The CIH Housing Professionalism Commitment has been designed to help organisations improve the professionalism of their staff and their output to in turn improve outcomes for tenants.
As the professional body for the housing sector, CIH has always been keen to find ways to support and enhance professional practice across the housing workforce.
In 2021, we launched our professional standards framework to help ensure all housing practitioners, no matter their role, had the right values and behaviours to work in our sector and our industry leading qualifications have long been recognised as the leading way to evidence your housing knowledge and skills.
However, beyond these offers, there is so much more that we offer landlords to help them improve their professionalism and as such, we are launching our Housing Professionalism Commitment to encourage housing organisations to publicly demonstrate how they will support ongoing professionalism at all levels in their organisation.
The commitment
The Housing Professionalism Commitment has been designed for housing providers to show that they value professionalism and education and are acting to demonstrate this commitment through the professional continuing development of their staff. The four commitments are:
- Commit to reporting on the professional development of housing staff as part of the Annual Assurance Statement process.
- Ensure that training and qualifications for housing staff are written into your organisation’s business plans.
- Commit to regular engagement with schools and learners about housing sector careers.
- Promotion of the value of CPD across staff/customer boundaries.
Meeting the commitment
The following guidance gives housing providers more information on how to meet the Housing Professionalism Commitment.
Why does housing professionalism matter?
We all want housing to be recognised as the impactful profession that it is and while the government, regulators and skills agencies have a role to play, the biggest responsibility for increasing its regard rests with the sector. We want housing professionals across the country to recommit to their education and CPD and this commitment has been developed to ensure that we can make the strongest possible case for housing education by showcasing the commitment of the housing sector to continued professionalism.
By investing in professionalism, organisations can help housing practitioners to develop their knowledge and advance their careers. It also ensures practitioners can better meet the needs of tenants and gives them the knowledge and skills to manage risk, identify potential problems, access a network, provide challenge, and provide assurance.
As the range of roles required in the sector becomes more varied (see below), housing education, including CPD, helps practitioners understand the broader purpose behind the work that they do and how other factors impact on their duties, and supports them to keep on top of the changing policy and regulatory environment.
We have also created a separate supporters’ pledge for organisations that work in or closely with the housing sector but who don’t directly provide homes themselves. This includes, for example, contractors, suppliers, trade bodies, and membership organisations.
We believe that these organisations are ideally placed to help support housing professionalism and our supporters' pledge asks them to sign up to make three focused, but easily deliverable commitments.
The three supporters’ commitments are:
- Commit to reporting on the professional development of staff as part of your Annual Report.
- Ensure that training and qualifications for staff are written into your organisation’s business plans.
- Promotion of the value of CPD across staff/customer boundaries.
Please email scotland@cih.org if you would like to sign our supporters’ pledge.
Sign up to the commitment
To sign to the the Housing Professionalism Commitment, please email us at scotland@cih.org and we will be in touch shortly after to supply you with your commitment certificate, support pack and other supporting information.
