Our recordings cover various topics, from practical housing management and high-level policy discussions to events designed to support your professional development. All recordings are free for all CIH members, log in and listen/watch from anywhere.
Developing and retrofitting: the low carbon agenda
John Kiely, director of housing & public sector at Savills and Brian Rankin, energy manager at Choice Housing looked at the low- and zero-carbon agenda and retrofit of existing homes. Discussing the opportunities and current challenges, they shared examples of developing new homes to higher energy standards including Passive House, zero carbon, Code 5, and Code 4 projects.
Social Housing Allocations for now and the future
The complexities of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown has brought housing into sharp relief and means it is more important than ever that we are clear of the need and purpose of social housing in Wales. A central part of this is the allocation policies and processes that support people to access social housing in Wales.
Tyfu Tai Cymru looked across all local authority areas to understand how the allocations process works in different locations. Shelter Cymru presented findings from their detailed research which focused on the Swansea area.
All speakers explored what works and what can be improved.
Getting your repairs service back up and running during COVID-19
As we start easing the Covid-19 lockdown restrictions what will the impact be on repairs and maintenance services? How will organisations deal with the backlog of repairs, reach out to customers in a meaningful way and manage customer expectations.?
Our speakers reviewed the current situation, explored how we work towards returning to normal service, considering how long this might take and explored whether there are opportunities to be taken from this crisis to do things differently in the future.
Bonfires to beacons: community cohesion in Northern Ireland
Celebrations of culture and heritage can be an important part of life for some and a contentious issue for others. Tanya, Gavin & Mark examined the role social housing landlords can play in supporting communities to explore the diverse range of opportunities available to them in reimaging celebrating their cultural heritage differently, and looked at how we can learn from the journey's others have already embraced and how can we support positive expressions of culture.
International best practice examples, local office case studies and findings from consultation with staff and customers were explored alongside a series of practical initiatives designed to support communities' initiate conversations around change.
Building better boards
We were delighted to host our first CIH Building better boards event with over 200 people in attendance throughout the day.we presented our new offer to boards to help drive best practice, knowledge sharing and promote professionalism that drives assurance and innovation across the sector.
Expert panels discussed governance and building better boards in the 4 sessions listed below:
- Building better boards
- Putting people's voices at the heart of governance
- The new business as usual: What does this mean for good governance
- Boards cannot live by governance alone
A summary of the discussions is included in our Building better boards virtual pack
Homelessness during Coronavirus and beyond
Margaret-Ann Brunjes, chief executive, Homeless Network Scotland and Clare Mailer, head of housing service at Perth and Kinross Council explored the challenges of dealing with homelessness during the Coronavirus outbreak and discussed how we ensure that homelessness doesn’t increase when restrictions begin to be eased.
Launch of research into affordable housing need in Scotland 2021-2026
Shelter Scotland, Scottish Federation of Housing Associations, and CIH Scotland launched new research into affordable housing need in Scotland. The findings set out the number of affordable homes Scotland needs between 2021 and 2026. At this launch event, we heard about demographic and housing market trends in the Scottish housing system and what this means in terms of access to affordable homes in the short-to medium-term.
In 2015, the organisations’ joint research helped to inform the current affordable housing supply programme, and the study has been repeated with the aim of setting a new robust target that will meet existing and future need.
Ensuring equality during lockdown
Our speakers, Alicja Zalesinka, Director of Tai Pawb and Hannah Wharf, External Affairs Principal, Equality Human Rights Commission explored how the Coronavirus crisis is impacting the poorer and more vulnerable people in our communities and throwing up barriers to the way that we would normally provide services.
We discussed how to can ensure that we maintain equality in the allocation of housing options and support services provision during the COVID-19 lockdown.
Shine a light on mental health and housing
We were joined by our president Aileen Evans for this session on mental health and housing. Learn more about the mental health toolkit that has been created especially for the housing sector. We also heard from experts in the field of mental health and from leading housing organisations on how they have applied best practice for both staff and residents alike.
The future of sheltered housing
The expert panel looked at the housing needs of our ageing population and whether the current sheltered housing stock is suitable for purpose.
Areas discussed were:
- The housing needs of our ageing population
- Is the current sheltered housing stock suitable for purpose?
- How have sheltered housing services been evolving in recent years?
- Supporting sheltered tenants through the Coronavirus pandemic
- Funding and partnership opportunities to enhance the sheltered housing offer
- Ensuring effective tenant participation in sheltered housing
- Can we sustain sheltered housing with the squeeze on Supporting People funding?
- The need for co-operation with the health and social care sector in developing future models of sheltered accommodation
- Examples of good practice.
