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Dispatches from Housing 2026: day three
A daily round-up of the most important headlines from day two of the Housing 2026 conference. Photography by Guzelian
Dispatches from Housing 2026: day three #UKhousingFollowing action-packed first and second days at Housing 2026 – where delegates attended sessions on topics ranging from building safety, to misinformation, to veteran homelessness – day three kicked off with the winners of the Inside Housing Management 30 being revealed.
The rest of the day included discussions on the use of AI, concerns about the implementation of Awaab’s Law, the impact of the English regulator’s economic standards refresh, post-Grenfell building safety, renters’ rights, and what the sector could learn from China.
Here is our round-up of what was discussed on Thursday.
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What can we learn from China about creating communities that help people live for longer?
One fascinating panel discussed how the Longevity Home in Newcastle was the UK’s first real world ‘living lab’ for healthy ageing – a space where residents, care professionals, technologists, and housing providers have co-created the future of independent living.
The space was developed through a collaboration between Bernicia, the North East Combined Authority and Newcastle University’s National Innovation Centre for Ageing.
The home functioned as a dynamic testbed where people could trial innovations such as circadian lighting, digital communication tools and emergency response technologies, shaping them through lived experience.
Lynne Corner, chief operating officer at the National Innovation Centre for Ageing, said: “We’re trying to build in much longer-term thinking, so that we’re taking our housing stock and our future housing stock with us to a time when we already have one in three people over 60. [The ageing population is] going to be much, much higher by 2030 and 2050.”
She continued: “So what does that mean? It means that we’re going to have more people in the population who have certain needs. How can we design an ‘Internet of Caring Things’?
“There’s so much in our politics, in our design thinking, that takes a very short-term view, so we need to take a longer-term view that includes public-private partnerships.
“I think that’s going to be really positive, but the UK is lagging behind. This is the norm in China, Singapore, Australia, and in big parts of Canada and the US.
“So we’re spotting where this is working and working well, where you can see the savings coming through, but you can also see the quality of life and well-being savings coming through for the residents.
“We completely appreciate how difficult it is for people working in the sector, we know that the funding is scarce, but by showcasing different examples of what is happening internationally, we can get learnings about what might be possible, and how we can bring that to the housing and health sector.”
Is the AI hype justified?
Several sessions at Housing 2026 focused on how landlords can use artificial intelligence (AI) – perhaps unsurprisingly given that most sectors are interested in how advances in this technology could boost productivity and improve services.
But amid the hype, one provider shared their concerns about rolling it out too quickly among staff. Jas Sidhu, director of housing at St Basils, told delegates that he had decided to stop the organisation’s widespread use of Copilot, which comes for free with Microsoft 365 packages, until they had a “full governance review”.
The young people’s housing provider had switched on Copilot seven months ago, and “it went everywhere”, he said. “Staff were using it but not understanding the human intervention side of it and saying that what it said was actually correct when it’s not.
“So we made a decision, I did, to actually switch it off completely until we do a full governance review.”
This review is grading the use of AI by teams at the provider as either green, amber or red – “when can it be used, when it needs human intervention, and when it cannot be used at all,” Mr Sidhu explained.
He said his decision was also due to concerns that if staff did not understand settings on the AI tools they use, a small mistake would allow data to leak – with Mr Sidhu most concerned about the young people’s data the organisation holds.
He confirmed to the panel that he is now trialling Copilot and plans to roll it out first to the executive team, then to certain other teams. “It has to be used, it will be used, but in a controlled environment,” he said.
Asked by Inside Housing why they were worried the data could leak, he said: “At the time, we didn’t know what it was doing.”
“We did not understand what it was collecting, where the information is going, what was it looking at, how we control it – we had no idea.” St Basils has had two meetings with Microsoft and is speaking to two consultants to understand the technology before they switch it back on.
“It’s just because it happened so quickly,” Mr Sidhu added. “I didn’t just want to stop something, I need to protect the young people, our board as well as our staff.”
Post-Grenfell building safety culture still has a long way to go
The interim chief construction advisor at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has explained why the tragedy of Grenfell demonstrated a collective shame and failure of the building safety system, and how “we all have our part to play in correcting this”.
Thouria Istephan was speaking during a panel on safety culture, competence and the future of building safety.
Ms Istephan, who was part of Phase 2 of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry, set out why recognising safety and quality are part of a single agenda, with resident safety at the heart of decision-making.
She said: “The [Inquiry] recommendations were very wide-ranging. It demonstrated and summarised... incompetence, a great deal of incompetence, actually, across the board, within all sectors, also a great deal of dishonesty and poor behaviours.”
The concern about culture comes as the conference also heard from Dame Judith Hackitt, who said people in the building industry who thought post-Grenfell changes would “go away” have now realised this “isn’t going to happen” and change is inevitable.
In another building safety-related session, speakers shared innovative approaches and proven techniques for involving residents and enabling engagement beyond mere compliance with the Building Safety Act’s requirements.
A lot of the focus was on the role of the accountable person, and one audience member set out the importance of that role.
She said: “We’ve learned that having an accountable person at the first point of the project, as soon as it’s being announced, is beneficial for our customers to be able to direct their queries straight away without having to go through a... generalised inbox trying to get through to customer support.
“We found that putting that person at the forefront has been really beneficial, and it removes the fact that they’re not hiding, nobody’s hiding with the answers, and then you have people you can speak to.”
Sector lacks education on second phase of Awaab’s Law
The housing sector is “a lot less educated” on hazards covered by Phase 2 of Awaab’s Law and will likely need to move residents to temporary accommodation more often.
Kyle Foulds, head of assurance at Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing, said that landlords have had “a lot of time” to understand damp and mould, which is currently the only specific hazard in scope of the regulations.
Mitigating these issues within the 24-hour and five-day deadlines is “well understood already”, he told delegates at Housing 2026 in Manchester today.
But he added: “I think for the other hazards, as a sector we’re much less educated about what we can do to mitigate the risk in the short term.”
Do for-profit providers need a new name?
In one of the last sessions of the conference, Jennifer Murray, executive director of equity for Homes England’s National Housing Bank, said she wishes “the world found a better word for it”.
“No one in this entire sector isn’t for-profit, it’s actually the differences around what we do with that profit,” she said.
However, panellists admitted the alternative – institutionally funded registered providers – isn’t quite so snappy.
When asked what barriers investors face when considering affordable housing, Rizwan Khan, head of investments and partnerships at Sage Homes, said the sector and its regulation can be “mystifying”.
Citing Homes England’s Capital Funding Guide, which spans hundreds of pages, he said there is “probably something that can be done on simplification”.
Holding the government to account on its secondary Renters’ Rights Act reforms
Delegates at Housing 2026 heard the results of an annual survey, showing that 60% of tenants have never heard of the Renters’ Rights Act, and 50% of landlords aren’t confident with the changes.
The findings were revealed as part of a panel on how to make renting fairer for everyone.
Niamh Evans leads the policy work of the Renters Reform Coalition, a group of 18 leading organisations campaigning for renters’ rights and a fairer housing system in which everyone can access a decent, affordable and secure home. Ms Evans chose to focus on what comes next after the Renters’ Rights Act in making the system fairer for renters.
She said: “There’s a huge amount that the legislation sets out to come in through secondary legislation, which will include things such as the private rented sector database, and the private rented sector ombudsman.
“These will take a lot of work from the government, and it’s a campaigning priority for us at the moment, in making sure the government gets this right, that these aren’t watered down, and that these protections really do work in practice.”
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