliance side, it’s about making sure you’ve got people with the right qualifications, and supporting those who don’t have them yet to get them.

Also, organisations need to focus on continuous improvement. Just a few weeks ago, we saw all the new proposals the government put out around electrical regulations and improving electrical safety. So, people need to be on top of their game to understand why these new regulations are coming down the line.

Yeah, absolutely. What do you think has worked well in improving recruitment, either from your recent experience or something you've seen work well in the past?

Previously, I think really making sure that really the policies that the organisation have,  spell out about the competencies that's required for the people that manage compliance and building safety and then also making sure that's reflected in the job descriptions.

You've got to have a certain qualification, you need a level 5 qualification if you're going to be like a Building Safety Manager to manage high rise buildings over 18 metres.

To be fair, I have seen the people who work in the sector are keen, who want to go on are making sure that they've got the qualifications required.

Okay, perfect. Is there any different routes that you've experienced or you might have used before in terms of getting people into the sector maybe like partnering with different providers?

Obviously, I've recruited staff with you guys but as well with Arc. We're always looking at the sector, we're always reading the pressure now. We do make a note of the people that are coming through, or if there's a story about them in inside housing, or you meet them at a conference or even actually a few people that I've brought onto the compliance side of things have actually worked for contractors that have worked for us, but they've been technically really good.

And so I wouldn't say I've poached them, but, I've made them aware there's opportunities coming up. Do you want to come and work for a social housing provider? I've done that two or three times probably in the last five years. I've met somebody through a contractor, I thought you really know what you're talking about and getting that different perspective. To be truthful, they've probably got more of that commercial perspective as well. And that's really important because what we need to do to invest in the portfolio of social housing that we manage, it's expensive, so we need to be trying to think of innovative routes of packaging up work. And making sure we're in a position where, when we take things to market, the right information and requirements are clearly set out for contractors.

100%, looking at it from both different angles, I know in your recent experience, you have gone through some restructures as well that you've led on. Are there any sort of recommendations that you would give to the sector if someone was going through that same thing?

I think obviously there's a big driver around cost. And you'll know this, I know this working for Arc, that we've seen a big rise in salaries in the market because of the pool of people. It probably isn't as big as it should be. So it does drive the salaries up. The other thing that's about on the compliance side, in any kind of organisational structure managing building safety or managing compliance, you do need to build in a bit of redundancy. You can't have one job that one person does, and when they're on leave that stops.

That's it. Yeah, absolutely.

When you're designing a structure for a new organisation, you do have to have a bit of redundancy within the structure, or you need to make sure that you've got people almost buddied up. And a lot of organisations don't do that. I've seen organisations that when somebody's on leave, the electrical testing stops. Or the emails are coming from the contractors and nobody's dealing with them.

So the other thing to look at is, there's quite a lot of software systems out there now that will manage compliance and you can just send the certificates in and they'll collate them for you. Now that also takes out a lot of the human error that you do get within compliance. So anything like that, that can remove human error that can make teams more efficient. I would recommend anybody looks at that as part of managing compliance proactively.

So having  a combination, like you say, having the software side but also having that backup, in terms of redundancy support as well.

And then I know you mentioned there is a bit of that skill gap in terms of compliance. What sort of things do you see in the sector in terms of that?

I think more people who work in the sector, especially on the compliance side, want to do training and want to get qualifications that support their expertise. So we've seen more staff doing that and I think also since Grenfell there's been a bigger focus on, if something does go wrong, my name could be against it. People who work in that part of asset management within social housing, want to make sure that they've got the qualifications so they can do the job properly.

It's great having a restructure, it's great having the right people in and having the right systems in. But you also need to have a plan to keep investing in these people as far as their skills and let them have time off to be able to do courses or keep refreshing their skills. That's really important. It doesn't stop when the last person comes in on the structure, you've got to invest in those people going forward.

Always having that support. I think that's one of the things that we do come across, when we are recruiting in terms of the compliance sector, is that people may have a set qualification and would really want to go into compliance. 

What would you recommendation? How can we support that?

I think the main thing is people have got to want to do it. I've seen situations in the last two years when I've done compliance reviews of organisations where, for example, somebody's been put into the compliance team because they used to work on the tools in the DLO, and they've had an incident and so now they've been put into managing electrical compliance and they're in the office and they were an Electrician.

The first criteria for anybody that wants to work in compliance really is they've got to want to do it, and they've got to be interested in it. And I know it can be quite a dry subject. I enjoy it personally.

That all comes down to attitude. When you're recruiting for people, you can recruit for knowledge, you can recruit for skills, and you can see that on a CV. But the attitude bit, that is the bit that really comes out, it's an interview and that's the hardest bit to change with somebody as well is their attitude. If they haven't got the attitude, it doesn't matter what qualifications or skills they've got.

You can't have an effect on that. Can you?

So that's really the most important thing to look at is people's attitudes, and if you're restructuring a team, you want to be left with a team of people that have got the right attitude, that want to grow, and you have that culture.

And the most important thing actually is having an open and honest culture. Because if something's starting to slide or go wrong, you want to deal with it as early as possible. So you want the people in the team that are doing the day to day management of it to be able to come to you and say, we've got a problem here. So you can sort it out then.

Oh, God, yeah, absolutely.

And what would you sort of say are those key attributes that you would look for, to get that right culture, in terms of a compliance?

I think in my experience, culture comes from the top down doesn't it? The people at the top who are leading these teams, really need to open an honest culture. They need to give staff the opportunity to be able to talk openly, whether it's in a one to one or a meeting.

What I’ve found is that the most important thing is making sure people feel they can put their hand up and say, 'Actually, there’s a problem here,' or, 'I don’t understand this.' Because sometimes things go wrong simply because people didn’t fully understand something.

So be intuitive and actually be interested and ask those questions and people.

You need to be able to say, 'I don’t understand this.' There has to be a culture where, not that failure is accepted, but where it’s okay to fail once, as long as you learn from it.

Yeah, oh absolutely.

And I'll be truthful, we've seen that the regulator of social housing dishing out all these C3s at the moment to organisations, especially around like safety and compliance, not keeping residents safe. It’s a good thing, because they’ll learn and change, and probably do it faster, since they’ve got the regulator scrutinising them, compared to if they’d found the issue themselves and taken it at their own pace.

At the end of the day, we want to give residents safe homes to live in. That's the most important thing. And we want to be able to demonstrate that. We need to be able to demonstrate that and prove that we're doing that.

Oh absolutely. What would you sort of say is obviously when we do get those good people that are breathing that culture and qualifications and are right for the job, how do we keep them and how do we grow them?

The first thing is, you've got to pay people a fair wage that reflects the job that they do. And to then keep them so they can grow within the organisation and provide a better service. We've talked about qualifications. You need to do that. The most important thing is performance management and also having targets that are in the world of compliance. You can never have a target that's like 98% you've got to have 100% targets.

They are really hard. People think you get to 100% and it’s done, it's not, keeping it 100% is really, really hard.

You've got to have that culture within the business as well, where people are rewarded and it's not just all about paying them. We've seen haven't we post Covid in a lot of organisations. Flexibility is a big thing.

Rewarding people with all the T's and C's that they get and all the added values that they get. I know some organisations do things like gym membership and they've got all these health plans, where you can get your glasses paid for or dental. So it's all that added values to go with the culture of the organisation and obviously paying people a fair salary.

100% and I think exactly like you say from experience and the salary surveys and things that we've done, there is so much to it, from a recruitment perspective in terms of like you said, the flexibility and things like that.

In terms of the most recent places that you’ve worked and supported, has there been any supportive plans or progression plans that you’ve implemented for people?

Yeah, where I'm working now and actually at Arc, we have targets even though Arc are a consultancy. We have targets around developing ourselves. It's not all about making money.

I'm going into organisations and helping them but I need to keep my skills in check, and make sure that I'm understanding everything that I need to understand. I've worked in housing for 30 years, and it's probably changed more in the last seven years or so than it has done for the previous 23.

We're in a position where there's a lot of change at the moment and we've had two new pieces of legislation, we've also got the new decent homes requirements coming in and that's going to be extended as well to private landlords.

There's going to be these pools of people that have got these skills. There's probably some of those now that are going to go into the private sector because, suddenly all these private landlords have got to meet Decent Homes Standards. They've got to meet all these compliance standards. As social housing we're fishing in the smaller pool.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I guess, is there any sort of advice? Because obviously if there is that smaller pool, we want people to come into the sector and start their career out in the sector, to be able to get to that level of specialism in compliance. Any advice from someone that didn't look and think, I'm going to go into social housing, or architecture.

Any advice that you would give to someone that's looking to get into the sector?

Working in the sector we all come into contact with contractors, consultants, even other people that work in property. I'm working in Northampton now. Obviously I deal with the council so there's people there that work in property. You haven't got to have people that only have a social housing background. Obviously it helps. But at the same time, if they've got relevant skills that they've picked up in other parts of property and construction. Then there's the opportunity to mould them and get them into social housing. So I'd say to anybody in the sector when you're working with other people keep an eye out for people. Next time there's a role coming up, think,  could they come and work with us.

I know people now that have started out as admin people, just general admin people who are now, Head of Data at large organisations. It's not only about meeting people, it can be people that have started as a general admin, it's always interesting I think when you see people's CVs and you see they started off working at like a stationary shop or something like that and they've come into social housing.

I bet it's so interesting to hear the different stories and different walks of life. We're really big on our social value, starting to work out with different organisations and things like that. So I think a massive thing for us is to be able support people that come from completely different walks of life into the sector. So I think that it's so good for you to hear that as well, to be opening up.

We've done it at Arc. We've had people that have come and worked for Arc as associates who might not have a social housing background. For example, they've got a finance or an accounting background and they've worked for Arc and then they've started to understand the social housing sector and then they've ended up in a job or as a Director or something like that within social housing.

I'm proud to work in social housing. I think it's a really good sector to work in. I feel like I'm trying to do some good and it's personally quite rewarding. It's quite taxing mentally. And that keeps me attracted. It always keeps me on my toes. It’s a sector I love working in and I'm 30 years into it now, so the sector itself I enjoy. And I enjoy the challenge going forward.

Yeah, no, I can imagine. I think that's a really good place to end this conversation. Because I think it's so good for other people to see that from your experience over the last 30 years.

So, thank you so much for all of that. Yeah, it's been really good to chat to you, thank you for all of the insight and all of the advice and everything moving forward.

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