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I'll do everything from answering the phone and taking a repair to developing the business plan and five-year financial forecast," says Karen Cooper, chief executive of Bexley Churches Housing Association. "I'm not simply the chief executive, I'm the human resources director, the finance director and the rest of the service management team."

It's not something you'd hear from Peabody or Guinness with their tens of thousands of homes. But Bexley Churches is one of the 983 housing associations classed by the National Housing Federation as "small" – in other words, as managing less than 500 units. Its three full-time and two part-time employees oversee 130 homes in London, so staff by necessity turn their hand to whatever challenge arises.

According to the NHF's 2002 figures, small registered social landlords manage, between them, just 5% of the total number of units in England and Wales, and many concentrate on black and minority-ethnic tenants. In contrast, there are 108 associations with more than 5000 homes each, that manage two-thirds of national RSL stock.

With little individual clout, small RSLs are increasingly finding strength in numbers: forming partnerships with larger housing associations, banding together in groups and sharing expertise and benchmarking locally.

Smaller housing associations face the same challenges as their larger cousins – rent restructuring, maintainance, regulations and the decent homes standard – with additional pressure on resources. For those that are keen to grow, the Housing Corporation's reliance on larger associations for approved development programmes is frustrating.

One of the biggest headaches for small associations, says Clare Winstanley, chief executive of Innisfree Housing Association in north London, is regulation. Innisfree manages 400 homes for the Irish community and employs 13 staff. "In order to keep up both with regulation and new legislation, chief executives of small associations have to be really good bureaucrats. Unless you keep on top of the paperwork, disaster looms."

Winstanley is particularly angry about a Housing Corporation consultation paper published in February that suggests associations' performance reporting systems should be externally verified, on top of inspections, planning assessments, financial reports and external audits.

Small soldiers
Grouping together with other small RSLs is a popular way to tackle this kind of problem. Solfed, the South London Federation of Small Housing Associations, is a group of five BME associations that joined forces 10 years ago to benchmark and develop together. At the moment, it is looking at joint arrangements with contractors and setting up a direct labour force.

"It is unlikely they would have the capacity or Housing Corporation support to develop on their own," says John Newbury, director of consultant Newbury King. Newbury believes that by joining forces, smaller organisations can gain the purchasing or expertise advantages available to larger players. Organisations might audit each others' repairs teams or procure IT systems together.

Grouping could also solve some of the problems small associations have attracting senior staff. "They need a finance director with the skills of those in larger organisations but can't afford to pay £70-80,000," says Andrew Billany, chief executive of 400-home Hornsey Housing Trust. For example, Innisfree's 2002 annual report states that its three senior managers and chief executive were paid less than £170,000 in total.

The next stage for partnership among small RSLs, as consultant Newbury says, is to share expert staff. "They might say 'why do we all have one of everything?' and look at employing or contracting one finance director between them, rather than replicating everything in each organisation."

Another step, one favoured by Innisfree, is to move beyond short-lived relationships with developers that yield only a couple of units, and towards more involvement with one or two organisations delivering larger numbers of units on a less frequent basis. Innisfree's Clare Winstanley says: "You still have huge legal documents and spreadsheets whether it's two or 20 units. If you're a small RSL, you don't want to do all that for a small return." Innisfree currently has nearly 100 homes in development. Of the first 200 affordable homes created in the redevelopment of the Arsenal stadium area led by Newlon, 15 will be Innisfree's.

In addition, the small can survive by providing services for other landlords. Hornsey Housing Trust owns 400 supported housing units for the elderly and provides support for a further 400 owned by Haringey council, north London.

Under a similar arrangement in West Yorkshire, Nashayman Housing Association manages stock for 41,000-unit Home, in addition to its own 500-units. It is also taking part in a large-scale regeneration project in the Upper Parkinson Lane area, with Home and Calderdale council. Up to 200 back-to-back terraces will be demolished and replaced with between 100 and 200 properties in a mixture of sizes and tenures.

"We wouldn't be able to approach the project on our own," says Nashayman chief executive Ansar Ali. "But neither would Home or the local authority be able to do it without us, because we know the community that populates Upper Parkinson Lane."

The sugar daddy approach
There is also the option of teaming up with a larger housing association. In Liverpool, for example, Eldonian Community Housing Association is piggybacking on a development bid by Liverpool Housing Trust for a 36-unit elderly extra-care scheme.

So far, LHT's development team has led the process in consultation with Eldonian, put in a bid for funding and helped Eldonian to select an architect to design the project.

If the corporation agrees, LHT will manage the project and Eldonian will assume ownership of the scheme on completion in September 2004, adding to its 310 units.

Despite the struggle experienced by small associations, the emerging partnership solutions prove that the small can not only survive, but thrive. And there are, as many staff in small housing associations point out, advantages to being small. "I know all my tenants by name, and I know their children's names," says Karen Cooper at Bexley Churches. "Small associations do have advantages and enormous strengths."