1,100-employee company now part of contractor giant
ForHousing has sold its property services business to contractor Wates for an undisclosed sum.
The Greater Manchester-based housing association, which is currently non-compliant with the Regulator of Social Housing’s governance and financial viability standard, sold the firm which made a pre-tax profit of £1.6m in 2022/23.
The move means 1,100 employees transferring to Wates, with the latter now managing more than 550,000 social homes.
Ray Jones, managing director of Liberty, said: “By joining Wates, we enter the next stage of our growth and development. Our combined service provision brings a stronger offer to both existing and potential clients, especially in property and renewable energy decarbonisation; services to which Liberty and Wates are strongly connected.”
David Morgan, executive managing director at Wates, said: “We’ve been actively seeking a specialist property support business to expand and strengthen our existing expertise in the social housing sector, and extend our range of services into the areas of heating and compliance, as well as renewable energy services. In Liberty, we’ve found the strategic fit we were looking for.”
Wates said Liberty will continue to trade under its own name while the number of people employed at Wates’ property arm will rise to around 3,000.
Mike Parkin, chief executive of ForHousing, said the provider explored options around its ownership of Liberty as part of a review to ensure its focus is on its “core mission” of providing well-maintained homes.
Parkin said: “We know the delivery of our property services, and others in the sector is in safe hands and firmly believe that working with Wates will allow us to deliver our core mission of providing safe, well maintained homes and customer focused, equitable services. This new step forward will also ensure continued high quality services for Liberty’s current clients and their tenants, as well as an exciting future for Liberty colleagues.”
The decision to sell Liberty comes after ForHousing’s downgrade to ‘G3’ in January 2023, which saw RSH raise concern about ‘unregistered entities’ at the group.
RSH said at the time that expected improvements to ForHousing’s governance developed in an action plan in 2020 had not been delivered.
It said: “ForHousing’s ability to meet the regulatory standards continues to be, at times, hampered by the activities or influence of unregistered entities of the group, which has allowed risks to crystalise.”
RSH at the time said some legacy decision-making, coupled with insufficient oversight in ForHousing’s governance arrangements resulted in a number of ForViva group executive contracts, incentive schemes and severance arrangements being agreed that were not aligned with its codes of governance.
RSH said ForHousing has completed several planned actions to strengthen the registered provider’s independence within the group including a new intragroup agreement, new governance arrangements and new appointments to the board.
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