Date published: 24 February 2022
The team at the award winning law firm – Shakespeare Martineau - has worked with Stonewater Housing for a number of years.
Stonewater is a registered provider of social and affordable housing with over 34,500 properties supporting 76,000 tenants and the team had to date supported them across a wide range of legal requirements.
The challenge
In March 2020, Stonewater Housing, along with most other businesses in the UK, instructed its non-keyworker colleagues to work from home, due to the pandemic. Nobody at the time knew how long the situation would continue and how it would impact the business and our colleagues.
Working from home was a different experience for everyone and with that came concerns for people’s mental and financial wellbeing.
Fast forward to 202, the working landscape as we know it had shifted enormously. Many businesses adopted a hybrid working model.
Stonewater faced a challenge and needed to support its colleagues by encouraging good mental health practices.
As part of the solution, colleagues were offered a loan to spend on their home working environment. For some, this meant new equipment, for others – it was constructing a new office in the garden.
The solution
Stonewater worked with the Finance team at law firm, Shakespeare Martineau, to ensure the project was compliant. The scheme actually had more complex legal requirements than originally anticipated.
Financial loans and lending sit in a highly regulated sector. The Shakespeare Martineau team worked quickly to understand the objectives of Stonewater’s scheme before providing guidance back. There were many elements to consider, such as;
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did Stonewater need to be regulated by the FCA?
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did the documentation meet the very stringent legal requirements of the Consumer Credit act?
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did the loan constitute credit broking?
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what exemptions or other regulatory structures were available to assist Stonewater?
Taking all this into account, the team was able to deliver a product that aligned with Stonewater’s goals, and ensured it did not breach any regulations.
At a glance
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Shakespeare Martineau worked quickly and efficiently to meet the client’s timescales.
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It quickly identified the regulatory minefield that the client could find themselves in, and developed a compliant and attractive offer.
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The scheme has been enormously successful so far with double the anticipated demand amongst Stonewater colleagues.
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This scheme is proving to be of real interest to other organisations as an employee benefit and as a way for employers to actively support mental health and a hybrid working model.
The result
Stonewater launched its groundbreaking innovative scheme to its colleagues, with the confident knowledge it was the best it could possibly be.
The advice Shakespeare Martineau provided tied all the regulatory strands together, and ensured the product sat safely within the rules of this heavily regulated landscape.
Take up of the scheme from colleagues has exceeded all expectations and it is double the original anticipated demand. The positive feedback has been overwhelming.
Other employers, as a result, have been in touch with Shakespeare Martineau to discuss how it might work for their organisations.