Research and Intelligence Services

Research and Intelligence services, which sits within the Policy and Public Affairs department of the Northern Housing Consortium, works on a range of both commissioned and non-commissioned research projects.

The team works toward providing services for members that enable them to better understand their housing markets and their residents. The tools which the team provide can assist in improving performance within member organisations as well as gaining a robust, reliable and representative knowledge of the northern housing offer and how it relates to the needs and aspirations of it’s residents.

The projects worked on by the team include paid research, for which members or groups of members, will commission and pay for, and wider strategic projects which will benefit a wider range of our northern members.

Commissioned Research projects include:

• District-wide housing market assessments, which enable authorities to better plan future housing provision.
• Housing Needs Surveys, which evidences the households that are living within unsuitable accommodation and assist authorities in prioritising future spend into improving homes and developing new homes.
• Affordable accommodation studies, highlighting the level of affordable accommodation that is required and how affordability can be measured at a local level.
• Rural housing assessments, which will be used by parish councils to gain additional funding for any affordable or specialist housing.
• Homelessness Reviews, to review homelessness services and access the impact on reducing the number of homeless cases.
• BME and Gypsy and Traveller Accommodation Assessments, allowing authorities to gain a better understanding of the needs of a range of ethnic groups and recognising the cultural sensitivities surrounding these.
• Regeneration assessments and impact assessments, which allow a robust assessment of current and previous work of regeneration and investment to highlight successful and unsuccessful schemes.
• Assessment of Older Person’s accommodation, which gives a better understanding of the needs of older people in terms of accommodation and support related services.
• Housing strategies, assist members in writing housing and housing related strategies and evidencing future priorities and how these will link together.
• Tenant Satisfaction surveys, measuring the satisfaction of tenants with their homes and neighbourhoods to enable landlords to identify improvements for the future.
• Mystery Shopping exercises, testing a range of landlord services to highlight any difficulties with service delivery.
• Staff Satisfaction surveys, enable organisations to improve staff moral and assist with recruitment and retention.
• Staff salary surveys, benchmarking of salaries in the sector to monitor staff pay and assist with recruitment and retention by ensuring fair pay.

Customer profiling service

One of the many services on offer from Northern Housing Consortium is that of our Research and Intelligence section and the help we can provide you in understanding your tenant base and how services should be delivered through our customer profiling service.

With over 15 years’ experience of working in the sector the NHC’s Research and Intelligence team are able to offer a wide range of skills to help meet your research needs. Customer profiling service offering includes:

• Creating the questionnaire to your own specifications
• Saving you the costs of data inputting by scanning returned questionnaires into our dedicated software
• Creating an output in a specified format to input into your CRM system

Non-commissioned projects have included:

• Housing in 2020, which has looked into what accommodation and services will be required in the future, given market changes
• Healthier communities, looking into areas of Good Practice of increasing the health of tenants and residents
• Accommodating a Greener Future, looking into greener and eco-friendly developments
• Impact of Buy to Let and Buy to Invest on the wider market, looking into what impact investment properties has had on the accessibility of accommodation to the general community
• Positive impacts of Community Involvement, links between community involvement and satisfaction with neighbourhood levels

The section works on a range of projects to enable them to meet their financial target and improve member’s capacity to undertake their own research. This includes responding to consultation papers and government guidance, as well as producing briefing papers, informing members of new and innovative methodologies.

Ultimately, the NHC research services wish to enable members to work with more effective evidence to improve services and result in a greater quality of life and quality of place for residents.