Top September housing and comms news

September is always a mad month. Summer is over and everyone is playing catch-up. Except this year it was on fast-forward! The See Media team has been doing our best to keep up, flitting between events in Liverpool (Housing Community Summit) and London (Inside Housing Communications event). Here is some of my top September housing and comms news from a manic month.

Will access = influence?

Housing was prominent at the Labour Party Conference (also in Liverpool). It was good to see a mention in the Prime Minister’s speech of a pledge of social housing for veterans, young care leavers and domestic abuse survivors. Angela Rayner, Rachel Reeves and Ed Miliband have also all stuck to the mantra on housing being central to “rebuilding Britain”.

So, the housing sector is continuing to have high-level political access with the new government (despite housing minister Matthew Pennycook’s last-minute decision to dial into rather than attend in person at the Housing Community Summit). But will it translate to influence, come the Budget announcement by Rachel Reeves on 30 October? Expectation is high that the chancellor will announce a 10-year social rent settlement of CPI+1% for English landlords and provide much-needed long-term certainty. The mood music is good, but it remains to be seen whether housing providers will be dancing come 30 October.

Homelessness fight

Elsewhere at the Labour Party Conference, there was plenty of fight in the halls over the decision to withdraw universal winter fuel payments from pensioners – but what about homelessness? The Labour Party manifesto contained a promise to introduce a cross-government strategy to end homelessness – but no timescale. Yes, there were several sessions in Liverpool on boosting housing supply to address the housing crisis, but what of the plan to end homelessness – and by when?

Theresa May’s government committed in 2017 to halve rough sleeping “by the end of the parliament” and to eliminate it entirely by 2027 – that pledge ended with her premiership. Sir Keir Starmer says he wants to end the bluster and stick to his promises – will his promise on ending homelessness pass this test?

Top three from me

Many others have written on the key points from the IH Comms event on 19 September. See Placeshaper’s Joanna Charlton or Citizen’s Sonia Johal Squires on LinkedIn for their thoughts. There are three things I’d like to flag from what was a really excellent day.

We all need to redouble our efforts on embracing AI and figuring out how best it can support our organisation. We use ChatGPT, Dalle and other common platforms at See Media, but if we’re honest we are only really scratching the surface. The session with Tim Bailey from Purposeful Relations and Ben Verinder of Talkstream was a fantastic guide on how to get the best from AI. Top advice is to establish a working group of AI enthusiasts, supported by a senior budget-holder. This can explore your organisation’s challenges, how AI may be able to help address them and, crucially, act on this insight. Start using AI that is already available, such as in your existing day-to-day platforms (MS Co-Pilot; smart projects in Monday.com; etc). And be transparent – have an AI policy that sets out how your organisation is using AI to improve your services. We are going to be doing just this at See Media this autumn, so I’ll report back.
Okay, so this one is a very personal highlight. We unveiled our new See Media visual identity and website! We are celebrating our 10th birthday as See Media this year and as part of this we have been talking with clients and colleagues on their likes and dislikes on what we do. This has helped us create a new brand strategy that has underpinned our new look (thank you to the excellent Liam Rennie-Jeffries). Check it out at our new website (created by our brilliant partners at Effra Digital) and see what you think. Importantly, this exercise is about much more than a lick of paint. It has been a valuable opportunity to connect with our clients and come together as a team around a shared purpose. For the record, it is: to see the social housing sector communicating well so people have great places to live. We think this cuts to the chase on what we are about and hope you agree.
The people. We were fortunate to have a steady stream of friendly faces stop at our stand to say hello. Also, the quality of the speakers was impressive and makes it clear that the housing sector is blessed with comms pros that are ready to step up their support for their leadership teams to help deliver their objectives. The day flew by and it was time to pack up before you could say “can I have a squishy See Media house?” (our squishy merch will return…!). I and the rest of the team are looking forward to catching up with the 10 winners of our prize draw for a free, one-hour PR consultancy meeting – congratulations and thank you for entering.

Phew – time to have a breather. I did warn you it was a manic month. Thanks for sticking with me. Til next time….!