Housing Associations and Neighbourhood Governance

Innovation and Good Practice funding from the Housing Corporation was awarded to the Young Foundation to explore the potential for housing association involvement in neighbourhood governance.

This project grew out of the Young Foundation’s wider work on neighbourhoods through our Transforming Neighbourhoods Consortium.

The project had two aims:

• To assess the implications of developments in neighbourhood and community governance for housing associations
• To develop new tools and approaches to support housing associations’ role within this area.

Many housing associations have built up strong relationships with residents and communities and now provide a wide range of neighbourhood-based services on top of their core housing business. Indeed, in some areas, housing associations have successfully taken the lead in initiating and supporting neighbourhood working. Yet, there are other examples where housing association involvement has not been so fruitful.

Therefore, this project explored:

• How the housing association’s role in neighbourhood governance can be developed, building on the experience of success to date
• Examine current policy agendas for housing associations, including stock rationalisation and local authority stock transfer
• Examine housing associations’ role in finding a balance between meeting the needs of vulnerable residents and wider communities; the development of new settlements and the regeneration of deprived and damaged communities.

Gathering our information

We broke our research into three stages. In addition to conducting a literature review, interviewing key stakeholders and producing a scoping paper for stage one, in stage two we:

• Conducted four case studies - Poplar HARCA in London, Tees Valley in Middlesbrough, Penwith in Cornwall, and Touchstone Housing Association in Coventry, which have taken a leading role in local development and implementation of neighbourhood and community governance
• Interviewed ten housing associations who are a representative sample of the overall spread of housing associations to explore their experience of involvement in neighbourhood governance
• In stage three we developed an options paper which outlines practice and developed models for housing associations to use as a guideline for how best to increase involvement in neighbourhood and community structures. Finally, we will conducted a stakeholder seminar drawn from key stakeholders and housing associations' contacts in order to help refine options that will inform the final report

For more information contact Liz Bartlett, Associate, Local Innovations Team:

020 8709 9294 or liz.bartlett(AT)youngfoundation.org