From the Chief Executive…Give boards a bigger range of voices – and stop worshipping the governance gurus
If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. Why does no one ever follow that advice? A year or so ago I was on the train and got talking to someone who used to be senior at the Post Office. “Don’t believe a word of what you hear, those sub-postmasters were stealing,” she said. […]
Behind the Headlines: The hidden trade in temporary accommodation
In his latest piece for HQM on the temporary accommodation crisis, Keith Cooper investigates how some London boroughs are using former office blocks in other towns and cities to house their homeless – with detrimental results. The new town of Harlow is infamous for its high concentration of temporary accommodation in ex-office blocks. Many […]
A smoking ban in public housing: Ethical and effective?
Since 2018 residents of public housing in the US have been banned from smoking in their own homes. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) brought in the policy with 18 months for managers to comply fully. Public housing authorities must ban the use of combustible smoking products in the home and anywhere within […]
Heat networks: A warm future?
Last month the UK government announced important new funding and other measures to boost takeup of ‘green’ improvements in the housing stock. Prominent in the list of initiatives to start from 2025 was action to promote construction of new heat networks, and to improve the efficiency of existing ones. The government says that heat networks […]
How to build more affordable homes: Are private sector partnerships an answer?
The perennial question of how to get more affordable housing built has been in the minds of researchers in 2023. Around the world, the long-term trend has been for fewer numbers of new affordable homes to be built. But some countries have bucked it by tapping into the private market – with all the mixed […]
Ombudsman Corner
By Richard Blakeway, the Housing Ombudsman Recently I met with the board of a social landlord who asked what I thought about conditions in the private rented sector. For while the poor conditions in some of those homes provides no excuse for social landlords not to meet their own obligations, it […]
Mourning the decline of ALMOs
By Chloe Fletcher Director, HQN As I leave the National Federation of ALMOs (NFA) and join HQN, the country is anticipating a general election. This seems like a good time to reflect on what the ALMO model brought to councils, tenants and the sector as a whole, and what lessons could be […]
Building a culture of excellence
Jahedur Rahman Operational Director, Housing and Building Safety, Haringey Council It’s been said that ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’. For Haringey’s housing service, building an open and positive team culture has been at the core of service transformation. Last year wasn’t easy. We took our ALMO, Homes for Haringey, back inhouse in […]
Housing in Practice: Out of the void
In the latest in our Housing in Practice series, Neil Merrick reports on a housing association that isn’t just trying to reduce voids by turning them around faster but is supporting residents into sustainable tenancies at the same time. The resident’s story In early 2023, ‘Anna’ (name changed) was accepted by the Hyde Group […]
Facing challenges in today’s UK housing sector
By Mark Dewell SVP, Education, Government and Social Housing, Advanced Moving forwards While problems for the UK housing sector appear to stack up on an almost daily basis, employees are doing a sterling job of ploughing forwards. In an era of change and uncertainty, workers in both public and private sectors are […]