Keeping Communities at the Centre as Housing Changes

By David Guy · 29 September 2026

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

The Housing Community Summit, Liverpool – 8 September 2026

At the Housing Community Summit in Liverpool on 8 September 2026, David Guy spoke with Incommunities board member Lara Oyedele and CHIC’s Kyle Smith about homelessness, social value, local government change and what good partnership looks like in practice.

A housing conference is usually full of big questions, big numbers and, at the Liverpool summit on 8 September, quite a lot of Haribo. But between the sessions, the exhibition hall and the conversations happening in the corridors, I kept coming back to a simpler question. How do we make sure investment, policy and good intentions are felt by people in the communities we serve?

It felt like a timely question. On 25 August 2026, the government announced £9.58 billion in funding for new social and affordable homes through its ten-year £39 billion Social and Affordable Homes Programme. The scale of the announcement matters, but the more interesting part comes next. How does that investment meet local priorities, real people and the practical work of delivering homes?

The conference was not short of other big questions. Housing is being asked to deliver more homes, stronger services, better resident experiences, more social value and clearer evidence of impact. It can be tempting to focus on programmes, targets and announcements. The conversations in Liverpool kept bringing the discussion back to people, relationships and the choices that make a difference locally.

That was the backdrop to my conversations with Lara and Kyle. Lara has also served as President of the Chartered Institute of Housing, although it was her current board perspective that shaped much of our conversation. Kyle had spent much of his time in the exhibition hall, talking with housing providers and supply chain partners. They were coming at the sector from different angles, but their messages connected in a reassuringly practical way: better results usually start with better relationships.

A shared purpose on homelessness

“We’re all here trying to do the same thing, which is give people a decent home.” — Lara

Before we got into the detail, Lara described a familiar conference experience. Old colleagues, new and current colleagues, and the occasional former boss appearing in the crowd. That sense of continuity mattered. The housing sector has changed considerably over the years, but many of the relationships and shared responsibilities remain.

Her first session looked back over 60 years of Homes for Cathy, Shelter, Crisis and Notting Hill Housing Trust, and asked how far the sector has come in reducing homelessness. It was a useful chance to recognise the progress made, while also being honest that there is still more to do.

Lara was particularly interested in the gap that can sometimes appear between the traditional social housing sector and organisations specialising in homelessness. Both are working towards the same outcome – a safe, decent home – so why should they feel like separate parts of the system? As she put it, “there needs to be more interconnectedness” between the homelessness sector and the social housing sector.

That question sits against a difficult backdrop. Official figures published on 13 August show that 135,580 households were living in temporary accommodation in England on 31 March 2026, including 177,530 children. England’s National Plan to End Homelessness also places prevention and collaboration at the centre of its approach.

The point is not simply that organisations should attend more meetings. It is about making the connection early enough to change what happens for a household. A landlord, local authority, homelessness charity and community partner may each hold part of the answer. If they share information and plan together, support can be in place before a tenancy is at risk rather than after a crisis has developed.

Lara also spoke about making sure people who live and work in social housing are part of the decisions that affect them. For a board member, that raises useful questions about whose experience is shaping a strategy, how different communities are heard and how leaders will know if their decisions are working in practice. As a an advocate and campaigner for diversity and equality in housing, Lara also talked about the challenges different political and social views are currently having on the housing sector, and how the need for housing professionals to continue to work to the right values of inclusivity and equality has never been more important.

The emphasis on voice is easy to agree with in principle, but it needs to show up in the way priorities are set, services are designed and performance is discussed. It is also a question I recognise from the strategy and service improvement work I do through ARK – evidence matters, but so does understanding what that evidence means in people’s everyday lives.

Making social value visible

“Members and housing associations know their communities really, really well.” — Kyle

Kyle’s conversations in the exhibition hall brought a different but connected perspective. Social value can sound like a line in a contract, but his point was that it becomes much more meaningful when it starts with what a community actually needs.

Housing associations and local partners know their communities well. Contractors and suppliers bring skills, capacity and ideas. The opportunity is to connect the two, so that a procurement conversation leads to something people can recognise locally — perhaps a training place, an apprenticeship, a community facility or support for a local organisation.

Kyle described the role of CHIC as helping to build that bridge between what members need and what the supply chain can offer. Some of the conversations had focused on how a familiar contractual social value commitment can be used more purposefully, rather than treated as a standard paragraph that is added at the end of a procurement exercise.

That is where CHIC’s relationships with members and suppliers can quietly add value. Helping people have the right conversations early, before commitments become wording in a contract. The aim is not to make every project look the same. It is to make sure local priorities are understood and that the people delivering the work know what success should look like.

The government’s August housing investment announcement includes an expectation that delivery partners consider opportunities for young people to enter employment. That gives Kyle’s point a useful real-world test. Can the skills conversation begin before a project is fully designed, and can local partners help the opportunity reach the people it is intended to benefit?

An apprenticeship or employment opportunity is more likely to have an impact when local partners help identify who could benefit and what support they may need to take part. For me, that is the difference between a social value commitment being recorded in a contract and becoming something a resident can recognise in their own life.

Kyle also highlighted the value of bringing information from contracts together to identify common challenges and share learning. That creates a chance to understand which approaches are working, where delivery is getting stuck and what can be improved next time. It is a simple idea, but an important one when organisations are dealing with similar pressures.

Change outside housing and continuity inside it

The day before the summit, on 7 September 2026, the government announced a review of its Local Government Reorganisation programme, with some decisions withdrawn and other plans paused while the process is examined.

For local authority landlord teams, that creates a very real balancing act. They are thinking about what changing structures could mean for boundaries, assets, data, contracts and responsibilities, while still managing homes, maintaining compliance and keeping residents informed. These are not abstract questions: they affect service continuity, investment decisions, staff capacity and the information future housing teams will rely on.

In conversations with local authority colleagues, I heard uncertainty about what comes next, but also a clear desire to keep working together and to be part of shaping the change. Nobody yet knows exactly what the final arrangements will look like, but there was real value in being able to talk openly, test assumptions and challenge different perceptions.

That is one of the places ARK can help local authorities: providing independent, practical support on the impact of change on landlord services, asset and compliance information, governance and service continuity. The aim is to help councils keep moving, protect the day-to-day experience of residents and make clear choices while the bigger picture is still being worked through.

The practical questions are familiar, even when the structure around them is not. What must continue without interruption? Which data and decisions need to move with a service? Where are the risks, gaps or dependencies? Who needs to be involved early so that the transition does not become something that happens to housing teams rather than something they help shape?

A positive and practical mood

What struck me was that neither conversation was about finding a magic answer. Lara spoke with the experience of an Incommunities board member who has seen the sector change and adapt over time. Kyle spoke about the practical connections that help plans become delivery. Both were positive, but grounded in what it takes to make progress.

“We’ve always pivoted. We’ve always been able to respond as a sector.” — Lara

That spirit of adaptability came through in the wider mood around the conference. There was positivity about the funding available to the sector, alongside a realistic recognition that announcements do not always translate immediately into money, capacity or delivery. The response was not to stand still, but to keep sharing ideas and working through the practical questions together.

Kyle also picked out the balance in the programme, with room for strategic discussion as well as operational challenges and solutions. That matters because a conference should be useful to people at different points in their careers. A senior leader may be thinking about governance, investment and long-term direction, while an early-career colleague may be looking for practical ideas to take back to a team. The best conversations make space for both.

So what can be taken away from Liverpool? Perhaps it is the value of choosing one local priority and bringing together the people who can help address it, including residents. Agree what each partner can contribute, decide how progress will be recognised and keep learning as the work develops.

That is how the relationships built at a conference can begin to change what happens at home. And if the answer does not emerge straight away, there is always the prospect of another conversation — and, judging by Lara’s conference haul, probably another bag of Haribo.