The Housing Community Summit brought the most influential people from the UK’s housing sector to Liverpool earlier this month. It came in the wake of Angela Rayner’s resignation and the recent Reform UK party conference, which all set tongues wagging.
Besides the backdrop of Westminster politicking though, the main topic of conversation was the positive outlook following the Spending Review in June and the government’s promise of a 10-year, £39bn investment in the Social and Affordable Homes Programme.
Transformational shift
Across the summit, it was agreed that there has been a transformational shift in the government’s outlook for social housing, with 300,000 of its 1.5m home target assigned to the tenure, but there is no quick fix.
There is a lack of confidence in capacity and capability within building and planning to get the job done at all and a growing sense of realism that opposing parties to Labour could change the political priorities for the housing sector altogether in four years’ time.
Managing AI opportunities
AI was also a big feature of the event, with its own ‘AI & Technology Theatre’ in the exhibition hall. We heard from speakers about the pros and cons of implementing AI into your organisation. These include: hyper-personalisation for customers – being able to pull up a whole data set at the touch of a button; administrative efficiency – rather than replacing humans, it’s allowing your workforce the time to provide a more personal service; and it unlocks new insights from massive data sets – 80% of which are in unstructured form and near-impossible to navigate at speed.
Housing comms insights
Here is our advice on how the sector can ready their communications and improve customer engagement in light of the above:
- Tenants and stakeholders need clarity and transparency – clearly communicate how announcements and updates from the Spending Review, Awaab’s Law and the Decent Homes Standard will impact customers and the work you’re doing to provide safe and secure homes. This was reinforced by Steve Fensome of Westmoreland Supported Housing when he revealed a key lesson from his organisation’s merger project was that they had perhaps “overcommunicated” with customers. “[In future] we need to make it clearer what the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of the merged organisation look like,” he said.
- Work with industry bodies to provide realistic evidence of how much retrofit work will cost. Annie Owens from the National Federation of Housing said the estimated costs of floor coverings in the new Decent Homes Standard are unrealistic and nowhere near what it will cost in practice. However, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government is open to further evidence being provided as part of the consultation.
- Bring your employees and customers into the AI journey – Scott Bache, lead product manager at Housemark, said the best way to do this is to get data governance in place to create a safe space to experiment, rather than approach AI use with loads of rules constraining it. Simon Fitzpatrick, CEO at West of Scotland HA, agreed, saying the housing applications process had been cut from three months to three days due to colleagues using AI to explore what was possible to improve those areas customers were finding frustrating.
- Remember the power of a great case study. Fuad Mahamed, CEO of ACH, said what the media mainly portrays about refugees and asylum seekers is not true. He said: “Migrants are here to work and contribute to the UK. They are not here to be a burden to society.” He said this negative narrative can be challenged through positive case studies and gave the example of one former ACH resident, Adeep, who has gone on to found a £500,000 maintenance company employing 10 people.
- Human connections matter. Nowhere was this clearer than at the bag packing event See Media supported with Places for People and Fortem for our 2025 charity partner, The Buddy Bag Foundation. This took place on Tuesday morning and attendees, including the NHF’s Kate Henderson, CIH president Elly Hoult and Peabody CEO Ian McDermott, all spoke of the sense of purpose they felt from participating in the bag pack and directly helping young people in their time of need. Many shared this on social media afterwards, helping spread the word about the great work TBBF does, providing essential items to young people who have been forced to flee to emergency accommodation
- Ensure you have a strong organisational narrative that seeks to support those most in need. For instance, providing those 300,000 social and affordable homes as part of the government’s Social and Affordable Homes Programme, or getting those 160,000 children out of temporary accommodation.
For more insights from key housing events and conversations, please join our mailing list. In addition to our monthly ‘House Blend’ newsletter, you’ll receive our regular See Media Briefing documents packed with political insights.
Chelsea Yearsley is an Account Manager and Stuart Macdonald is Managing Director at See Media.
