Resident involvement - Hyde Housing Association

Resident involvement in social housing in the UK and Europe
inclusion in our original fieldwork. Respondent views also fed into decisions on
case study landlord selection. This process involved industry bodies and
academics. The former included the National Housing Federation, CECODHAS,
the European Liaison Committee for Social Housing, International Union of
Tenants. Among contributing academic colleagues we are particularly indebted
to Professor Mark Stephens (University of Glasgow), Tim Brown (De Montfort
University), Gerard van Bortel (OTB, Delft University) and Lars Engberg (Danish
Building Institute).
Both Gerard van Bortel and Lars Engberg also played active roles in the research
fieldwork by drafting country reports and by undertaking interviews with case
study landlord and tenant representatives. The three country overviews, relating
to Belgium (Flanders), Denmark and the Netherlands, provided a profile of the
social rented sector in each jurisdiction, summarised the relevant legal and
regulatory obligations applicable to social landlords, and outlined the range of
‘resident involvement’ models operated in that country.
Especially given the relatively modest scale of the research it was necessary to
focus the fieldwork on a limited range of countries. Similarity to England was
crucial here. Important considerations were the scale and role of social housing
in each potential case study country, and the profile of the country’s social
housing sector – including the existence of relatively large landlords configured
as not-for-profit agencies rather than state providers. Also critical was the extent
to which – in the view of expert informants – resident involvement practice in
each country might be considered as potentially providing relevant lessons for
social landlords in England. On this basis, as mentioned above, it was decided to
focus on Belgium (Flanders), Denmark and the Netherlands.
The scale of the research also constrained both the extent and depth of the case
study fieldwork. Firstly, we needed to limit the number of case study
organisations to three in the UK and six elsewhere (two per non-UK country).
Secondly, while the UK fieldwork involved face to face interviews with local
stakeholders, case study contacts in the other countries needed to be
undertaken by telephone.
Selection of case study organisations was influenced primarily by the need to
involve not-for-profit providers operating at a similar (large) scale to Hyde
Group. Equally, the fieldwork needed to focus on organisations considered as
potentially exemplifying ‘best practice’ in resident involvement within each
jurisdiction.
Given the necessarily limited number of UK case studies it was decided to
concentrate specifically on England; in particular, the 26 housing associations/
groups with more than 20,000 homes. Within this, given the preference for case
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