Get involved
As a housing association employee or board member in Wales, your membership of Community Housing Cymru (CHC) is included as part of the overall membership of your organisation. Take a look below to see who we are, how we work with our member housing associations and how you can make the most of the engagement and learning opportunities we offer.
What's your role?
CHC for HA staff
What is Community Housing Cymru?
Community Housing Cymru is the voice of housing associations in Wales.
We represent not-for-profit housing associations that provide homes to roughly 10% of the Welsh population.
Our collective vision is to make Wales a country where good housing is a basic right for all.
Our members work throughout Wales, providing homes and services to a wide range of people. As their trade body, we fight for the things they need to support their communities, and to ensure that together we can achieve our vision.
Our current corporate plan sets out our key goals to March 2027:
- secure the tools, funding and policy that supports good quality housing association homes;
- influence the policy environment so that housing associations can continue to provide homes that are affordable, and effectively support tenants facing financial hardship;
- promote trust in housing associations and support them to build strong partnerships locally;
- ensure that CHC is an agile and inclusive membership body and an exemplar employer.
How does CHC work with housing association colleagues?
Our member offer is made up of a variety of different engagement opportunities. You can find details about how to get involved with the work that we do here. For ease, please see a summary of these opportunities below.
Member communities
CHC has established a number of member communities. These communities provide space for professionals across the sector to meet, and are set out along specific themes. They include:
Chief executives (closed group)
Board chairs and vice chairs (closed group)
Building safety
Communications and external affairs
Finance
Future homes (development and assets)
Health, care and support
Housing management
HR
Regulation and governance
Member community groups come together in person at least twice a year to focus on key issues, look to the future, share good practice and network with colleagues from across Wales.
Each member community has an associated WhatsApp group to maintain networks between meetings. For joining instructions see the ‘Get involved’ section below.
Events for colleagues
Throughout the year, CHC runs a variety of online events as part of our virtual offer to members, including:
Spotlights - virtual meetings that allow us to share information and encourage online discussion.
Webinars - virtual sessions, often delivered by an expert voice, to impart relevant information to sector colleagues.
Welsh Government information sessions - online sessions to link in with key relevant Welsh Government departments for updates and discussion.
We also run online and in-person events linked to specific policy activity or key areas of work that are important to you as our members.
Head to the ‘What’s on’ section on our website to book on to our latest events.
Task and finish groups
We also run time-limited task and finish groups, bringing colleagues from across the sector together to work on key activities that require a collective response or solution. These groups join up for a purpose and have defined remits and timescales.
Online information about these areas of work is available on our Housing Hub, where you can also find resources to support you and your organisation. The hub has been built to bring the latest updates on our policy work, along with related sector news and guidance, straight to our members.
Conference programme
We run four conferences every year for the sector. Our Governance conference is in March, One Big conference in July, Finance conference in October and our flagship Annual conference in November.
Our conference programme is available here.
Commercial partners
As part of our support for members, we aim to connect you to key experts with ties to the sector. We have selected partners that show a commitment to building strong and ongoing relationships with housing associations and share our vision of a Wales where good housing is a basic right for all.
Connecting with commercial partners provides us with access to expertise that can support the sector, as well as an additional income stream to support our work. Find out more here.
News, briefing papers and updates
As our work progresses throughout the year, we work hard to keep you, our members, informed. We do this in a variety of ways:
weekly update emails direct to housing association CEOs;
our fortnightly CHC bulletin – see below for how to sign up and receive this;
specific update emails to member community mailing lists;
Briefing papers on key emerging issues.
We also send an impact and engagement report to CEOs twice a year. These reports give an overview of the work we’ve been doing and the impact we’ve had on your behalf. CEOs also get further insight into how their organisations have engaged with CHC over the relevant period.
Get involved
As a housing association employee in Wales, your membership of CHC is included as part of the overall membership of your organisation. To sign up and receive updates on our work, events and opportunities to get involved, please create an account.
If any of the member communities are relevant to your role, and you would like to be part of the ongoing conversations that take place with colleagues across Wales, each community has a WhatsApp group. If you would like to join one of the WhatsApp communities, please get in touch letting us know your name, email, mobile number, position, organisation and the group you would like to join.
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CHC for housing association staff
CHC for HA board members
What is Community Housing Cymru?
Community Housing Cymru is the voice of housing associations in Wales.
We represent not-for-profit housing associations that provide homes to roughly 10% of the Welsh population.
Our collective vision is to make Wales a country where good housing is a basic right for all.
Our members work throughout Wales, providing homes and services to a wide range of people. As their trade body, we fight for the things they need to support their communities, and to ensure that together we can achieve our vision.
Our current corporate plan sets out our key goals to March 2027:
- secure the tools, funding and policy that supports good quality housing association homes;
- influence the policy environment so that housing associations can continue to provide homes that are affordable, and effectively support tenants facing financial hardship.;
- promote trust in housing associations and support them to build strong partnerships locally;
- ensure that CHC is an agile and inclusive membership body and an exemplar employer.
How does CHC work with board members?
Member communities
CHC has established a number of member communities. These provide space for professionals across the sector to meet, and includes chief executives, finance directors, human resources and communications colleagues and many more.
One of our key member communities is the board chairs and vice chairs group. This group comes together in person at least twice a year to focus on key issues, look to the future, share good practice and network with peers from across Wales
Events for board members
In 2023, we expanded our work to support board members.
- We run in person board member networking events in South and North Wales. These networks are informal get togethers that enable board members to share experiences with their counterparts and receive updates on business critical topics.
- We have introduced a new series of online briefings targeted specifically at board members, covering both general information on the sector and more in-depth topics. Board members can join these briefings live or access the recordings and other key resources on our new Board Learning Hub, hosted within the Housing Hub.
- We have also launched a WhatsApp group for board members and one for board chairs and vice chairs - see the ‘Get involved’ section below for details on how to join.
Conference programme
We run four conferences each year to bring the sector together. Our Governance conference is in March, One Big conference in June, Finance conference in October and our flagship Annual conference in November.
Board members are welcome to attend our conferences, with the Governance conference being particularly relevant. Find out more here.
Housing hub
The CHC website is home to our Housing Hub. The hub provides access to information about the key areas of policy work that we are currently focussing on. It also includes supporting material, to make related sector news and guidance available to our members.
Get involved
As a Welsh housing association board member, your membership of CHC is included as part of the overall membership of your organisation.
To sign up and receive updates on our work, events and opportunities to get involved please create an account.
Please make sure that you tell us that you are a board member so we can make sure that we update you about the elements of our work that are most relevant to you.
If you would like to be part of the board members or chairs and vice chairs WhatsApp group, get in touch sharing your name, email, mobile number, position and the organisation you are a board member of.
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CHC for stakeholders and commercial organisations
We currently work with a number of key stakeholders and commercial partners. Get in touch with Louise Price-David, our Head of Membership and Partnerships, to find out more about further engagement opportunities with CHC and the sector.
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