Social Housing Partnerships

Business can invest in their communities by forming strategic partnerships with social housing organisations.  Improvements in social housing have an immediate and positive impact on people's lives, translating to educational achievement, increased employment opportunities, reduced crime, and a healthy and more inclusive community.

I firmly believe that there is far more business can do to support housing association tenants and it is only through such partnerships that we will be able to help some of the most vulnerable groups in society"

There are pockets of social housing throughout the UK which suffer from ‘non decent’ housing, overcrowding, high rates of poverty and widespread unemployment.

Without intervention and support this cycle of economic decline is hard to break, and will continue to impact on skill levels, health, sickness-related absence from work and crime levels.

To address these issues, Business in the Community is championing partnerships between businesses and the social housing sector.

Work to date includes:

• Building Opportunities – a pilot in Birmingham and Bristol completed in March 2010 which developed partnerships between multi-sector businesses and social landlords to support employability and routes to work for residents.  Two publications, 'Building Opportunities Report' and 'Building Opportunities - A Toolkit for Social Landlords' emerged from this pilot, both of which are available from this page by clicking on the publication titles to the right-hand side.
• Research - the pilot described above built upon research published in 2008 which showed how business was working with social landlords to improve, educate, empower and support communities. 
• Briefing Note – a short paper setting out the key social housing issues in the UK, the relevance of these to the private sector and what role business can play in tackling the problems is available.  Please see 'Documents' below to download this paper.

Pilot

The 'Building Opportunities' pilot ran from September 2008 until March 2010 and was supported by the Tenant Services Authority and Wates. It partnered 111 local residents in Birmingham and Bristol with 200 employability opportunities, using support from 19 multi-sector businesses. 

Engagement of residents and business took place with a view to capturing and sharing learning once the pilot had finished. Evidence was gathered on how relationships between business and social landlords can be most effectively developed and maintained, which was used to produce two publications - a pilot report and a toolkit for social landlords.

Please download the two publications for more detailed information on the pilot and its learnings.  Also available is the previously published 'Toolkit for Business' which complements the new publications.