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Dispatches from Housing 2026: day one
A daily round-up of the most important headlines from day one of the Housing 2026 conference. Photography by Guzelian
Dispatches from Housing 2026: day one #UKhousing #Housing2026A daily round-up of the most important headlines from day one of the Housing 2026 conference #UKhousing #Housing2026Delegates on day one of the annual Housing conference this year were greeted by a person in oversized gorilla suit handing out flyers, who was eventually escorted from the steps of Manchester Central.
Whatever the primate was flogging, I hope they were being paid enough money to stand outside in the baking 30°C heat. Thankfully, animals were not allowed inside the conference hall.
The first day had some clear themes of partnership working, resident-led approaches to building safety and housing management, and looked at the different priorities between landlords in London and those in the North.
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There was time to put housing management problems to Inside Housing Management’s Agony Aunts, enjoy fireside chats hosted by the editor of Inside Housing Living, and flip omelettes in a charity cook-off.
With the prime minister’s tearful resignation outside 10 Downing Street on Monday (you can read the sector’s response is here) and most commentators believing that newly elected Andy Burnham will be crowned leader of the Labour Party, many of the sessions stressed the need for continuity amid the political upheaval in a number of policy areas, such as the Social and Affordable Programme (SAHP), which is already assessing bids.
Here is our round-up of what was discussed on Tuesday.
Will a new government impact grant funding?
Pat Ritchie, chair of Homes England, told attendees that the agency is continuing to work through the grant programme bidding process, but there is a “question as to how that will translate to any new government” in light of the prime minister’s resignation.
Strategic partnership bidders are still awaiting Homes England’s final decision, following a request to re-profile their grant drawdown last month.
An audience member at the session asked whether bids will be put on hold given that Mr Burnham – the frontrunner to replace outgoing prime minister Sir Keir Starmer – has suggested he would direct the entire £39bn SAHP to social rent homes.
In response, Ms Ritchie said: “I think we need to be quite clear about this, that we’re going through a process with the SAHP and that’s what we’ll do.
“We’re getting towards the end of that process, and it will be for whoever the minister is to decide how they want to move forward.
“But there is a programme there that we’ve got partners ready to deliver on, and there is a question as to just how that will translate to any new government.”
Partnerships and regeneration
Towards the end of the day, housing leaders from the North of England discussed how to partner up effectively to improve and deliver more homes. Shazia Bashir, a partner at law firm Winckworth Sherwood, said she has seen partnerships become more and more common, as providers look to “buddy up”.
Robin Tuddenham, chief executive at Calderdale Council, joked that attendees may have heard the expression: “Partnership working is the suppression of mutual loathing in support of government funding.”
On a more serious note, he suggested that partnerships tend to suffer with problems around power sharing, accountability and long-term sustainability.
Meanwhile, Sasha Deepwell, chief executive of Irwell Valley Homes, sung the praises of the Greater Manchester Housing Providers – a partnership of more than 20 housing providers in the region – which she said as a group deliver one third of all new homes in the area.
The closing session in the Great North Theatre looked at next steps to realise the potential of regeneration, off the back of the Renew inquiry’s initial findings.
Nick Atkin, chief executive of Yorkshire Housing, said the government has already answered a lot of the sector’s asks and warned that there is a risk the sector is seen as “moaning, bleating and negative”. He urged landlords to “eradicate that”.
On regeneration, Mr Atkin said the “one core ingredient for success… is civic leadership” that “transcends politics” to come up with a long-term plan.
You can read more about regeneration in the North here.
Despite hearing some early progress on grant funding and regeneration at Housing 2026, a major London landlord has warned that the lack of demand in London is making it difficult to cross-subsidise social housing.
Fiona Fletcher-Smith, chief executive of L&Q, said: “There is simply no demand, so a lot of building isn’t happening because nobody’s going to buy [housing], and if nobody buys it, we in the housing association sector can’t cross-subsidise the stuff we really want to do.”
With these concerns ongoing, Inside Housing published our annual survey that reveals which housing associations are the top 50 Biggest Builders.
Treasury brain
‘Treasury brain’ is a pejorative term used in UK politics to describe the institutional culture of the Treasury, where officials and ministers prioritise short-term fiscal control and rigid spending limits over long-term strategic investment and growth.
Rumours suggest a Mr Burnham government might replace the chancellor. If he does, he will also have a fight on his hands to change the culture. This was pointed out by Lord Best, who made the case for regeneration at the Great North Theatre.
However, he said a blockage to this agenda is mandarins in the Treasury who are not convinced by the value of funding regeneration in the same way as new build homes.
Lord Best also lamented a siloed approach to the government led by Whitehall officials who cling to power instead of devolving more responsibility to regions.
One area of government that arguable doesn’t suffer from the same short-term thinking is Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ).
During a panel on delivery of the Warm Homes Plan, a government official suggested that more public funding for energy upgrades could be forthcoming if the housing sector shows it can deliver.
Caroline Withey, programme director of the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund at DESNZ, told delegates that “getting it right first time is the key” for the department’s schemes, adding that it knows consumer protection reform “needs looking at”.
Ms Withey added: “Basically if you deliver well, then we can ask for more money.”
This followed calls from Ramin Hakimov, head of commercial and policy engagement at solar energy company Allume, for more DESNZ funding. “We know that this £100m for solar and battery that will be pretty much oversubscribed as its [the] historical case,” he said.
Concern remains with building safety policy
Delegates at the conference heard how remediation teams at the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) are facing “difficult decisions” as removing all combustible cladding from buildings is not always possible.
John Palmer, director of operations at the BSR, explained that replacing faulty cladding can cause other problems, including damp and mould.
He said: “In some cases, Jane [Carroll, head of external remediation] and her team have to make some difficult decisions about how to proceed.
“So, for example, it may be that it’s actually not possible, not feasible, to remove all the combustible materials in the external source. If that’s the case, [the question is] how much can stay, and if it has to stay, [what are] the mitigations around that that we need to put in place.”
On residential personal emergency evacuation plans, fire safety expert Jenni Seex said they are “trying to solve a problem that shouldn’t exist” and would not be needed in high-rise blocks that had adequate fire protection measures.
Asked by Inside Housing if the regulations do enough to keep disabled people safe, Ms Seex said: “I think the difficulty is, they are regulations which are trying to solve a problem that shouldn’t exist.
“So, people in their own flat should not be at risk from a fire somewhere else in the building.
“If you’ve got a fully sprinklered high-rise building and all of the fire safety features work, residents shouldn’t need these, so I think that’s a chicken-and-egg situation, really.”
Homelessness, cost of living, and a move to municipal rent models
Ian McDermott, chief executive of Peabody, said there needs to be a “fundamental look at rent” in London to create a more affordable system.
Speaking on a panel about development in the capital, he said solutions such as “municipal rent” or “flexi-rent” should be encouraged as alternatives to traditional affordable rent models.
When asked whether there is a place for affordable rent – defined as rent up to 80% of local market rates – Mr McDermott said he does not “particularly like” the tenure.
“It was not the result of any great policy analysis. It was a fix at the time Grant Shapps was the housing minister and he wanted to find a way of building the same number of homes with half the amount of grant, and that was what he alighted on,” he explained.
In response to a question by Inside Housing at another session about whether the panellists would support a new statutory definition of ‘affordable housing’ being introduced after an MP-led inquiry found the current description fails to reflect the situation across the country.
Ms Fletcher-Smith of L&Q said: “I think it’s about understanding your local markets and what’s affordable in one part of the country; it’s got to be very much linked to local earnings, so having a very strict statutory definition might be difficult.
“But having a statutory kind of way of working it out, whether it’s 40% of average local income or 80% for an intermediate rent.
“The one thing I would urge on any kind of intervention by government is, ‘Please, keep it simple.’ We build homes for sale, we build homes for for rent. I think when I looked at some of our rent data, we have probably about 16 different types of rent, and they’re all linked to historic funding arrangements.”
On homelessness, panellists discussed how funding is still “very much concentrated” on crisis response instead of prevention.
Dr Lígia Teixeira, chief executive of Centre for Homelessness Impact, said: “Prevention really has very much won the argument, and yet crisis keeps stealing the show.”
Her comments in the session – which was focused on moving from crisis response to homelessness prevention – were related to the vast majority of funding being funnelled “downstream” into temporary accommodation instead of earlier intervention to stop people from experiencing homelessness in the first place.
Another area where it was felt the sector could do better was supporting residents with the cost of living, particularly in local authority debt collection.
During a discussion in the London Theatre on housing affordability and the cost of living crisis, Dan Hawthorn, executive director for homes and communities at Camden Council, called for a more person-centred approach to debt collecting.
He said: “In my experience of working in other boroughs, we’re not brilliant at a joining those those debt collection efforts up, so that residents are dealing with one organisation rather than all the different departments they might have money to, but also we haven’t been taking a very kind of person-centred approach to collecting that debt.
“You hear stories that sometimes the bailiff is the first human being they meet in a conversation about their debt – that’s not right.”
Agony Aunt advice
A lively lunchtime panel with Inside Housing Management’s Agony Aunts saw the housing experts take on delegates’ biggest problems, from persistent complainants to complex legal challenges.
Age-old housing management problems such as no-access issues, anti-social behaviour and noise complaints also cropped up during the troubleshooting session, but so did some new emerging problems including a rise in numbers of AI-drafted complaints, Awaab’s Law queries and housing associations wanting to challenge ombudsman determinations.
Capacity issues in housing management, and when to engage the Equality Act, emerged as a common theme. Agony Aunt Rebecca Eastwood, partner at Devonshires Solicitors, reminded the audience that taking early legal action can sometimes be the best course of action in capacity cases.
Omelette-flipping
Senior sector figures gathered at Riverside chief executive Paul Dolan’s omelette challenge, as part of his Cook-off for Cancer campaign raising money for Young Lives vs Cancer.
Eddie Hughes, former minister for rough sleeping and housing, was among the fastest, completing in 39 seconds. Tracy Harrison, chief executive of the Northern Housing Consortium, also finished in 39 seconds – but hers was barely scrambled eggs.
Peabody’s Mr McDermott had a hob malfunction and took more than 90 seconds and fellow G15 leader Paul Hackett, chief executive of Southern Housing, also came near the bottom of the leaderboard.
Inside Housing’s own Martin Hilditch took a respectable 48 seconds, but he dropped his whisk and spilled eggs everywhere.
Mr Dolan was the fastest with 17 seconds, perhaps unsurprising considering his chef experience. Mr Dolan started the campaign after his own cancer treatment shortly after joining Riverside.
“I wanted something positive to come out with my experience,” he said.
"Cancer is horrendous for anybody who experiences it, but especially for a child to have cancer, and the family who has that uncertainty. So we wanted to do something for children with cancer and that’s what we’ve done, and the response from the sector has been amazing.”
You can read our interview with Mr Dolan, where he talks more about the campaign and Riverside’s hopes of gaining a C1 grade, from earlier this year here.
Who is the new Housing Ombudsman going to be?
Away from the sessions, there was a lot of talk about who will replace the outgoing sector watchdog. One senior leader suggested to Inside Housing that it would be better if the sector “didn’t know the name of the new ombudsman”.
You can read Richard Blakeway’s exclusive exit interview with Inside Housing here, which includes some key advice for his successor.
See if you can spot yourself during day one of Housing 2026 here.
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