Westmoreland Supported Housing – Due Diligence on Partnership Options

Westmoreland Supported Housing Limited (WSHL) is a registered provider of long-term lease-based Specialist Supported Housing.

Objective

WSHL sought DTP’s support in a pre-due diligence exercise to consider partnership options for WSHL.  WSHL was non-compliant with the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) standards.   For12 months, the leadership of the business has been focused upon an agreed recovery plan, with the aim of delivering a viable, stable business, with a clear long-term future of providing high quality services for its customer.  Having delivered the significant internal change required to deliver stability, leadership focus moved to long-term planning.  As part of this, WSHL Board elected to investigate options to partner with other organisations to create increased organisational strength, improved delivery capabilities and to accelerate WSHL’s route to regulatory compliance.

What we did

The scope of the exercise was to identify, assess and report upon options to enable WSHL’s leadership to decide upon a preferred strategic route for detailed due diligence and negotiation.  WSHL sought DTP’s support based upon (1) DTP’s knowledge of both the wider social housing sector and the SSH mini-sector (2) DTP’s experience of M&A transactions and their nuances in the sector and (3) DTP’s approach to assessing the assignment.  In respect of the latter, DTP’s focus was in ensuring clarity over WSHL strategy, assignment scope and targeted value and DTP’s ability to add material value before accepting the assignment.

DTP’s role was multi-faceted, to work jointly with the CEO in:

• shaping the overall approach;
• leading on specific areas – specifically the financial and cultural assessments;
• completing joint analysis;
• acting as trusted advisor to CEO; and
• acting as independent advisor to WSHL Board, to provide assurance on the quality of the process and impartiality in analysis.

The CEO and DTP’s Andy Roskell worked closely throughout the process from inception to decision-point, culminating in Andy facilitating a session for WSHL Board to review the analysis, consider recommendations and achieve a decision on moving WSHL forward.

While DTP have experience in similar exercises in this sector, this assignment was particularly challenging, due to the nature and status of both the mini-sector and WSHL itself.