Webinar explores what’s needed for England’s housing strategy to deliver?

On Monday 3 March, Homes for All hosted a webinar on what is needed for a housing strategy to successfully deliver, based on lessons from international experiences of creating national strategy.

A recording is available below.

The webinar was opened by Isabel Barnes, Head of Cross-Cutting Housing Strategy at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government – the team responsible for the government’s national housing strategy, which will be published later this year. She said:

“Thanks to… the Homes for All team for all of their work and support in helping us build the evidence base around the strategy.”

“Addressing the crisis is obviously not going to be easy and ministers have been clear this requires a long-term view and working across government departments, and the government working closely with all parts of the housing system to bring about the change that we need. A core part of that is having a long-term housing strategy.”

Alex Marsh of the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence went on to outline key learning from new research currently underway to examine what works (and what doesn’t) for other national housing strategies around the world.

He outlined three core dimensions that must be satisfied for national strategy to be successful – Politics, Polity and Policy – and explored how they must be accounted for in Preparation, Design and Implementation of strategic activities.

“One of the things we’re trying to develop in the way this piece of research is reported, is to keep these three dimensions of strategy explicit and in play.”

“A lot of the commentary on housing policy or housing studies and its engagement with policy, zooms in quite quickly on policy and the substance of policy… and quite often stands back from the broader conditions under which strategy is likely to evolve and be created, but secondarily the conditions under which it’s likely to be sustained over time.”

David Orr, Chair of Homes for All, was our final speaker and he highlighted the need for long-term, clearly defined outcomes for a new housing strategy alongside a legislative structure that is embedded in governance.

“[Homes for All] put together a big coalition of different kinds of organisations – housing organisations, but also organisations who understand that heir work is profoundly affected by what happens in our housing policy and delivery…

“The intention was to try to bring together a range of thinking, knowledge, experience and expertise to challenge the fundamental underlying problems that we all know so well… [These] can properly be categorised as a lack of strategy, coherence and an overabundance of instant initiatives, ideas, thoughts…

“For something which is so profoundly long-term in its investment, its impact, in its implications for our health as individuals, as communities and as society collectively, we have been ill-served by that array of very short-term thinking.”

Jonathan Lewis of Nationwide Foundation, Homes for All funder, summed up the webinar with thanks to all who joined.

He urged anyone interested in supporting a successful vision for England’s homes to sign our joint open letter to the Minister, Matthew Pennycook,which asks him to consider a statutory National Housing Committee.

To support the letter please contact Jonathan at Jonathan.Lewis@nationwidefoundation.org.uk by 10am Monday 10th March.