Recent publications
Here you can find all the latest research reports that HACT has published.
Published: November 2021
This paper provides an insight into the opportunity for closer partnership working between health bodies and the housing sector both nationally and at a place-based level. In understanding the environment across these two sectors, HACT aims to describe how the public health team serving Bedford Borough, Central Bedfordshire and Milton Keynes are working with local housing associations and other agencies to deliver public health objectives in partnership, producing change by positively influencing the health and quality of life within its communities.
Published: April 2021
HACT have published a review of Cotman Housing’s project All About You, which aimed to support carers of people with dementia to be more physically active. The report identifies key learnings from the project.
Published: April 2021
HACT have worked with Town & Country Housing and Clarion Futures, the charitable foundation of Clarion Housing Group, to produce a report into the role of place-based partnership working in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, with a focus on employment support.
Published: March 2021
This White Paper examines rent-flex, a platform that enables residents to develop and agree their preferred, individual, schedules of rent payments for the year ahead.
The evidence from the proof of concept pilot indicates that rent-flex could help housing providers reduce the costs of rent collection, improve cash flow forecasting increase visibility of rental income and target tenancy sustainment initiatives at those most in need. It could also transform the landlord-tenant relationship by creating a joint planning approach to the management of rent payments, whilst simultaneously improving residents’ financial resilience, health and wellbeing, and giving them greater control of their finances and lives.
Published: February 2021
The second report from our RCT programme run in partnership with JRF, this report looks at how the theory behind RCTs has been put into practice, with an emphasis on the practical application of RCTs in the social housing sector.
It pulls together experiences, learning and reflections from RCTs that have been designed and delivered by housing providers.
Published: January 2021
Commissioned by Regenda, this White Paper examines how housing organisations can work with health and care organisations to alleviate workforce issues. The NHS is the largest employer in the UK. Prior to Covid-19, there were over 200,000 job vacancies in health and care organisations. Filling these vacancies, as well as those created as a result of the impact of Covid-19 on existing members of staff, is a huge challenge.
Published: December 2020
An anthology of stories, statistics and viewpoints that capture how social housing organisations responded to the Covid-19 pandemic across the UK. A Sector Together includes stories ranging from a children’s cooking project in Gloucester to a motorcycle prescription delivery service in Gwent, from activity packs in Cornwall to food vans with built-in Wifi in Glasgow, as well as statistical evidence about the sector's impact.
Published: December 2020
Network Homes commissioned HACT to research how resident feedback could be put to more meaningful operational use. This report goes further and proposes a resident feedback framework we believe can be applied across the social housing sector.
Published: November 2020
In this research study, HACT provides insights drawn from a particular intervention aimed at tackling furniture poverty. The study assesses the impact of NFS, a furniture service operating as a subsidiary of Your Homes Newcastle (YHN), the ALMO of Newcastle City Council, who also commissioned this study.
Published: September 2020
Social value is an intrinsic part of our sector’s DNA. It is central to our collective social purpose. HACT's social value roadmap was developed to enable the social housing sector to use social value information to improve services, enhance decision-making and increase the impact we make.
Published: September 2020
This report published by Placeshapers and HACT draws on insight from more than 100 organisations to show how housing associations adapted during the national lockdown and played a key role as community anchors. It goes on to explore how social landlords are fundamentally reviewing their work and their role in places as we look to the future.
Published: September 20202
This report was written by UK Collaborative Centre of Housing Evidence (CaCHE) and HACT for the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations (SFHA), Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), Public Health Scotland, and the Rural and Islands Housing Associations Forum (RIHAF). It brings together evidence on the impact and value of social landlords’ housing and wider services.
Published: August 2020
This third set of impact measures show that between March and June 2020, UK social housing organisations representing 40% of the sector provided almost £1,000,000 in financial assistance, provided over 110,000 residents with advice and guidance, and made over 600,000 welfare calls.
Published: July 2020
The Sussex Health and Care Partnership is a new integrated care system. To enable them to move forward with housing, health and social care integration, they have developed their first mental health and housing strategy with help from HACT.
Published: July 2020
In this report, we evaluate Orbit's Breathing Space programme, which has made a positive impact on the lives of service users and brought about positive improvements in mental health. The report includes a number of recommendations that have been incorporated into the revised version of the service.
Published: July 2020
In this report, we evaluate Orbit's Earn It, Don't Burn It programme, which has made a positive impact on the lives of service user across a range of financial literacy outcomes, including having enough money knowledge and finding best deals behaviour. The report includes a number of recommendations that have been incorporated into the revised version of the service.
Published: July 2020
In this report, we evaluate A2Dominion's response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and make a number of recommendations about the organisation's future operating policies. The report is the first in-depth research into the response of a social housing organisation to the Covid-19 crisis.
Published: July 2020
This second set of impact measures shows that between March and May 2020, social housing organisations representing over a third of the sector provided almost £500,000 in financial assistance, made almost half a million welfare calls and identified just over 175,000 vulnerable residents.
Published: June 2020
A whitepaper exploring the measuring and development of social value in housing associations and local authorities, published by Hyperoptic with HACT and Simetrica-Jacobs.
Published: June 2020
This first set of impact measures show that during March and April, social housing organisations representing a quarter of the sector made over a quarter of a million welfare calls, and identified over 120,000 vulnerable residents.
Published: May 2020
In this White Paper, we examine some of these pilots to see how far the sector has engaged with IoT technology. We then look at some of the barriers to its wider implementation. We finish by highlighting the potential benefits of the social smart home for residents and communities.
Published: March 2020
This report outlines progress so far in the use of RCTs in the social housing sector. It provides guidance on when to use RCTs either as an alternative to, or in conjunction with, other research methodologies.
The report is the first of two that draw on the learning and insights from a project run in partnership with JRF with the aim of raising the profile of RCTs in the social housing sector.
Published: July 2019
The report was commissioned by the GLA, who asked HACT to help them engage with the social housing sector in London. It outlines the role of housing associations and their relevance to social prescribing, identifies the key players in London that are best placed to engage with the social prescribing agenda, and looks at how best to take this engagement forward. The report has been used to inform the GLA’s forthcoming next steps for social prescribing strategy.
Published: August 2018
Results from two randomised control trials (RCTs) that were conducted in partnership with Hyde Housing Group.
The first trial tested the possibility of maintaining the engagement of customers from the point at which they were referred to the support service until they received support. The second trial tested ways of improving engagement with hard-to-reach tenants.
Published: August 2018
Using a mixture of quantitative and qualitative research, this report examines customer satisfaction and concludes that social housing needs to adopt a new approach to the issue.
The research was funded by bpha, Catalyst, Equity, OneManchester, Peabody, settle and Trafford Housing Trust.
Love sport: An evaluation of Sanctuary Group's sport and physical activity programme
Published: July 2018
Authors: Frances Harkin, Christina Knudsen
Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods, this evaluation examines the outcomes for participants of Sanctuary Group's Love Sport programme, as well as the social value generated. It also evaluates the delivery approaches taken by community partners to understand what worked well, and what was less successful.
Published: January 2017
Authors: Jim Vine, Mary-Kathryn Rallings Adams, Christina Knudsen, Ricky Lawton, Daniel Fujiwara
Using Wellbeing Valuation, this project analysed data collected through the English Housing Survey. The approach enables monetary values to be placed on the impact of housing provider activities around core housing; it does this by investigating the associations between attributes of the home, including its surroundings, and individual wellbeing.
Published: November 2016
Author: Jim Vine, Christina Knudsen and Phillip Goddard
This research, involving six housing association partners, attempts to quantify the extent to which community investment outcomes are actually associated with lower costs to the business.
The analysis used in this report utilised advanced data science methods – known as propensity score methods – to ensure that like-for-like comparisons were made between the people in different categories. Individual results were produced for each housing association, identifying the relationships between the different statuses and costs for their tenants.
Social Sustainability: A White paper for Your Housing
Published: December 2015
Author: William Howard
The purpose of this paper is to clarify the concept of ‘social sustainability’ so that housing providers will be able to determine (from a position informed by evidence) the elements of social sustainability they can positively affect in the neighbourhoods and communities in which they work.
Procurement and Social Value: A White Paper for Wandle
Published: October 2015
Author: William Howard, David King, Frances Harkin
The aim of this white paper is to explore practice and regulation around the incorporation of social value in the procurement process and inform procurement activity at Wandle.
Transforming care pathways for people with dementia
Published: October 2015
Authors: David King, Amy Swan, Lindsey Livney, Peter Molyneux
This report written in partnership with HACT builds on the National Housing Federation's 2013 publication Dementia – finding housing solutions and subsequent work that has been carried out through their strategic partnership work with the Department of Health. Housing associations are ideally placed to help health and social care commissioners deliver this change; promoting more integrated service pathways, applying the best evidence to practice, and co-designing support packages with individuals to ensure better health outcomes.
Community asset transfer: A toolkit for housing providers
Published: September 2015
Authors: Mary-Kathryn Rallings, Frances Harkin
Housing Providers typically own a range of Community Assets including land and buildings. The management of these Community Assets is a significant part of Housing Providers’ Community Investment activity, yet little is known about the strategic approach they take when managing a portfolio. Affinity Sutton asked HACT to conduct this research and produce this toolkit in conjunction with three Community Organisations that were pioneers of Affinity Sutton’s Community Asset Transfer approach.
The Wellbeing Value of Tackling Homelessness
Published: September 2015
Authors: Daniel Fujiwara, Jim Vine
This research breaks new ground in exploring key issues around homelessness using rigorous statistical methods to place monetary values on the impact of tackling homelessness. A new large longitudinal dataset – Journeys Home – was used, enabling us to assess the impact of moving between different housing statuses on life satisfaction and the effect of accessing support services on housing status.
Published: May 2015
Authors: Lizzie Trotter, Jim Vine and Daniel Fujiwara
Affinity Sutton, HACT and SImetrica have previously deployed the wellbeing valuation approach to create the Social Value Bank, the largest robust and consistent set of monetary values for social outcomes. In the earlier work, the analysis controlled for the effects of health, calculating values that represented the direct effect of outcomes (such as gaining employment) on people’s wellbeing. However, many outcomes might also improve people’s wellbeing indirectly, by improving their health, which in turn improves their subjective wellbeing.
Approaches to tenancy management in the social housing sector: Exploring new models in the tenant-landlord relationshipPublished: September 2014
Author: Mary-Kathryn Rallings
There has been recent controversy over new approaches to tenancy management that formalise engagement with the landlord as part of the tenancy agreement, reward/sanction behaviour, and/or introduce fixed-term tenancies. At their core, these new models ask fundamental questions about the nature of the tenant-landlord relationship. How are the rights and responsibilities of tenants and landlords defined? What does ‘independence’ mean in the context of providing support for tenants?
HACT investigates these questions in a new research report. This report concludes that there are several important elements to both support-based and rewards-based models, including recognising links between community investment and tenancy management, focusing efforts on pre-tenancy work, and capitalising on existing expertise within the organisation to help housing officers succeed in increasingly demanding roles. This report serves as an important starting point for discussion, conceptualising different angles of the debate as well as analysing whether these models intimate a cultural shift.
Strategic approaches to employment: Responding to change in the sector
Published: July 2014
Authors: Mary-Kathryn Rallings, John Coburn
This report follows HACT's year-long action-learning programme with eight participating housing providers. It offers a glimpse into the broad array of employability activity within the sector, and showcases the resources invested in supporting tenants into employment. All of these activities suggest that housing providers are looking at the challenges around employment, considering the implications of welfare reform, thinking creatively, and critically exploring different responses.
If you're interested in commisioning HACT to carry out research on your behalf, please get in touch with Mary-Kathryn Rallings to discuss your requirements in further detail.