You are viewing 1 of your 1 free articles
Our most read insight articles of 2018
We reveal which of our insight articles were clicked on by the most subscribers in 2018
Our insight articles range from in-depth investigations and data pieces to interviews with housing leaders, quick-turnaround listicles and fact-checkers.
Below, in reverse order, we reveal the top 10 insight articles by most subscriber page views:
10. First Priority: the inside story of a housing association that almost went bust
One of the first big regulation stories of the year was the Regulator of Social Housing’s conclusion that First Priority – a small provider of homes for adults with learning disabilities and mental health problems – had a “fundamental failure of governance”.
In November we published the full inside story of what happened at First Priority, detailing how the organisation entered into a series of lease deals with investment funds and how this nearly proved disastrous.
9. Dispatches from Housing 2018: day two
Our daily round-ups of housing sector events and conferences always prove popular with our subscribers and our coverage of Housing 2018 in June was no exception.
Our second daily update summed up some of the major themes of the day’s conference sessions and delegate chat, including REITs, Brexit, offsite manufacturing, stigmatisation of social housing tenants and Universal Credit.
8: Repairs and maintenance spend tracker: what did your association do in 2016/17?
How much is your housing association spending on repairs and maintenance? In May we published an in-depth analysis of repairs spend by 240 large housing associations in England.
This looked at how the rent cut has affected key decisions associations are taking about how best to ensure stock is maintained.
Our sortable data tables enable you to compare and contrast repairs expenditure, and changes in year-to-year spend for the landlords. It breaks the figures down into major, routine and planned works.
7. Top 50 Biggest Builders
With government announcements about funding for new homes and strategic partnerships, the focus on housing association development was stronger than ever in 2018.
Our Top 50 Biggest Builders survey data tables revealed which housing associations are completing the most homes and which have the largest pipeline.
Our detailed research also showed breakdowns for pipeline and completions of homes by tenure and revealed which landlords have increased their stock by the most.
This is all stitched together by excellent analysis from Inside Housing’s business reporter, Luke Barratt.
6: Rising Stars 2018: the shortlist
This year’s Inside Housing/Chartered Institute of Housing Rising Stars competition was significantly revamped with 10 up-and-coming housing professionals shortlisted for this year’s final.
The candidates wrote blogs for Inside Housing, took your questions in a live Twitter chat, participated in a round table debate and faced off in a public vote. Oliver Harling, a trainee surveyor at Irwell Valley Housing Association, emerged as the eventual winner.
This article back in April announced the 10 finalists. Readers could scan their profiles and then cast their vote for their preferred candidate.
5. Knowsley Housing Trust: what went wrong?
At number five in the list was this excellent piece of investigative reporting by our award-winning journalist, Nathaniel Barker.
Knowsley Housing Trust in August became the first social landlord to be censured by the Regulator of Social Housing on fire safety grounds since the Grenfell Tower fire in June 2017.
The regulator downgraded the Merseyside-based association to a non-compliant governance rating.
This piece for the first time told the full story of how the problems emerged.
4. The usual suspects? We scrutinise the appointment of a new generation of chief executives
Anybody following the social housing news closely over the past couple of years will have noticed the high turnover of chief executives at the largest housing associations.
Our exclusive research in October revealed the full scale of this trend with 44 chief executives of the largest UK housing associations departing in the past three years, taking 511 years of experience with them.
The piece also looked at their replacements and found the sector has much to do on inclusivity. We revealed only nine of the 34 appointments were women and only one was from outside the social housing sector, while just 5.9% are BME.
3. Housing association chief executive salary survey 2018
Our annual chief executive salary survey is available to our subscribers only and is an essential resource for anybody wanting to get the minutiae of chief executive pay in the sector.
Our data tables allow you to compare pay of chief executives of 182 different organisations, using a range of different measures, including pay per home, pay per turnover and highest percentage pay increases.
The piece also allows you to compare bonuses, pensions arrangements and reveals where the pay gaps are.
2. Social Housing Green Paper: one week on the debate rages
The long-awaited publication of the Social Housing Green Paper in August promoted a flurry of reaction, comment and analysis from key figures across the sector.
A week after the document came out, we published this piece trying to make sense of some of the key debates happening in the sector about the government’s plans.
1. Seven problems with last night’s Dispatches
Channel 4’s Dispatches episode Getting Rich From the Housing Crisis put housing associations in the national media firing line.
The programme alleged that associations had lost their social purpose and were culpable for the housing crisis.
In a quickly-turned-around article, we listed the ways in which the programme was misleading, inaccurate and pointed out that it omitted to mention the role of government policy in the housing crisis.
This piece certainly struck a chord with Inside Housing readers and was comfortably the most clicked on insight article by our subscribers in 2018.
