Housing Mergers and Partnerships

We recognise that the process of working more closely together needs to be managed with skill and care, and we know that you will look to your advisers for independent guidance and expertise that can be delivered in a practical and effective manner to guide you in the right direction.

Our team has extensive experience of mergers between registered providers of social housing, having worked on nearly every merger in the sector over the last 5 years. We genuinely believe our approach to such projects is different to other advisers – we always aim to:
- Work in a creative, solutions-focussed way to deliver the best possible outcome (and value for money).
- Focus on the key objectives and priorities (the "stop-go" issues) to ensure that those are always at the forefront of the project.
- Utilise our experience and awareness of the key issues and risks that arise in such projects to spot issues at an early stage and ensure these are dealt with swiftly and efficiently.
We have a team of housing specialists working seamlessly together to support our clients in relation to all disciplines involved in such projects – including corporate, banking, financial regulation, pensions, HR, housing management and property.

Our experience includes undertaking legal due diligence, which is vital step to give your Board the confidence to move forward with the merger. This can be resource-intensive for your teams, and is often undertaken under time pressure. We are experienced at managing the demands of such a project and will guide you on how to get the maximum value out of the exercise rather than simply “ticking a box”.

We can also help with strategy discussions around growth strategies, and have assisted organisations to implement preparatory work so that they are ready to ‘hit the ground running’.

But don’t just take our word for it…

“We’re very grateful to Bevan Brittan for providing us with sound advice as we navigated our way through what has ultimately been a smooth and successful merger. Working in partnership with them has meant we have been able to get things done quickly and efficiently.”
Sophie Atkinson, commenting during her role as Director of Governance and Compliance at Catalyst Housing Limited

“The support and advice from the Bevan Brittan team has been invaluable throughout this merger process. We are pleased that this has now concluded and look forward to continuing our plans to get closer to residents and improve our locally focused services.”
Sarah Cameron, General Counsel and Group Secretary at Peabody
Places for People - Merger

We were instructed by PFP in relation to its merger with South Devon Rural Housing Association, including undertaking legal due diligence.

SDR is a small organisation and therefore we spent time upfront agreeing a scope that was reflective of its size and risk profile, whilst still covering key areas. We also provided guidance to the PFP teams on operational due diligence focus areas, agreeing how we would bring both reviews together to ensure a comprehensive picture could be presented to the Board.

The merger had a short timeframe and, following instruction in late November, we set up a dataroom to be used by all advisers immediately (setting restrictions on access to folders as appropriate). The exercise was carried out over the Christmas period and therefore it was vital that access was gained quickly and easily – this enabled documents to be collated and reviewed during early January. Our teams were able to turn around our initial review within 3 weeks, with final reports available by the end of January.

This enabled the board approvals to be obtained with plenty of time for shareholder approvals and completion of the merger by 20 March 2024.

Merger of Peabody & Catalyst

We advised Peabody Trust and Catalyst Housing Limited on their merger. This created one of the largest registered providers of social housing in the country. Our involvement included advice on, but not limited to:
- Inside information
- legal due diligence
- governance of the merger process, including project planning and the role and terms of reference of the joint steering groups
- consumer credit registration requirements
- HR and pensions
- reformulation of the group’s governance framework including committee terms of reference and subsidiary board constitution
- regulatory notifications
- applications to the registrar
- post-completion restructuring including the simultaneous transfer of engagements from Catalyst to Peabody and from Rosebery Housing Association to Town & Country Housing
Leeds & Yorkshire Housing Association - Due Diligence

We were instructed by LYHA as part of its merger with York Housing Association (a subsidiary of Karbon).

Our work included advising on the proposed scope and any areas for particular attention, liaising with other advisers to minimise duplication, direct liaison with the Karbon team to obtain documentation and responses to additional queries, liaising with the jointly appointed consultant to project manage and dovetail with the implementation work, undertaking the document review and reporting to the committee and Board. This included a presentation to the committees and identification of key areas for attention in our easy-to-navigate ‘traffic light’ report.