Cross-sector collaboration will build on our strengths

As we launch Trust’s new five-year strategy, ‘Ready, together’, our guiding principle is clear: if we want to be truly equipped for the future, the RSL sector must rethink how it operates. We need to move beyond traditional operational silos and embrace much more cross-sector collaboration, sharing of resources and develop future-ready workforces and capabilities across the sector, not just within individual organisations

Today, Trust operates in a distinctive space. While our heritage is firmly rooted in specialist later living homes and care services, 40% of our portfolio is now general-needs housing and growing. We sit at the intersection of specialist care provision and wider housing delivery. From this vantage point, it’s clear that no single organisation, regardless of scale, can navigate the competing challenges of physically building more new homes while managing the rapid advancements in technology without working differently.

Take affordable housing construction, for instance. The sector faces an acute skills shortage, not merely across trades, but in specialised client-side project management and development roles. For many RSLs carrying the costs of a dedicated in-house development team is simply not viable, due to the reality of infrequent new build projects and many roles being focussed on day-to-day asset management.

At Trust, we already deliver client-side development services for a small number of RSL partners and discussions are underway to support others who need ad hoc and one-off project delivery capability, without carrying the financial overheads. Sharing our own in-house technical teams’ expertise across organisational boundaries preserves vital development expertise within our RSL sector, helping drive new supply, keeping delivery costs down and allowing other RSLs to keep their in-house resources focused on customers.

When used responsibly, developments in technology, data and AI, also present significant opportunities for the sector, helping to further transform how we deliver services. We have strategically invested in our tech, data and cyber capabilities and are seeing the benefits for our customers, workforce and the wider business. This has given us the confidence to go further over the next five years, but we realise this brings challenges. Specialist skills are in high demand and cyber threats are increasing and evolving. Technology is moving faster than any RSL can comfortably keep pace with.

Despite the potential that technology offers, people remain central to the RSL sector and we must attract and retain the right people with a modern employee offer. RSLs can’t match many salaries in the private sector, but we offer something far more compelling; deep social purpose, a progressive work culture alongside agile, modern working environments.

Being Customer Ready, Impact Ready, and Future Ready isn’t just Trust’s strategic ambition, it’s a template for collective resilience of the wider RSL sector. The challenges we face as a country demand a collective response, one that combines the expert knowledge and empathy, with technical capacity and digital infrastructure from across the sector. Only by collaborating openly can we ensure that every pound invested delivers the highest quality, affordable and warmest homes, the most secure communities and the very best outcomes for our customers.

Jackie McIntosh is Chief Executive of Trust