Richmond Social Housing Access Summit Report

The first of it’s kind, Richmond Social Housing Access Summit, was held on Monday 22nd June from 1-5pm at the Richmond Housing Partnership Offices in Teddington. Bringing together over 50 stakeholders across social housing, local authority and voluntary sectors, 5 local voluntary organisations based in Richmond Borough – Ruils Independent Living, Multicultural Richmond, Citizen’s Advice Richmond, RAID and Age UK Richmond – hosted a day of learning and joined up working on accessibility within the social housing world.

This event was a culmination of the campaign on disrepair and the report ‘Decaying Homes, Forgotten Lives’ published in Autumn 2024. This report and campaign highlighted the impact of disrepair and inaccessibility of systems across social housing in Richmond Borough, particularly on Disabled people and those who are intersectionally marginalised. The Summit provided a space for people to come together and learn about common barriers and work towards solutions that aren’t bound by budgets and existing frameworks, but are innovative and person-centred.

Access the agenda from the day here.

The two main themes that emerged from the learnings are –

1. Accessibility is not a one-off or ‘one size fits all’ job and we need to be working both individually with residents and systemically with partners from across housing, statutory and voluntary sectors to make sure the right reasonable adjustments are being made

2. That lack of clear, timely and accessible communication is often the biggest contributor to residents not getting the support they need.

Collectively, participants came up with many solutions and take aways for future work, which have been compiled in the Wrap-up Report.

Access the PDF Wrap-up Report here.

Access the Word Wrap-up Report here.

Ultimately, the Social Housing Voluntary Collective wants to support housing providers to implement changes discussed on the day to support tenants with access needs to better engage with their them. We hope this event will provide a foundation for more co-production and collaboration.