Whether chairing social housing finance conference advisory panels or joining the discussion around communications and influencing in housing, our director Luke Cross has been on the pulse with UK housing’s biggest conversations.
Here are a few reflections on the start of 2025 and the year ahead…
- Good riddance, jittery January!
Trump, bond yields, the budget fallout – it’s all been taking its toll on sentiment in the affordable housing sector, which continues to feel the strain of a difficult operating environment, the need to do more for less, and as one esteemed panellist put it at a recent finance conference advisory panel I chaired: uncertainty, everywhere, all the time…
You’d be forgiven, especially during those dark, winter mornings, to have been drawn into the doom and gloom.
But the affordable housing sector has much to feel reassured about – a well-cushioned and safeguarded sector compared to wider real estate, with renewed political support, an opportunity to play a central role in the devolution agenda, and a rebalanced regulatory framework that now ranks consumer regulation alongside economic priorities.
And it’s during tough times that some of the best ideas are formed…
- 2025 – the year of thinking big
Social housing providers have always been a cautious and conservative (small c) bunch – some might say, in hushed tones, that they’re conditioned to be so by the regulator.
But there are some big and ambitious ideas doing the rounds, which all come down to addressing the multi-billion-pound question: how do we get more investment, and delivery capacity, into social and affordable housing?
2025 is the year that the housing association funding playbook gets rewritten, or at the very least, enters a new chapter…
- We’re in this together
One could argue that the recent blow up over the role of for-profit housing providers isn’t particularly helpful – but we need to have open conversations if we want to make progress.
It’s right that there’s a distinction between non-profit and for profit – but that shouldn’t ignore all the shared ambition and purpose that also exists across the two groups, especially those investors that are stewarding people’s pensions and looking for a for long term, stable place to put them. It’s also worth reminding the HA sector that the large scale ‘sell off’ of council housing homes 30 or so years ago, backed by banks and done at discounted prices in some cases, was the privatisation of the day – despite the charitable and non-profit nature of most of the buyers.
Of course there is concern around the priorities of investors. Ask anyone on the street and they’ll say investors exist to make a financial return. And that’s why it’s squarely on those investors to prove their shared purpose, and take their fair share of risk.
- Will ESG thrive or survive in 25?
ESG has been under fire from both ends of the spectrum and much in between – from being branded ‘woke’ to bring criticised for falling short of impact.
But as we head into the new year the language of ESG is still very much alive, with businesses that think long-term still placing value in sustainability and ESG serving as a strategy, performance assessment and communications tool to help you on the way.
No doubt the ‘ESG debate’ will rumble on, but it’s clear that sustainability is here to stay.
And for social housing, this is the year we’ll need to move up a gear, not least as we prepare for what’s around the corner for financial reporting.
- Why public perception matters
I’ve always been a believer that public perception matters in the sector – including during my time as editor of Social Housing, when I often heard that HAs needs to get better at telling their story, and are often stuck between a rock and a hard place of opposing political ideologies.
Some in the sector feel the time spent on this is wasted time, and that each HA should be focusing on getting their own house in order, delivering best possible services to their residents and speaking to their own stakeholders directly.
Of course there’s truth in that, but it’s also not a binary choice.
Why? Because ‘the sector’ is still seen as a movement, it’s a collective. While people within it might think all HAs are different, that’s not how others view it. HAs are seen as a homogenous group – and one that has billions in public money that it needs to be accountable for. And as a movement, you’re only as strong as your weakest link (damp and mould being a case in point). That broader perception is what shapes people’s sentiment and trust in you, which in turn influences political decision making.
With the NHF announcing its plans for a sharper focus on public understanding and perception of HAs, they’ll be plenty more on this to come…
- Strategic thinking – and storytelling
Naturally all this had to come back to the day job…
I think this is where we really need to distinguish communications from PR. For me, the former is about engagment, while the latter carries connotations of influencing at all costs.
One interesting point from the recent NHF Communications and Influencing event was the idea that some HA communications people haven’t got time to think strategically. That suggests comms is happening ad hoc, reactive and without direction – and it can’t be the way we do things. The in-house comms function has never been more important than it is now, and needs the right support from leadership.
So in short – some of the takeaways from my first month back in housing (some of of which I’ve picked up from some excellent discussion in recent weeks!)
- Think bigger than the day to day
- Keep reaching out to stakeholders
- Always be telling the story
- Cut the puff – being honest about problems and telling it straight earns trust
- Think as a collective – not as a single business or even a regional group: the sector is a movement
- Show that the sector is fighting the government’s fight – we still need to win the argument for money
- Use data and evidence to back up what you’re doing and the choices your making
- But tell the human stories – housing is about people after all
- Sometimes, let others do the talking: HAs are in desperate need of advocates and champions – there are supporters out there for what HAs do, let’s find them!
- And let’s keep the debate going – because these conversations matter too.
By Luke Cross, Director