HDN heralds new approach to harness board diversity in the housing sector A Housing Diversity Network (HDN) programme to improve board diversity through targeted role search and retention techniques has been judged a major success. HDN’s interim report highlights the positive outcomes of the first year of Advancing and Harnessing Board Diversity programme piloted with two northern housing associations – Progress Housing Group and Together Housing Group. The programme adopts a new approach to improving board diversity through creative recruitment of a cohort of potential board members from diverse backgrounds. This cohort then undergoes a two-year training and development programme [...]

National Housing Federation Summit 2019: Five Things We Learned By Mushtaq Khan I was at the National Housing Federation Summit in London last week. Here’s a few important takeaways from the two days: Nothing is going to get done in terms of housing (or any other) activity until Brexit is ‘done’. Although booked to appear, the latest new Housing Minister was unable to attend and even though we continue to hear about the housing crisis, policy pronouncements were thin on the ground. Information on what’s the future of the Race Disparity Unit, for example, isn’t at the top of the [...]

Manningham Housing Association CEO Awarded "Hero" Status July 4, 2019 Manningham Housing Association (MHA) chief executive Lee Bloomfield has been named as Mentor of the Year at the prestigious Housing Heroes awards. Organised by leading trade publication Inside Housing in partnership with the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH), the national awards recognise the commitment, passion and hard work of the unsung heroes of the UK housing sector. Lee Bloomfield The ceremony was held as a curtain raiser to Housing 2019, the CIH’s annual conference which was addressed by Theresa May in one her final speeches as Prime Minister. Mr Bloomfield was recognised [...]

CMI Level 5 Award in Coaching and Mentoring  We believe that building a culture of diversity and inclusion goes hand in hand with a strong coaching and mentoring culture. We are partnering with Whole Spectrum to offer this course which builds on our existing successful board excellence and staff mentoring programmes. Whole Spectrum have a long track record of delivering coaching and mentoring qualifications within the social housing sector. This programme has a focus on diversity and inclusion and can both support professional growth, organisational development and meet wider diversity goals. Who is the programme suitable for?  Existing mentors on [...]

Why are Diversity Initiatives Failing? The past few months have been eye-opening for me. I’ve been working with housing organisations on improving their performance in equality, diversity and inclusion. I used to work in this area, but having had some time away the roles have now been reversed and I’m the trainer and consultant and not the client. It has meant that I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the amount of work that organisations have done on diversity initiatives and why many people feel that on the whole these initiatives have failed. It’s not as if housing [...]

Culture, Diversity and Inclusion – “Firms are nervous about the threats they face” FCA Discussions about Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) have been taking place in the housing sector for years but despite encouraging positive examples of good practice we're a long way from seeing it being embedded sector-wide. EDI in many organisations is still regarded as an afterthought or troublesome concept or as 'yet another' thing to be added to an ever-growing 'to-do' list. Lack of understanding and a misplaced emphasis on inputs and effort required to tackle EDI issues has for some resulted in a compartmentalised, box-ticking approach [...]

NEWS RELEASE Social housing more diverse but satisfaction of protected characteristics groups a concern 13th December 2018 A new report from Birmingham-based research charity the Human City Institute reveals that the social tenant group has become more diverse in the last two decades, with more BME tenants, more women-headed households, greater levels of disability and long-term illness, and more tenants identifying as LGBT. The report also identifies levels of satisfaction with social landlord services among some protected characteristic groups – especially BME tenants, women, disabled tenants and LGBT. Read more here

The Inspire Awards: Diversity & Inclusion in UK construction, engineering & housing The Inspire Awards 2018, recognising and encouraging diversity in the construction industry, proved to be successful.  HDN helped with the judging and will do so again for Inspire Awards 2019.  How about HDN members and their construction and improvement partners putting forward some nominees this year. Do have a look at the brochure for 2019 here.

Raj Patel 09:52 October 2, 2018 Equality and Diversity rise up the social housing agenda E&D, and greater inclusion, cover who is housed by the social housing sector, as well as the roles of staff and governance of social housing providers. The growing importance of E&D issues is partly thanks to the determination, campaigns and initiatives of several sector-wide agencies, and a number of social housing providers, including Housing Diversity Network members. HDN organised the highly successful #housingdiversityday in March this year, which made E&D concerns even more visible, and we will be doing so again next year. [...]

Boldly Going into the Beyond Hi everyone, my name is Aisha and I work for Poplar HARCA, a housing association in East London. I was asked to share my experiences and what I have done beyond the HDN Mentoring programme. The idea of public speaking is something that can really put the most confident person on edge. I used to be one of those people but then I had a job that involved going into schools and speaking to 16-18 year olds about donating their blood, organs, and bone marrow. With a topic like that it was not unheard of [...]