Introduction

The Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government in conjunction with the Disruptive Innovators Network is delighted to invite you to the launch of the governments new 'Social Housing Innovation fund' with a call to social landlords, tenant representative groups and associated agencies.

The challenge

Social housing tenants do not always feel as though they have meaningful opportunities to influence and scrutinise their landlords housing strategies, policies and services. The social housing innovation fund will provide grant funding to social landlords, tenant representative groups and other relevant organisations to test innovative projects which seek to improve tenant engagement and help tenants to better influence and feel listened to when decisions are being made the homes they live in.

What will the fund look to achieve?

The fund will allow MHCLG to invest in and test, and learn from, innovative projects from across a range of different geographies and types of organisation, with learning disseminated widely across the sector.

Bidders must show that their proposals:

• are innovative - essentially something new which adds value and challenges conventional practices in the sector.
• have been co-produced with tenants – meaning you have worked with tenants to jointly set the project’s vision and priorities, design the proposal and make decisions about delivery.

• have the potential to be ‘scaled up’ more widely across the sector - This will involve demonstrating the value and potential impact of the solution to other social housing providers and how this can be achieved

The webinar will provide an opportunity for the MHCLG team leading the project to explain the objectives of the fund, the sorts of projects they are looking to support and to provide more detail on how you can apply. They will also be able to answer any questions potential applicants might have ahead of the bidding window opening.

Speakers will include:

Charlotte Hilliard – Policy Lead MHCLG

Georgia Mellor – Policy Adviser MHCLG

Sophie Porter - Policy Adviser MHCLG

Who should attend?

Anyone interested in improving the tenant and resident experience and improving the range and type of engagement landlords have with their customers will benefit from attending this event. In particular if you have an idea or a potential solution that you are keen to test in the real world and might require some startup funding to enable it to get off the ground.