Approved Housing Bodies

At Moore, we have developed a tailored and discrete service for Irish Approved Housing Bodies (“AHBs”). We are a leading internal audit service provider to Ireland’s credit unions. The credit union movement has a number of similarities to AHBs. Both are built on social co-operative principles and both operate in a regulated environment. Our experience in assisting Irish credit unions has been primarily to assist in the implementation and embedding of governance, risk and internal audit frameworks. This professional service footprint has a high degree of relevance for AHBs as they commence their journey in a regulatory environment with increasing governance demands. In this regard, we are ideally positioned to provide AHBs with a leading edge service.
Our connection with AHBs commenced in 2015.  We acted for the Irish credit union movement in designing a funding model to finance AHBs in line with the stated Governmental policy to fund social housing in an off-balance sheet context. Our project with credit unions was to design a funding model in this context. In completing this project, we engaged with representatives of the AHB sector, along with officials from the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government. In so doing, we gained a deep understanding of AHBs in Ireland.  

In line with the Governance Standard of the Approved Housing Bodies Regulatory Authority (“AHBRA”), AHBs are obligated to demonstrate “appropriate internal and external audit”. We have developed a compelling internal audit programme, tailored to fit the specific and unique needs of AHBs, that can provide comfort and assurance that the AHBRA standard as it relates to internal audit is met. Key areas of focus include, but are not  limited to:

• Tenant Service Policies
• Income Management
• Tenant Communication and Engagement
• Allocations and Lettings
• Health & Safety Compliance
• Repairs and Maintenance
• Void Management
• Compliance with overall Standards of AHBRA
• Risk
• Compliance
• Viability Assessment
• Liquidity
• Business Plans