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Housing Futures Workshop

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Last week Ellie Gooch (Localities Manager) and I facilitated a workshop at our office in Riverside for the Housing Futures Innovation Programme. This is an exciting opportunity for Bromford to look outward, build relationships and innovate within the sector. You’re likely asking what’s this all about then? 

Here’s the spiel -

“Housing Futures is the National Housing Federation’s innovation programme, and the biggest collaborative exercise ever undertaken in the housing sector. Over the next 18 months, Housing Futures is bringing together housing associations from across the UK to collaborate to solve housing’s biggest challenges.”

The Objective 

The objective of the workshop was to submit Bromfords response to the first phase in the programme - Identify the challenges. 

What are the BIG housing challenges we need to solve as a sector?

The challenge must 

  • affect a significant number of people

  • have a significant impact on those they affect

  • be a challenge that is likely to get more acute in the future if action is not taken now

The Workshop

Energy, passion, Post-its, pens and a wall graphic at the ready we dived straight into lively debate and it was great to see a cross-section of colleges collaborating, knowledge sharing and voicing their views away from desks and screens.

We asked the group to consider

  • What do you think the challenge should be?

  • Why does this matter to you?

  • What have you seen/heard to support this?

NHF1.jpg

The wall graphic swiftly filled with post-its and covered topics from universal credit to climate change and everything in between.

With limited time left we had to group the ideas into themes which were the following - 

  1. Homelessness

  2. Mental health support (unhealthy lifestyles)

  3. Government policies (e.g Universal Credit)

  4. Influencing developments, design and affordability.

  5. Technology/digital era (Universal Credit again) 

  6. Stock Condition

NHF3.jpg

Next step was to pick one as our housing challenge. How did we do this? A good old fashioned vote, nice and simple. Winning by a small majority Influencing developments, design and affordability won.

Bromfords Submission

Using our problem canvas tool this was Bromford’s submission statement.

At pre-development planning stage, it affects any person, in any demographic who is living near or moving into a new development housing scheme. Lack of suitable land, pressure to build and grow, local authority decisions and government policies mean that developments are not future proofed for sustainable communities. This impacts customer’s ability to thrive in their community, with unsuitable, un-affordable housing. It creates housing management challenges for Housing Associations and puts pressure on external services. This is a common problem and has a huge impact on customers lives, including their mental health, homelessness and social isolation. We are looking for innovation solutions developed around these themes. 

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It really was an enjoyable session which highlighted why we are here and a reminder of our purpose. It's easy to get bogged down with day-to-day activities yet we are here to invest in homes and relationships so people can thrive. 

If you are interested in the next steps here’s the programme phases and timeline - 

  1. January-February 2020: Identify - Identifying the challenges

  2. March-June 2020: Insight - Doing the detective work

  3. September-October 2020: Ideas - Preparing the groundwork

  4. November-December 2020: Incubate - Growing ideas

  5. January 2020-June 2021: Impact - Supporting ideas to succeed

More information can be found here https://www.housing.org.uk/our-work/innovation/

Thanks to everyone involved - Ellie Gooch, Naomi Mitcheson, Sam Paterson, Delphine Guillemoteau, Jack Davie, Becky Davis.