On the 8th and 9th September 2025, Convene attended and exhibited at the Housing Community Summit. We’d like to thank the NHF and CIH for joining together to put on such an important and collaborative event.

The NHF and CIH describe the Housing Community Summit as not just a conference, but “a forum for debating and actively shaping the future of social housing.”

The conference brought housing professionals, stakeholders, politicians, and residents together to discuss the pressing issues that affect the sector, and the opportunities we have to shape the future of housing. It offered two avenues to explore this, Housing in Focus and Housing in Practice.

Housing in Focus provided dedicated thought leadership from top political speakers and housing’s senior leaders, all with a focus on business strategy and delivering social purpose. Housing in Practice was a bespoke programme of sessions taking place across four theatres alongside the exhibition floor. Topics ranged from property management and customer engagement, to data and operations.

Day One

On the first day of the conference, Housing in Focus began with a session that looked at building successful communities and aligning housing strategy with community needs, and a policy update on the Decent Homes Standard.

After the Chair Kirsty Wark’s opening remarks, there was a short talk on economic outlook and offering insights on Britain’s path forward, which was followed by a panel that looked at decoding the political landscape after the Spending Review. This explored how the government’s decisions could unlock much needed new housing across the next ten years.

Then, there was a talk on how partnerships can be used to rebuild sector capacity, offering a decade of renewal and growth for housing. This looked at how to engage with the private sector, local government, residents and key stakeholders to deliver long-lasting change.

This was followed by a series of sub-plenaries, which explored a variety of topics including building at scale to meet local housing need, stigma and inequalities, the UK’s ageing population, hearing customers and acting on it, a roundtable on understanding devolution, and drafting AI strategy.

The last was an interactive workshop, which looked at helping executive leaders advance their AI journey. It aimed to give practical insights from expert facilitators and focus on how AI can help with key boardroom decisions.

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After lunch, there was another series of sub-plenaries. These explored important topics in housing such as the skills gap and the threat to essential services and the delivery of new homes, business planning and the cost of decarbonisation, temporary accommodation and its toll on children, building stronger communities through partnerships, a roundtable on the power of tenant satisfaction, and the funding of the future of social housing.

This was followed by a talk on collective responsibility to ensure resident safety, and the importance of collaboration with residents, industry, regulators and the government.

Then there was a final important talk on exploring intersectionality and social change, with Baroness Doreen Lawrence, which reflected on institutional racism, her experiences and the connection between race and class.

For Housing in Practice, there were four exhibition theatres dedicated to asset management and development, housing management and engagement, artificial intelligence & technology, and net zero homes.

There were several interesting sessions that looked at topics like reducing environmental impact and adopting sustainable procurement practices, strengthening communities and how the housing sector can effectively address poverty and homelessness, and how organisational culture and tenant engagement are intrinsically linked.

The exhibition on AI and technology specifically explored AI’s role in the future of tenant engagement, how AI and data intelligence can help social housing with their compliance best practices, the data bias and blindness in the sector and how AI solutions can work for housing officers and customer service teams, and transform housing services.

Day Two

The second day of the conference began with a talk about leading at the local level, focusing on the government’s vision for devolution and increasing delivery to meet local housing needs.

This was followed by a talk on redefining the housing model to deliver longevity, which explored if current housing practices can support long-term sustainability and meet future demands. Building homes is not only about the bricks and mortar, it’s important to focus on the community aspect and developing a ‘place’.

Then there was a series of sub-plenaries, which included topics such as housing, health and education, in conversation with Prof David Miles CBE, building strong foundations, reimagining strategic planning, in conversation with the Regulator, and the Affordable Homes Programme and the next ten years.

In Conversation with the Regulator featured the CEO of the RSH, Fiona McGregor, who highlighted that the very positive settlement for housing from the comprehensive spending review puts pressure on the sector to deliver. Fiona emphasised that from their work, governance underpins everything. Good governance requires good data and that data needs to be assured.

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There were then more sub-plenaries, which focused on supported housing in crisis, tackling the housing crisis and generating economic growth, the role of home ownership in the government’s housing strategies, migration, identity and housing divide, residents inclusion and participation, and a conversation about homelessness and hope.

There was a final set of sub-plenaries that looked at unlocking the true value of data in social housing, creating regional equality and social cohesion, stock rationalisation and disposal, in conversation with the four Federations, a roundtable on the new models of finance and preparing for the new regulation Awaab’s Law.

This is a new law impacting the social housing sector as a response to the death of Awaab Ishak which the coroner attributed to black mould in the property. This law comes into effect in late October and it aims to define specific timelines for repairs that fall into the category of damp & mould.

Richard Blakeway, the Housing Ombudsman, reminded everyone that Awaab’s law is there to define timelines for certain processes that only had vague definitions before. This will increase transparency and trust from residents.
Richard also highlighted some of the key benefits of Awaab’s law:
• Better data to demonstrate compliance
• Better communications with residents
• Consistency. Doing the right things right all the time

This was followed by the final talk of the day which explored whether the sector can achieve its energy targets. This gave insight into the policies and funding mechanism that support large-scale projects, the net zero transition and the debate between prioritising addressing fuel poverty or decarbonisation.

The talk highlighted how electricity costs are the biggest problem, and that social housing properties have the highest EPC rating of any tenure. It emphasised that Net Zero is a legal obligation not just guidance, and it needs to be talked about as a strategic ambition. The trade-off now is whether to build new homes ready for net zero now rather than to build them now to a lower standard and plan to retrofit them in 20 years.

For day two, some important sessions in Housing in Practice were about making net-zero easy to understand for all, equipping communities for a sustainable future, how smaller providers can hit sustainability targets, the role of tenants in governance structures and staying strong on cybersecurity.

There were also more conversations surrounding AI, as a hot topic for not only the housing sector but all industries in the last year. These looked at setting ethical standards in AI in social housing, moving from standard data to smarter data, scaling with purpose and how social housing is being reshaped by technology, and how AI is working for organisations.

 

The Housing Community Summit was crucial in exploring and giving insight into the issues that are affecting social housing today, and what we can do to ensure a successful future. There was emphasis on the rising use of AI for the sector and how organisations can utilise it, and how the current government changes and policies are impacting the sector.

Convene would like to thank the NHF, CIH and all those in attendance for making this summit such an important and insightful event for the housing sector.

If you’d like to learn more about how Convene can help your housing association, join our Housing GRC community and come to our next webinar to hear from Justin Bryant about how Community Housing ran a contemporary Governance review.