Bricks and mortar are only part of the answer.
Housing market instabillty and a lack of affordable homes provide a major challenge for the housing policymaker - and the picture on the ground is even more complex when you add poor quality neighbourhoods plagued by low employment and incomes, limited aspirations and a decaying infrastructure.
You need to be able to tailor your approach to meet the needs of local communities; this is the only way to ensure that the benefits of intervention are long term and factor in the full range of social, economic and environmental issues essential to meet the objective of creating sustainable communities.
Key Themes
Across regions we know that there are different housing challenges - ECOTEC can help you:
- Understand and define your housing market
- Assess key housing market drivers
- Prepare housing investment programmes
- Develop your housing strategy and policy
- Understand market change - migration, private rented sector, affordability
- Evaluate your effectiveness
- Plan and manage your activities
Services & Products
ECOTEC's dedicated housing team is experienced in working with local authorities and national and regional agencies to develop and implement housing and planning policy. We work with housing associations and local authorities to support business planning and asset management and with a range of sub-regional partnerships to understand markets and develop policies and strategies to support sustainable and successful communities.
- Strategic research and intelligence
- Housing market assessments
- Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) housing research and strategy
- Young person housing research and options
- Housing demand assessment modelling
- Private rental market research
- Housing and regeneration
Case Studies
Role of private rented sector in South Yorkshire
TRANSFORM S.Yorkshire, the Housing Market RenewaL Pathfinder for the area, commissioned ECOTEC to research the role and impact of the private rented sector in four towns – Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham, and Sheffield. Within those towns, special attention was paid to former coalfield villages, areas of concentrations of Right-to-Buy activity and student areas. A combination of postal survey and door-to-door interviewing researched the views and needs of private rented sector tenants. A series of interviews with landlords, managing and lettings agents filled in the picture from the side of the providers. And extensive analysis of secondary housing and Housing Benefit data placed the results of the work in a firm context. The final report contained a toolkit and series of recommendations for the monitoring, control and quality development of the sector.
Click here to read the full report
Strategic Housing Market Assessment for the East Kent Sub-region
ECOTEC were commissioned to carry out a Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA) for the East Kent sub-region (comprising the local authority areas of Canterbury, Dover, Shepway, Swale and Thanet), to help inform the Local Development Frameworks and housing strategies of those authorities. The sub-region has ambitious housing and economic development plans, but faces major issues around affordability, transport connectivity, the regeneration requirements of coastal towns and issues to do with rurality. The SHMA breaks the sub-region down into twenty-one local housing markets, and analyses the interaction between them, and the major London and south eastern housing markets, as well as making recommendations for future housing development.
Click here to read the full report
