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 – through research, debate and a Pilot.

Work to date includes:

• Building Opportunities – research published in 2008 which showed how business is working with social landlords to improve, educate, empower and support communities.  These publications are available from this page by clicking on the publication titles to the right-hand side.
• 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 – projects are currently underway in Birmingham and Bristol to develop multi-business partnerships with social landlords to support employability and routes to work for residents.  Please see below for further information.

Pilot

The Social Housing Partnerships Pilot is running from September 2008 until March 2010 and is supported by the Housing Corporation's Innovation and Good Practice Grant Programme. It is partnering local residents in Birmingham and Bristol with employability opportunities, using multi-sector business support. 

Engagement of residents and business is currently taking place, with a view to capturing and sharing learning once the Pilot has finished. Evidence is being gathered on how relationships between business and social landlords can be most effectively developed and maintained, which will be used to create a replicable model for partnership building.

Please download the briefing below for more detailed information.