CIH release first wave of EDI census data

At the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) we are committed to improving equality, diversity and inclusion in our organisation, throughout our membership and across the housing sector.

We developed our EDI census to continuously capture data and discover what our membership looks like across the UK. It also allows us to see where our membership might not be representative of the wider population, so we can consider how going forward, we can make our membership (and more broadly access to the housing sector) more inclusive.

The census launched in November 2022. Members can choose to answer all, some or none of the questions and participation in the survey has no bearing on their CIH membership or status.

We committed to sharing a snapshot of this data around our 59^th Annual General Meeting, taking place on 6 October 2023. We therefore collated all of the data we received from the census up to and including 31 July 2023 to produce our Equality, diversity and inclusion census result 2023. At this point, 766 members had completed, or part completed, the census.

Summary findings

• The most common age of our members is 45-54
• Our membership is 63 per cent female
• Our membership is more likely to be lesbian gay or bisexual at 11.3 per cent (compared to between 2.1 and 3.1 percent in the population)
• The ethnicity of our membership broadly reflects the diversity seen in the wider population
• Though our membership has higher numbers of individuals identifying as black and lower numbers identifying as Asian than is seen in the wider population
• Our membership has a lower proportion of individuals with a disability (as defined by the Equality Act 2010) then is in the wider population
• 7 per cent of our members speak or understand a recognised minority language, with Scots being the most prevalent.

Download the Equality, diversity and inclusion census result 2023.