Disseminating housing research to practitioners who can use the findings to shape and improve services

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Housing researchers and practitioners inhabit two often separate worlds. Each group has its own networks, events, debates and structures. This project would help to bring the two groups together, to achieve meaningful policy debate, practical action for research informed improvement to strategy and services, and a synergy that could help to underpin future research. This proposal seeks to help ameliorate the current economic difficulties in the participating sectors. The problem of lack of robust evidence for the policy and practice community to use in decision making is likely to be exacerbated in the coming period, following the curtailment and in some cases cessation of nationally available data sets. A further current problem for the policy and practice community exists in the necessity for budget cuts and the scarcity of resources. This is hampering practitioners' capacity to research issues themselves, to commission research exercises and to find and select useful research to put into action. The commercial sector similarly faces economic austerity and a risk-averse climate. Its links to the academic community need further development. Commercial organisations therefore need support in developing the provision of research-based evidence from what would initially be seen as a non-viable venture commercially into a self-sustaining activity. The project would place a University of Sheffield researcher with HQN Ltd, which operates a membership network of about 700 housing organisations. The researcher's task would be to set up and operate a bespoke network within HQN's existing base, featuring news and digests of relevant academic and other research. An impact-focused initiative working individually with four organisations to support them in incorporating academic research into their policy and practice or strategic work would form a core part of the project.