The homes and communities investment evidence collaboration

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The aim of the homes and communities investment evidence collaboration is to embed up to date and authoritative research in the HCA's investment decision-making. The HCA was established in 2008 as the national housing and regeneration investment agency for England. Over the period 2011-2015 it has a total budget of £8bn to spend to promote economic growth and to deliver high quality affordable housing. The HCA works with local authorities, housing associations and other partners, to provide investment for new affordable housing, to improve existing social housing and to redevelop land. Through its enabling role, HCA staff provide skills and experience to local partners. At a critical time for its work, the HCA would like to form a small, highly targeted partnership with a group of key housing researchers at the London School of Economics and the Centre for Housing Policy (CHP) at the University of York.This proposal has been developed by Dr Rebecca Tunstall (LSE), in co-ordination with Jim Bennett, Head of Corporate Strategy and Kurshida Mirza, Strategy Manager at the HCA. They have worked together on a series of successful conventional research projects. The HCA would now like to develop this relationship to promote more intensive knowledge exchange between academics and key decision-making staff. These will include staff from HCA's six localities across England, and some staff from two of the HCA's partner organisations: its sponsoring department, the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), and the national representatives of its key local partners, the Local Government Group (LGG). The collaboration will be established through a series of three intensive, tailored workshops for about 20 key decision-making staff from the HCA, DCLG and LGG, involving detailed and interactive presentation of the current evidence base on topics selected by participants, and exploration of the implications of evidence for forthcoming decisions. The workshops are intended to be immediately applicable during the year of the collaboration. They will also build individual and organisational capacity, and form the basis for what is hoped will be an ongoing self-sustaining informal network of practioners and researcher members. The collaboration aims to:-Enable the HCA, DCLG and the LGG to learn from academic researchers to enhance the delivery of Government's housing and regeneration priorities; -Bridge the gap between academic research, policy and operational delivery and practice;-Allow researchers to engage with policy makers, to learn more about their research needs, and how research can be made most useful for application in policy.This proposal offers the potential for research to influence directly very substantial and long-lasting public investments by the HCA and partners in affordable housing and regeneration across England over 2012 and subsequent years, through a comparatively small budget. The HCA feel there is currently a gap in bringing academic researchers and operational delivery partners together to inform and influence both delivery and ongoing and future research.