Labour’s housing plans: Bring on the budget
The Labour government has now been in power for just over 100 days and there’s growing confidence within the social housing sector that we may be on the cusp of an affordable housing revolution. But much depends on the upcoming budget and whether Rachel Reeves can come up with the cash to match the bold […]
Helen Barnard interview: “The situation on the ground is pretty bleak”
As Director of Policy, Research and Impact at the UK’s biggest food bank charity, the Trussell Trust, Helen Barnard sees firsthand the levels of poverty and destitution thousands of people in the UK are experiencing on a daily basis. Food bank use is currently at a record high. And with another tough winter approaching, support […]
Tenant empowerment, toxicity, and tragedy
How did an organisation designed to put residents at the heart of housing management become synonymous with one of the worst tower block fires in history? Keith Cooper examines the role of the Kensington and Chelsea TMO in the run up to the Grenfell disaster and highlights some lessons that are relevant to all social […]
Case study: Tenant Service Assessors pilot
Location type: Organisational Landlord: Link Wentworth Residents: 3,917 homes at the time of the pilot (2019-2020) Estate type and size: Organisation-wide initiative What: The Tenant Service Assessors pilot was a successful project designed to test the applicability of a tenant scrutiny approach in Australia. Under the Tenant Service Assessor (TSA) and tenant scrutiny models, tenants […]
Case study: Argyll Estate, Coffs Harbour, NSW, Australia
Location type: Territorial Landlord: Mission Australia Housing Residents: Many have lived on the estate all or most of their lives. Many Aboriginal residents. High levels of disability Estate size and type: 112 homes for social rent, mix of houses and flats, plus some privately owned homes. Extensive undeveloped land surrounding. Part of a transfer of […]
Case study: Castle Vale, Castle Bromwich, England, UK
Location type: City suburban Landlord: Pioneer Group Residents: Many long-term residents, very low turnover. Formerly the community was almost exclusively white but now more mixed ethnicity Estate size and type: Very large estate with 10,000 residents in about 4,500 homes, of which Pioneer manages 2,500. Extensively remodelled to offer low-rise flats and individual houses. Small […]
Case study: Clúid Housing, St Mary’s Mansions, Dublin, Republic of Ireland
Location type: Inner city Landlord: Clúid Housing Residents: Many have lived on the estate all or most of their lives, and many families for several generations. New residents are also coming in Estate size and type: 1940s build of 80 apartments in a square with an inner courtyard. Open balconies facing inward. Total stock locally: […]
Using data to track success
Our research has included a distillation of the values social landlords are working to in successful placemaking. From these we developed a set of objectives, each of which has practical metrics attached – so that organisations can use their metrics data to establish a baseline and then track their progress. The metrics, crunched down from […]
The placemaking project: Our findings to date
We began our project with a literature review that encompassed as much writing as we could find from the 1980s to date that might be relevant to our work. We also ran surveys in the UK and Germany and undertook a series of case studies with social housing organisations in Australia, the UK and Ireland. […]