Meet Longhurst and Havelok Homes, or L&H Homes as it prefers to be known. If it sounds familiar then it is hardly surprising, but it is a new housing association building on the strengths of its amalgamated parents.

There’s been a lot to do, but from the beginning of October the hard work had paid off when a new player in the provision of affordable housing entered the world.

In many ways, it will be a familiar presence in the areas where it works, but it will be a larger more streamlined entity, built on the firm foundations of its predecessors. Those antecedents are Longhurst Homes and Havelok Homes, both members of the Longhurst Group that have now amalgamated into one new company.

One might say, in a way, that the Longhurst Group has waved goodbye to two member organisations, only to say hello to a newcomer that is greater than the sum of its parts, but of course the old entities remain very much in spirit at the heart of the new. Part of that spirit, as it were, is reflected in the name of the new company, Longhurst and Havelok Homes, or more simply L&H Homes, intended to convey the continuity and ‘heritage’ as much as to herald the new era.

“The rationale behind the amalgamation is to bring together the expertise of both companies,” said Mike Hardy, managing director of Longhurst and Havelok Homes. “By bringing together these two successful companies we will become stronger and increase our knowledge and expertise in developing homes, managing estates, providing care and support services and engaging communities.”

One of the major aspects of the amalgamation was to address the considerable geographic overlap in the two previous organisations’ territory. Havelok Homes was the smaller, though somewhat more specialised, operator. Centred in Grimsby, where it was responsible for a wide range of care services as well as sheltered and general housing, its remit extended outwards into North and East Lincolnshire. Its fellow member of the group, Longhurst Homes, operated in a much wider geographic spread, sharing some of the same territory in Lincolnshire with Havelok Homes.

However, Longhurst extended outwards from the banks of the Humber in the North, down to Norfolk and across through Cambridgeshire and into the East and West Midlands.

All told, the new company L&H Homes, now accounts for some 7,000 properties. This comprises the former Havelok’s care homes, as well as both organisations’ general needs stocks, not to mention the former Longhurst’s activities in catering for leaseholders and the provision of shared ownership housing. All of these are now provided under the new banner of L&H Homes.

“It was clear from both boards that in approving the amalgamation, they wanted to make sure that there was some retention of the brand identity – the reputation – of the two companies,” said Hardy. “There are reasons for that. Havelok had a strong reputation built on its management of two three-star rated care homes. It was known locally for partnership working with the community. Longhurst Homes was a bit of a different entity, in that it was working over a much wider area, but it also had a strong ethos of partnership working.”

These traits of reputation and expertise carry forward into the new organisation; it’s not as if they have become aspects of history, such a move would defeat the objectives of the amalgamation, after all. One of the purposes of the move was to improve services going forward and raise the game in terms of delivering affordable housing solutions for people in the communities where L&H Homes works. That is as true for the company on a local basis, as it is for the wider Longhurst Group, of which it is a member, that currently provides around 16,000 affordable homes. Here too at group level, the amalgamation is expected to serve the purpose of boosting the future delivery of homes and services.

“We wanted to improve our focus on sharing good practice in the development of business excellence,” Hardy added. “So, the amalgamation has allowed us to free up some senior level resources from the two former companies. This has enabled them to address different agendas, at the same time as consolidating the business. This is helping to enhance our longer term group strategic objectives.”

Looking on from the sidelines, one might assume that the larger Longhurst Homes ‘consumed’ the more diminutive Havelok in a merger, but from the very beginning it was intended to be a more genuine coming together, hence the emphasis on amalgamating. Both prior organisations were transferred into the entirely new company that came to be known as L&H Homes. The formation of this new entity marked the end of a lengthy and detailed process of planning and negotiation, not to mention consultation and approval.

Some of this is internal; winning over the staff and bringing them on board to the opportunities for change. And of course, the boards of the two former companies had to be in agreement with the proposals for amalgamation. Then there were the banks and building societies that had invested in the two company’s operations – they needed to be agreeable too. The approval of the Homes & Communities Agency (HCA), and more crucially, regulator the Tenant Services Authority (TSA). That’s before they got to the latter stages of the process, with approval and then final registration from the Financial Services Authority as a new Industrial & Provident Society. It’s a longwinded process, much more complicated in practice than this simple listing of stakeholders suggests.

And, of course, the above list doesn’t include the most important stakeholder of them all – the tenants.

“The tenants are a major stakeholder in our business, without them there wouldn’t be a business,” Hardy said. “We carried out a consultation exercise with all the residents – some 7,500 – over a six-week period. This began with an initial letter outlining the proposals and the strategic reasons for it, along with some of the perceived benefits.

“We followed that up with meetings to enable residents to come along and have face to face talks with officers from the two associations. We had something in the region of 45 local-based events for the tenants to attend. They also had the opportunity to write to us about the proposals, email or ring in, so there was any number of ways they could follow up that original letter.”

The end result of that consultation was that the tenants of both organisations were over-whelmingly supportive of the proposed amalgamation. And that consultation exercise raised a few eyebrows at the TSA. As part of the approval process, a comprehensive dossier of documents supporting the proposals, outlining the benefits and the arguments in favour, along with a detailed business plan for the new entity had to be submitted to the TSA. Information regarding the steps it had taken to ensure tenants were informed and involved was also included, as you’d expect.

“In their feedback, the TSA told us from the information on the consultation process that this was one of the most comprehensive tenant consultation exercises they’d seen of its type,” Hardy said. “So that was reassuring, given the emphasis on tenant customer service that we had.”

The TSA granted its approval of the amalgamation in July, opening up the way towards the last few hurdles. This took place in September, with two special general meetings held for both Havelok and Longhurst, as per the legal rules laid down for Industrial & Provident Society organisations, so that members could vote their approval of the amalgamation.

Away from the formalities and legal framework, the work went on apace to ensure that the operational infrastructure was in place and ready to go for the amalgamation. This involved unifying the two organisations’ IT systems and combining information into one database. The process also involved some reorganisation of staff, though redundancies were avoided, to ensure continuity of service as the old organisations moved forward into the new company.

Meanwhile, the existing contracts for repairs and maintenance will run to their original time, with some two years remaining, before a new framework is tendered under the guise of the new company. From the tenants’ perspective, the service will remain as it was, all that changes for Havelok’s tenants is the new contact centre for services.

From the perspective of tenants, a change in branding and, for some, a change of contact centre number aside, the process of amalgamation was intended to provide a smooth transition from the old companies to the new, such that in a sense it might feel as though it never happened. In that regard, it might be a new company under a new name, but it is very much business as usual.

That, however, is expected to include a continuous improvement and development of services. A new force in the provision of affordable housing has arrived. And it intends to use its inheritance from its predecessors to move forward and build an ongoing legacy of delivering excellence.

For more information please telephone 0800 111 4013 or visit www.l&h.org.uk