CHIC's Quarterly Board Meeting – March Overview

CHIC’s Board of Directors held its quarterly meeting on 20th March. The Boards role is to review performance of the consortium and agree future strategies and plans on behalf of CHIC’s membership. Highlights from the meeting are set out below.

1. Governance

Board Membership

Two member representative directors had left the Board in December 2023, due to job changes moving them away from their member organisations. CHIC had sought applicants from members to join the Board and this resulted in the appointment of two new member representative directors:

• Steve Porter, Executive Director (Assets), Wales & West Housing
• Vic Speakman, Senior Procurement Business Partner, Bromford

With these appointments, the Board is now at its full complement of 8 member representative directors and 3 independents.

Maggie Punyer, CHIC’s Chair said ”we are delighted to welcome Steve and Vic, who together bring a wealth of asset management and procurement experience to the Board, to ensure that member interests are properly represented."

Board Skills

The Board reviewed a comprehensive ‘skills matrix’ assessing the individual and joint skills of all 11 directors. The Board was satisfied it has the necessary range and depth of knowledge and experience to ensure that CHIC’s governance is robust.
 
2. Strategic Collaboration

It was agreed to continue to collaborate with another leading consortium, Efficiency North (EN), where this would lead to efficiencies and benefits for the members of both consortia.

The next collaborative project will be the procurement of an updated Merchants Framework. CHIC and EN will jointly run some market engagement and consultation events as the next steps in this process.
 
3. CHIC’s Business Strategy

The Board reviewed a summary of the conclusions and outcomes reached at its strategic awayday which had been held in February. This confirmed that CHIC should continue to offer:

• A managed service, with asset management and commercial support.
• The existing suite of services, strengthened with new frameworks and DPS as they become due.
• Support to existing members to grow the range of services and contracts they access via CHIC
• A proactive approach to existing and new member needs.

CHIC had seen progressive growth in recent years, and the strategy to grow the team to support growth and reserves to reflect turnover would continue.
 
4. Finance

2023/24 Outturn

The projected outturn for 2023/24 (CHIC’s year end is 30th June) was positively in line with projections so:
• Reserves would be strengthened in line with the strategy.
• CHIC’s annual social value contribution to CHIP, to fund the Community Chest Fund and work with Local Employment Groups, would be made in June.

2024/25 Budget

The Board reviewed and approved a draft budget for next financial year, based upon nearly 700 projects the team expects to be supporting.
 
5. Performance Reviews

The Board met its responsibilities to review all aspects of CHIC’s performance, including assurance from:

• A detailed performance dashboard showing the status of all services
• A ‘deep dive’ review of the Building Safety services
• The delivery of social value outcomes
• CHIC’s team structure and resourcing
• CHIC’s Marketing Strategy and activities
• CHIC’s Risk Register

6. New Frameworks

The Board received a detailed report in respect of the procurement process for a new Healthy Homes Framework. The directors approved the recommended framework award recommendations, so framework appointments could be progressed in advance of a launch on 11th April.

New starters to the CHIC team

We are thrilled to extend a warm welcome to Rebecca Wills-Smith and Hannah Elliott, the newest additions to the CHIC team who joined us this month.

Rebecca is the latest member of our Supply Chain team. Her role as Catalogue Manager will be reporting into our Head of Merchant Services to provide management, purchasing and commercial support to CHIC’s materials and merchants supply chain.