One of the London Housing Foundation's key objectives is to assist agencies in improving both efficiency and performance. Support to
boards and management – as they adjust to changes in demand for their
services and the funding available – is even more important now that the
threat to public funding levels looks like becoming a reality.
For
agencies to remain viable and sustain their services, they need to be
able to manage efficiently.
A fundamental component is both understanding their financial position
and its direction of travel, as well as being able to benchmark against
others in the sector.
Financial benchmarking
In 2009 the LHF commissioned research to analyse the finances of
the agencies working in the London homelessness sector, identifying meaningful ratios drawn from
the published financial statements. These ratios were then aligned to
key revenue headings and the strength of the balance sheet.
Further analysis was gathered from the accounts from the following two
financial years so that for all the ratios trends could be identified to
test against future years’. The outputs are useful to the London Housing Foundation for its own
analytical work. The wider benefit is from distribution to those
involved in the governance and management of the agencies to provide
them with both sector-wide and sub-sector benchmarking.
The key findings, facts and figures were made public in
Navigator and are available to download from this website.
The first issue of the Foundation's homeless sector finance briefing, Navigator, was published in Autumn 2010 with a review
of the initial outputs of the benchmarking research.
With the completion of the three-year analysis the second issue of
Navigator was distributed to all agencies working in London plus others
with a wider interest in the sector in the Autumn of 2011. Key findings and facts and figures from the research reveal a picture of the sector.
More on Navigator
Workshops
More detailed information was provided at a
workshop held at the King’s Fund in November 2010. Since then, more
specific information has been provided to individual agencies on
request.
A further workshop was held at the
King’s Fund on 13 September 2011 – Making Sense of Financial Indicators – and again specific information was made
be available to agencies attending.