There were some excellent discussions at this year’s Inside Housing Communications event in London. It was brilliant to catch up with plenty of friendly faces – especially some old colleagues from my Inside Housing days.
This included the journalist and author Pete Apps who is promoting his latest book ‘Homesick’, which explores the causes of the current affordable housing crisis in the capital. I have my signed copy and will be getting stuck in by the time you read this. If it is half as impactful as his previous book, ‘Show me the Bodies’, on the causes of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, it will be well worth a read.
Crisis comms recovery
Chelsea and I took something from every session and thanks again to Martin Hilditch and the team at Ocean Media Group for inviting me to chair a session on crisis communications. My job was made very easy though by the wonderfully candid Jeni Harvey. Jeni talked in detail about her role as director of comms and marketing at Rochdale Boroughwide Housing for the past 18 months and helping the organisation rebuild trust after the death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak in 2020 from a severe respiratory condition that was linked to damp and mould exposure.
Key insights for comms
Here are our key insights from the day for housing comms professionals:
- Labour MP Antonia Bance captured it best when she focused on a “gear shift” by housing providers. Her argument is that the housing sector needs to move from a mindset of campaigning for the funds to tackle the housing crisis (the Spending Review addressed that in Bance’s view), to getting on and doing it – and making sure the story gets out there with customers and local stakeholders.
- There is another aspect to the gear shift though that I felt emerged clearly throughout the day and that relates to an organisation’s values. This may be an uncomfortable shift for some housing provider leaders, but we heard from Philippa Ward at FareShare, Tim Taylor at SNG and others that communicating confidently from your values is at the heart of effective engagement.
- This is particularly important in a time of heightened scrutiny on social housing allocations and a growing public perception of social homes being chiefly offered to asylum seekers and migrants. While this is untrue (in fact 2% of the 261,000 social lettings in England 2023/24 went to asylum seekers and refugees), several speakers spoke of the pressing need for housing providers to be on the front foot and challenge this incorrect assumption. The JRF’s Talking About Homes team is doing some research in this area that is due out in the Spring, so watch this space for more guidance on how best to frame effective arguments in this very sensitive area of public policy.
- This debate also led housing providers to start reflecting not just on engaging in line with their values, but on how their values often mean they have no option but to engage with a debate. This is a real culture shift for many housing providers and will be particularly challenging for local authority landlords, whose elected members must take the lead on such matters. It is a conversation we have regularly with our clients and one that we will continue to explore with real interest.
- It wouldn’t have been a communications event without discussions on AI taking up a decent chunk of time. Some valuable information on the state of the art was shared by Purpose Union’s, Yvonne Luu, but the real nuggets for me came from freelance journalist, Hannah Fearn. Fearn highlighted some key recent developments in journalism that are fundamentally altering the way content is created. “The age of click bait is over,” declared Fearn, as people are increasingly using AI platforms such as Gemini and ChatGPT to search for information. Fearn added that mistrust in PR pitches or new freelancers that have turned out to be high-profile AI fakes has meant a focus on fact-checking and authenticity. This could be good news for organisations such as housing providers, that can provide real case studies of real people that inform topics that the AI bots are more likely to highlight in answer to prompts.
- A prevalent theme throughout many sessions was the need to engage with residents, build trust, speak ‘fluent human’ and work together for better outcomes. Caroline Lamprey from Golden Lane Housing spoke about how resident feedback helped them make their comms more accessible, such as changing the word ‘strategy’ to ‘plan’ and using Easy Read. Thea McNaught Reynolds from ISHA said that residents had fed into a two-year Tone of Voice project, after initially disagreeing with everything ISHA thought it stood for. Meanwhile, Palma Black from Soul Purpose 360 urged housing providers to simply speak to residents like people – don’t “other” them.
If you would like to discuss any of these issues further and how they affect your organisation’s comms planning, please get in touch at hello@see-media.co.uk. We are real people who love what we do – supporting housing providers to provide more and better homes.
Stuart Macdonald is Managing Director and Chelsea Yearsley is an Account Manager at See Media
