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Are you ready to embrace change?
learning, qualifications and CPD will increasingly blend these elements to ensure that IRPM professionals have strong technical competence, delivered safely and ethically for customers who sit at the heart of everything they do. In this way, over time, we will build much needed trust and respect between managers and their residents. That trust is incredibly important. Not just to make customers happy, but to show government that industry can house our people well. But there is more that a leading professional body can do. The empowerment of the consumer and the overload of (sometimes woeful) information is encouraging residents, RTM/RMC directors course. When you consider the responsibilities that resident directors are taking on, it makes good sense for them to learn the basics and access the same sector-leading materials, events, resource hub and technical bulletins that the professionals do. Finally, the mission to raise standards across the leasehold and rented sectors continues, with a master’s degree in residential property starting later this year, complimenting existing Affiliate, Associate and Member qualifications in leasehold and build-to-rent management. Learn more about the big changes coming at the IRPM Annual Seminar on the 13th June at the QEII Centre, Westminster, London; the industry’s biggest combined BTR PRS/leasehold estate management event. https:// events.irpm.org.uk/ Andrew Bulmer FIRPM FRICS is CEO of The Institute of Residential Property Management If you want to know more about IRPM membership, qualifications, events and work, visit www.irpm.org.uk and even lawyers to take IRPM’s basic foundation
Y ou only need walk along any retail street – be it prime Oxford Street or any town centre with empty units staring blankly back at you – to understand what happens when customers change their preferences. The same Darwinian principles are headed towards property management. Government is fiercely determined to empower residents to challenge poor standards and switch agents for better service. As with retail, it is blindingly obvious that good managers will prevail, poor managers will fail. No bad thing, but how is The Institute of Residential Property Management (IRPM) embracing change? IRPM is the leading professional body for residential property management professionals, providing learning, qualifications and support to over 4,600 members from over 1,000 organisations in the leasehold, build-to-rent and retirement sectors. Its mission is to raise standards in the
As the property management industry is the focus for improving standards, the IRPM is at the forefront, explains Andrew Bulmer
Bedrock knowledge for any professional, but in our post-Grenfell, be-accountable world, mere technical competence is no longer enough. Professionals must go further. IRPM is leading that conversation, working with its members and their employers to deliver the culture change that consumers demand. In 2018, IRPM launched the Four Elements of property professionalism: • Technical competence • Safety • Customer focus • Ethics and behaviours It seems so obvious now, but just one year ago this holistic approach was game-changing, and it is still ahead of the curve. The Four Elements first appeared in our build-to-rent qualification, launched at the request of government to deliver on the promise of a better rented sector. IRPM
trusted voice with Government and stakeholders as an unbiased speaker of truth to power. For example, we are working with the Dame Judith Hackitt team reviewing the safe management of residential buildings and Lord Best’s working group on the regulation and accreditation of property managers. We also liaise with the Westminster and Welsh Governments and the Law Commission to guide leasehold and commonhold reform. So far, so influential, but what of the professionals
management of residential property in the UK. IRPM is a
themselves and the customers they serve? Industry qualifications
professional membership body, not a trade body, and is an authoritative,
have traditionally focussed on technical competencies, such
as law and finance.
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