From estates to neighbourhoods

Posted by ben Lee, NANM Director

Last week we were delighted to host the first working session of our new action team with social landlords which we’re facilitating with colleagues from New Realities. The five social landlords taking part are all in the process of developing neighbourhood agreements (or charters or whatever you want to call them) over the coming months.

We established the action team to add weight to what we view as a significant shift towards localism among social landlords, which in turn supports the case for other forms of neighbourhood working.

It has really been quite striking how many social landlords have adopted neighbourhood working of some form in the past 12 months. What is also noticeable is how many have used a neighbourhood agreement (or similar ‘rights and responsibilities’ document) as a first step, focusing energy and giving shape to their approach, and putting resident priorities first. As a measure of the scale of activity we’ve been sent over 40 examples of social housing-led neighbourhood agreements just in the past few months.

Social landlords going down this route talk of re-casting estate management as management of neighbourhoods; and explain the difference as being about more sophisticated partnerships both with tenants and other public services. Some also talk about their Big Society objectives – to involve residents more in the delivery of services. Either way, for most this is a significant move beyond their traditional role and into the domain of councils, the police, and the NHS. It also signals increased ambition among registered providers to expand their delivery and partnership role; surely no coincidence that this comes as other public services contract and retrench, leaving a vacuum.

And finally this appears home-grown within each social landlord – from their own priorities and business objectives and in our view this makes it stronger. So while the Tenants Services Authority has set out a Neighbourhood and Community Standard the uncertainty over the future of the TSA itself has meant social landlords are unlikely to have changed their approach simply on account of the TSA.

What does this mean? • For neighbourhood organisations outside housing – is this the time to build stronger relationships with your social housing partners?
• For social landlords already going down this route we’d love to hear what you’re doing so we can pass it on. • For social landlords thinking about it but not sure where exactly to start, then get in touch.