By Aileen Edmunds, Chief Executive of Longleigh Foundation
Housing is dominating the national conversation, with planning reform, higher standards and ambitious housebuilding targets all competing for attention. That focus is welcome. But as our sector concentrates on regulation and delivery, we should pause to ask a fundamental question. What are we actually trying to achieve?
Social housing has undergone profound change over the past few years. The Grenfell Tower tragedy rightly prompted deep reflection about the safety, quality and accountability of social housing. New consumer standards, stronger regulation and increased scrutiny have raised expectations of landlords and challenged us all to do better. That is as it should be.
Regulation matters. It protects residents, strengthens accountability and helps rebuild trust in our sector. But if our ambition begins and ends with compliance, we’ve misunderstood the purpose of social housing. Compliance can tell us if a home meets a standard. It cannot tell us if it feels like home.
Recently, I asked a room full of housing professionals to describe what came to mind when they heard the word home. The answers came quickly: safety, family, belonging, warmth and comfort. No one mentioned “a place that complies with the Decent Homes Standard”. Instinctively, we all know that home is about far more than bricks, mortar and compliance. It is the foundation from which people can build their lives, pursue opportunity and thrive.
What makes home feel like home?
Time and again, our research and grant making have shown this to be true. A few years ago, we commissioned research into something that, on the surface, might appear remarkably mundane: flooring. Specifically, the fact that when many people move into a social rented home, there is likely to be flooring only in the kitchen and bathroom. Our research found that around 760,000 adults living in social housing may be without floor coverings, set out in full in our report, The Provision of Floor Coverings in Social Housing: Final Report.
Residents consistently described the impact in profoundly human rather than practical terms. They did not talk about the absence of carpet. They spoke about embarrassment, about children feeling unable to invite friends home to play, about feeling visibly poor.
Conversely, when flooring was provided, such as through grants from a charity like ours, or other forms of support, people rarely described the carpet itself. They talked about dignity, confidence and feeling “normal”. Babies crawling safely across the floor. The confidence to welcome family through the front door.
The lesson here is straightforward: sometimes the smallest practical interventions create the greatest human outcomes. From flooring to financial wellbeing support to resident led research, we’ve repeatedly seen that relatively small interventions can have a lasting impact on dignity, confidence and opportunity.
Compliance protects people. Purpose changes lives.
None of this diminishes the importance of regulation. Indeed, regulation is essential. But regulation defines the minimum we should deliver. Purpose defines the difference we can make.
Today, we still face rising housing need and inequality alongside increasing loneliness, poor mental health, financial insecurity and growing social division. Against that backdrop, the role of social housing extends well beyond providing a roof over someone’s head. It creates the stability from which children learn, relationships strengthen, health improves and opportunity becomes possible.
The destination is not simply safer homes or higher standards, important though they are. It is enabling people to live healthier, more secure and more hopeful lives. That is the purpose social housing has always served at its best.
Those of us who work in social housing carry an extraordinary responsibility. Every policy, every repair, every development, every conversation and every decision has the potential to shape someone’s future. With that responsibility comes an extraordinary privilege. We are one of the few sectors whose everyday work creates the conditions for people to live healthier, happier and more hopeful lives. We should never lose sight of that.
Compliance protects people. Purpose changes lives. And we should never mistake regulation for the destination.
