Waltham Forest Affordable Housing Commission & Housing Strategy, London Borough of Waltham Forest, for London Borough of Waltham Forest, with Waltham Forest Affordable Housing Commission and PRD

Waltham Forest’s Affordable Housing Commission established the Strategic Tenants and Residents (STAR) panel to create 27 community recommendations for the Council’s pledge to build 1,000 new homes for social rent by 2026. The council has a target of 27,000 new homes of all tenures over the next 15 years, with the STAR panel as a key informer to ensure community engagement as the development continues.

Who is on the project team? (designer, consultants, etc)

Waltham Forest Affordable Housing Commission & Housing Strategy for London Borough of Waltham Forest with the Waltham Forest Affordable Housing Commission and PRD

Describe the context of the community engagement. Why did the engagement take place? How were the results of the community engagement shared with the project team and community?

We used community voices to share experience and change direction of housing policy in East London. Waltham Forest is on the front line of London’s housing crisis. House prices in the have risen at the fastest rate in the country - soaring by 118% over the last decade. The human impact of this broken market is stark, with homelessness rates in the Borough increasing by 55% since 2019. The Council convened the Borough’s first ever Affordable Housing Commission. Eight independent experts were tasked with proposing recommendations to accelerate the delivery of genuinely affordable homes. Commissioners wanted to understand how the borough had changed and how residents had experienced the change. Stories and ideas of residents were a key part of the evidence base used to inform the Commission’s recommendations. We undertook workshops and face to face discussion, using actual audio clips so that decision makers could hear directly from local people. Moving beyond detached articulations of supply and demand, resident voices helped to re-humanize the housing crisis; showing how the importance of housing as a foundation for a happy and healthy life. The Commission proposed 27 recommendations for the Council. These are being taken forward through the borough’s ambitious new Housing Strategy. T voices and lived experience of residents were vital to informing the Strategy and changing the direction of housing policy. Feedback was provided to participants to enable them to understand how their stories were informing decision making. The wider community was update through local and social media .

Tell us what you did, and how you did it. What was your approach in talking to the community? How did you ensure participants were representative of the demographic of the place and hard-to-reach groups?

Housing is personal. We wanted to capture the stories of people in acute housing need such as those who are homeless or at risk of homelessness, resettled families, those living in overcrowded homes. Reflecting the sensitivity of these conversations, we worked with trusted local partners to reach these groups. This included working with Shelter and the Council’s Refuge and Resettlement Team to recruit participants and design the discussion guides that informed the conversations we had with residents. We programmed a series of focus groups where local people could have an open and honest conversation about housing. Some groups were based on geography, focusing on areas which had seen substantial development. Others brought together people of the same housing tenure, or with particular challenges. We attended projects and initiatives to engage underrepresented demographics. For example, we attended youth projects to hear from young people, and visited homeless initiatives to speak to hear the people they work with experiences. Participants who didn’t want to share their experiences in a group setting could have a 1-2-1 conversation, or write to us to share their story. We used existing networks to recruit a representative sample of people into the engagement process. Across both phases, over 600 people applied to take part, and selection of participants was made based on a demographic and housing tenure criteria. Participants were paid the equivalent of the London Living Wage for their contribution, widening participation to a more diverse audience than would have otherwise been possible.

How was the feedback incorporated into decision making? Can you share how the project outcome has been shaped by the engagement?

Quantitative and qualitative evidence informed the work of the Housing Commission. The consultant team combined intelligence on area change, housing delivery, and demographic trends with the lived experiences of local people, and residents’ ideas for change. Engagement added depth and nuance to the quantitative data, providing a holistic evidence base to inform the Commission’s recommendations. The conversational phase of engagement fundamentally shaped the Council’s new Housing Strategy. Whilst the data showed that the Council had a strong track record of delivering affordable housing, the residents we spoke to had little insight into what the Council’s housing priorities were. To tackle this, the Council’s new Housing Strategy has been developed using theory of change principles. This is a process of describing the long-term change the Council wants to achieve, and then working backwards to understand how it can influence its desired changes with the powers and resources at its disposal. This has involved the Council defining the ultimate goal it wants to achieve for housing in the borough, and the long-term and intermediate outcomes it wants to see for its places and residents. Engagement fundamentally shaped each of the Council’s four long-term outcomes. For example, long-term outcome 4: development enhances neighborhoods and supports stronger and fairer communities is a direct response to local people’s perception and concern that development is for the benefit of others, not the community. “It’s feels like the Council are importing richer people into the borough but aren’t doing much to provide for people in the borough.”