- HQN

About consultancy

Our hands-on support covers a wide range of specialisms and expertise. Directly-employed and associate consultants, led by our directors, offer a strong track record in social housing and in consultancy.

With over 25 years as a company offering consultancy our team racks up many years of combined experience.

We’re here to help with confidential advice, guidance and health checks on the key areas.

We’ve listed some of our most popular topics below – if you can’t see what you are looking for please contact us.

Each consultancy assignment guarantees a single point of accountability – one director will take responsibility and provide continuity.

Recent client feedback

“HQN provided a comprehensive and professional service in managing Ealing council’s statutory PRS licensing consultation. The team of experts were supportive and at all times ready, willing and able to assist throughout the process.”

Allison Forde, Assistant Director, Ealing Council
“Having received a call from the RSH advising that we were due an IDA, I contacted HQN for assistance in helping to prepare our chairs who were being interviewed. Jo Ballman was excellent, having read the documents that we had sent to the RSH she crafted the questions and went through a mock interview with the chairs and prepared a note of areas that could be improved. With hindsight I think that it would have been helpful for us to have accepted the offer for the same exercise to have taken place with the exec too! We retained our G1 V1.

“We were very pleased with the service provided by Jo, and I would recommend both her and the rest of the team at HQN to assist with any of their consultancy services.”

Jackie Bligh, Chief Executive, Worthing Homes
“HQN Consultant Wayne Hughes has been a professional pleasure to work with. He has left us with a sound platform of findings to begin our Repairs and Maintenance transformation. It is not the end of our relationship as we will be calling on him again soon ”

Karen Connell, Interim Head of Housing, North West Leicestershire District Council
“The most helpful (and engaging!) session I’ve been to on consumer regs (and I’ve been to a few!). I shared the slides onto our exec and leadership, flagging the key task slides in particular – some great challenges.”

Rosie Hazeldine, Settle Group
“Really appreciate the open and honest feedback this afternoon. I thought the feedback was fair and it balanced some really positive comments about the staff that you met and the challenges ahead.”

Peter Brown, Service Manager, Sheffield City Council

Our consultancy offer

	Consumer standards – HQN can support you to answer the key inspection questions		Governance, strategy and risk – we help boards and executive teams, keep on top of risk and mitigations with our Iron Grip and stress testing away days
	Value for money, finance and business planning – HQN offers high level expertise in a wide range of finance-related areas for housing associations, local authorities and ALMOs		Want top marks for your in-depth assessment? – HQN has extensive hands-on experience of working with landlords to get them ready for IDAs
	Performance improvement support – we have helped over 200 organisations to increase performance and improve customer satisfaction. Many have gone on to achieve outstanding results, winning quality awards and are delivering services of which they can be justifiably proud		Do you feel under pressure to merge? Is it really the right answer for you? We can give you impartial advice
	Strategic housing services – the range of services we offer reflects the diversity of the strategic housing function, supporting the development of strategy and policy (including affordable housing, homelessness and housing support)		Asset management – our experienced team has a track record of strong project management and in-depth understanding of local authority, ALMO and housing association asset management
	Health and safety – it can feel relentless, new and revised guidance to stay on top of, risks and threats to watch out for. When it comes to health and safety there’s never been a greater need for reassurance.		Private rented sector – it’s big, it’s growing and in many places it houses more people than councils and housing associations. HQN will help you get the best out of the private rented sector whether you’re a council, association or ALMO
	Mystery shopping – whether you are looking for assurance, gearing up for regulation, preparing for the TSMs or looking to generally drive service improvement HQN can help.		Think differently with HQN’s board away days – we’ve a whole bunch of ideas for you, whether you’re holding them in-person or virtually. If you’ve already got a topic in mind we’ll go for that. Each session will be tailored to you and we guarantee it will not be dull.