Behind the headlines
Last summer, bed bugs hit the headlines after a major infestation swept across Paris. But the pests are increasingly a nuisance closer to home. Here, Claire Tough, Director of Communities and Customer Services at Homes in Sedgemoor, talks about their own battle with the bugs and the steps they’ve taken to try and get on […]
Housing’s Next Generation 2024: And then there were six…
After a series of increasingly difficult tasks, we’ve reached the final stages of HQN’s Housing’s Next Generation competition for 2024. Ahead of the grand finale at this year’s HQN annual conference, here’s the lowdown on our six finalists. After a challenging semi-final day in London last month, judges found it impossible to settle on a […]
Transforming social housing into an asset class: REITs in supported housing
Social care is in crisis, with MPs on the Public Accounts Select Committee warning that adult social care in England has been brought “to its knees” due to years of underfunding, short-staffing and neglect, writes Dr Richard Goulding. With almost half a million people on waiting lists for residential care, and Labour failing to commit […]
How to make building safety remediation more ‘liveable’
Thousands of multi-storey residential buildings require disruptive remediation work to fix safety problems identified in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire, writes Jenny Preece. Aside from the scale of activities taking place around the country, what sets this work apart from other large building projects is that homes will often remain occupied through the […]
Evidencing the value of a social tenancy: A digest of new research
Prof Jim Clifford OBE, Director of Sonnet Impact and Hon Professor, Sheffield Hallam University Social housing is valuable, bringing a place to call your own to many who cannot otherwise afford it. Value is one of those things that raises further questions. How valuable, to whom, and what are the stories that underpin that? How […]
Housing in Practice: Digging deep: how residents helped create a perfect garden
In the latest of our Housing in Practice series, Neil Merrick reports on how residents work alongside contractors to improve the gardens at a London estate. The residents’ story Five years ago, the gardens surrounding flats at the Factory Quarter estate in west London left much to be desired. Plants weren’t watered or properly […]
How the housing sector can make a positive impact on halting biodiversity loss
Every garden and area of green space matters By David Garrett, Head of Knowledge Transfer at sustainable gardening charity Garden Organic, explains how everyone can take small steps to nurture nature It can be scary switching on the news or the latest nature documentary and hear the words ‘biodiversity loss’ or ‘global […]
Telecare users must switch to digital before it’s too late
By Hannah Chandler, Telecare Lead, Lincolnshire Housing Partnership (LHP), which runs the Lincolnshire Telecare Service (LTS) in partnership with Age UK Thousands of elderly and vulnerable people in Lincolnshire who use telecare services risk being left behind when traditional landlines in the UK are switched off by telecoms providers from 2025. Consumers need […]
You said we didn’t. You were probably right.
By Rob Gershon, Social housing activist When I first heard that one of the government’s responses to the Grenfell Tower Fire and the resulting Social Housing Green Paper was going to be tenant satisfaction measures, sometime during 2019, I felt a certain amount of disappointment and cynicism. 2018’s Green Paper had comprehensively […]
Our housing crisis: A tale of broken trust
By Peter Brown, Non-Executive Director, Heart of Medway Housing Association Complaints to the Housing Ombudsman are on an inexorable rise, revealing a festering issue at the core of housing organisations. These repeated failures have seeped into the national consciousness, catching the attention of both the media and concerned citizens. Even politicians, typically […]