This year’s conference will examine the new government’s promises and embrace the new era. We’ll provide practical advice and guidance on best practice on a variety of topics from challenging prejudice, developing inclusive communities and work practices to recognising and meeting the diverse needs of tenants.

In recent years, the noble objectives of equality, diversity and inclusion have become caught up in the UK’s ‘culture wars’, a phenomenon that has been used by some politicians – including the last government – to sow division and create a narrative that EDI is a problem and part of a ‘woke’ agenda.

While the battle is largely played out on social media and in parts of the press, the real-life consequences have been significant, not least the recent racist riots that erupted in towns and cities.

But with the election of a new Labour government there is optimism that the equalities agenda can be reinvigorated and that it is still seen as a force for good by the vast majority of the UK population.

The early signs are encouraging:

• A new socio-economic duty requires public bodies to adopt transparent and effective measures to address the inequalities that result from differences in occupation, education, place of residence or social class
• The government has committed to granting the right to equal pay for Black, Asian, and other ethnic minority people with ethnicity pay gap reporting for large employers to be introduced. In addition, it plans to close the gender pay gap through mandatory reporting and action plans for companies
• Labour has also reaffirmed its commitment to LGBTQ+ rights and has pledged to reform the Gender Recognition Act to make it easier for trans people to obtain legal recognition of their gender
• And significantly, the government has promised to improve the lives of disabled individuals by enhancing accessibility and support, including ensuring that public spaces and transportation are accessible, providing adequate social care, and promoting employment opportunities for disabled people.

What will be covered?

• The Labour government’s new equalities agenda – what you need to know and what it means for housing, including the new socio-economic duty, ethnicity pay gap reporting, the Gender Recognition Act and improved accessibility for disabled people
• Meeting the diverse needs of tenants under the new Consumer Standards – a progress report
• After the riots – creating cohesive and inclusive communities
• Age and LGBTQ+ – our role in providing appropriate accommodation
• Engaging and involving a more diverse range of tenants.

Essential for:

• Chief executives
• Directors of housing or communities
• Directors of operations
• Heads of housing/neighbourhoods
• EDI managers and teams
• Heads of HR, learning and organisational development and teams
• Heads of governance and teams
• Heads of customer experience and teams
• Resident engagement teams
• Community development teams
• Communications managers and teams
• Head of business improvement/service improvement
• Strategy managers
• Policy managers.

10:30am Welcome, introductions and setting the scene

• Heather Thomas, Chief Executive, Sapphire Independent Housing

Heather will set the scene focussing on how a new government has brought in a new, more positive tone around EDI and brought forward legislation to enact their manifesto commitments.  Our programme today reflects some of the changes we anticipate happening in this parliament.

10:50am Lost in Translation…Regulation vs Delivery

• Lucy Malarkey, Director and Co-founder, Positive about Inclusion

• Karen Faulkner, Director and Co-founder, Positive about Inclusion

Based on their many years of social housing experience, Lucy and Karen will explore the changed regulatory landscape with its increased focus on the recognition of diverse needs and the delivery of equitable outcomes. From working with providers across the country, they will share stories and examples (the dos and the don’ts) that demonstrate how the sector is responding.

11:20am Listening to LGBTQ+ social housing tenants: Rainbow Roofs

• Lili Vetter, EDI Specialist, Wythenshawe Community Housing Group

Lili will explore how the LGBTQ+ community can experience social housing, the fear of discrimination by staff as well as neighbours, the added stigma they can feel and what social housing landlords can do to help.

11:50am Break

12:05pm Age and LGBTQ+

• Amy Davies, Head of Independent Living, Great Places

• Adam Preston, LGBTQ+ Development Manager, LGBT Foundation

Amy will be joined by Adam to discuss Amy’s research into specialist housing and care provision for LGBTQ+ older people across Europe and their work on co-designing the LGBTQ+ extra care scheme in Manchester.

12:35pm Closing the gap: The impact of race and disability pay gap reporting on workplace equity

• Jo Edwards, Group Head of Organisation Development, Riverside Group

Jo will discuss the work Riverside do within their organisation as well as within the Greater Manchester Housing Providers Group to positively promote race and disability equality through a number of initiatives.  She will share the success they have had through Boost, a new ethnically diverse leadership programme for Greater Manchester Housing Providers (GMHP) as well as the work they do internally to ensure inclusive recruitment and opportunities for all in their progression and succession planning.  She will show how measuring your gaps in pay and roles can help you find your issues and then act to redress the balance.

1:05pm Lunch

2:00pm Creating cohesive and inclusive communities: how should the sector respond to race riots?

• Mushtaq Khan, Chief Executive, Housing Diversity Network

Mushtaq will discuss the summer race riots and the impact they have had across the social housing community.  He will explore the lessons for landlords and the impact on our communities.  He will draw on lessons from past work tackling racial hatred and building bridges between communities to help provide advice and guidance to social housing organisations looking to protect their communities from this type of violence in future.

2:30pm Breaking barriers: leadership in volatile times

• Helen White, Chief Executive, Taff Housing

Helen will discuss how Taff Housing is dealing head on with the challenge of ensuring warm words and good intentions about EDI are actually driving out inherent disadvantage.  She  will reflect on whether the socio-economic duty in Wales placed on public bodies has improved the outcomes for those who suffer socio-economic disadvantage, contributed towards a fairer and more prosperous Wales, and how the ever more complex and challenging operating environment could be at risk of knocking progress off course.

3:00pm Getting a more diverse range of tenants involved

• Matt Jones, Executive Director for Customers, MSV

• Ibby Ismail, tenant, MSV Board and Customer Committee member

Matt and Ibby will discuss how they have been successfully reaching out to their diverse communities in the Greater Manchester area to encourage people from different backgrounds and ages to get involved in their formal tenant engagement structures.  They will also share how they are now interrogating their customer data to find out if there are problems or issues affecting certain groups of people and then taking action to rectify any structural discrimination that there may have been.

3:30pm Close

Heather Thomas, Chief Executive, Sapphire Independent Housing

Heather has been the Chief Executive of Sapphire Independent Housing, a small housing association located in North London that offers supported housing and general needs homes since 2016. Before her current role, she worked as an executive director of operations for several registered providers.

She is vice chair of g320 group of smaller London housing associations.

Heather recently completed her tenure as the chair of CCHA, the local housing association in Croydon, South London, where she lives.

She is a corporate member of the Chartered Institute of Housing and has a Masters in Organisational Behaviour.

Lucy Malarkey, Director and Co-founder, Positive about Inclusion

Lucy is one of the directors and co-founders of Positive About Inclusion CIC, a not-for-profit social enterprise based in the North East of England that provides equity, diversity and inclusion training and consultancy services.

She is a multi-award-winning specialist in the value of allyship and is passionate about networking and collaboration to create innovative solutions. An active volunteer mentor and coach, in 2023 she was recognised by the Euclid Network in their Top 100 Women Leaders in Social Enterprise initiative.

Lucy also holds the part-time role of Managing Director of WISH (Women in Social Housing), the network for women working across all disciplines of social housing.

Karen Faulkner, Director and Co-founder, Positive about Inclusion

Karen is one of the directors and co-founders of Positive About Inclusion CIC, a not-for-profit social enterprise based in the North East of England that provides equity, diversity and inclusion training and consultancy services.

A qualified coach and mentor, Karen is dedicated to creating more inclusive workplaces through supporting individuals to bring their whole self to work and fulfil their potential. Her facilitation style is warm and approachable, enabling participants to have challenging conversations to maximise learning.

Karen volunteers as a mentor for The Girls Network and is a non-executive board member for supported housing provider Tyne Housing.

Amy Davies, Head of Independence and Wellbeing, Great Places Housing Group

Amy is Head of Independent Living at Great Places Housing Group, overseeing specialist services for people over 55 across the North West.  Great Places are working in partnership with Manchester City Council, LGBT Foundation and the Community Steering Group to codesign and develop the UK’s first purpose built LGBTQ+ affirmative extra care scheme in Whalley Range, Manchester.

Amy is a 2024 Churchill Fellow and will be visiting organisations in Madrid, Lyon and Berlin and completing online learning with organisations in Sweden and the USA, to learn about housing and care services for older LGBTQ+ people and bring that learning back to the UK.

Helen White, Chief Executive, Taff Housing

Helen is Chief Executive of Taff Housing based in Canton, Cardiff. They provide homes and services to over 5,000 people across South East Wales. Helen is passionate about providing great homes and services. She is also a board member at Careers Wales, the Cymru Football Foundation and TPAS Wales. With over 200 colleagues, Helen is passionate about supporting new and innovative ways to enable everyone to be happy and healthy at work.

Adam Preston, LGBTQ+ Development Manager, LGBT Foundation

Adam is LGBTQ+ Development Manager at LGBT Foundation, a national LGBTQ+ health and wellbeing charity based in Manchester. Since March 2023, Adam has been leading on the development of Russell Road, the LGBTQ+ majority extra care scheme being developed alongside Manchester City Council and Great Places Housing Group. The scheme is being co-produced with a community steering group of older LGBTQ+ people and local residents, ensuring lived experience is at the heart of the scheme’s development. The vision for Russell Road is to create a safe, secure and affirming environment where older LGBTQ+ and allies can age independently, happily and with pride.

Jo Edwards, Group Head of Organisation Development, Riverside Group

Jo Edwards is the Head of Organisational Development at The Riverside Group since October 2023.

She has a background in organisational development, human resources and engagement, working in various sectors from banking, law, education and housing.  She also teaches CIPD qualifications focusing on topics such as engagement, high performance working and how to achieve sustainable organisation performance.

Jo previously worked for Stockport Homes Group (SHG) and within that time played a fundamental part in the journey of SHG becoming Number 1 Best Not for Profit organisation to work for in 2019 as well as the most recent results in Best Companies seeing SHG in the Top 5 Housing organisations to work for, and being placed 16th in the UK’s Best Large companies list.

Lilianna Vetter, EDI Specialist, Wythenshawe Community Housing Group

Lili Vetter is the equality, diversity and inclusion specialist for Wythenshawe Community Housing Group. She is co-chair of HouseProud North West, a LGBTQ+ colleague group looking to make change for LGBTQ+ people living in social housing, and Rainbow Roofs the customer arm. She is also vice-chair of the Greater Manchester Housing Partnership EDI leads group.

She is passionate about making change in the sector and wants to educate others on the importance of EDI in housing, she was recently shortlisted for the EDI champion award at the Women in Social Housing (WISH) awards and HQN’s Housing’s Next Generation 2024 competition finalist.

Mushtaq Khan, Chief Executive, HDN

Mushtaq works for Housing Diversity Network, an organisation helping the housing sector become more inclusive in terms of its leadership, service provision and workforce development. He has worked for several housing and regeneration organisations throughout his career, as well as running his own consultancy business. He was previously Director of Commercial Partnerships at the Jigsaw Group as well as Director of Aksa Homes. He has also worked at a senior level in local authorities for the over fifteen years, including working for large metropolitan councils such as Oldham, Trafford and Lambeth.

Matt Jones, Executive Director for Customers, MSV

As Executive Director for Customers, Matt is responsible for all customer services and ensuring they provide the best possible customer experience. The services in Matt’s area of responsibility include day to day and empty property repairs, keeping customers safe in their homes and all aspects of neighbourhood management including lettings, income management, community safety, our customer contact centre and complaints. In addition to this, Matt is responsible for our community projects and our independent living service comprising of later living, younger living and supported living. This includes corporate responsibility for safeguarding vulnerable adults and young people.

Matt is the nominated designated executive lead for ensuring the Consumer Standards are met and this includes responsibility for customer voice and influence and how that is embedded in MSV’s service delivery. He also leads the customers and communities committee, serves as the Vice-Chair of the Bolton Housing Partnership (Bolton Community Homes) and is a Director at Manchester Athena, a limited company established in Greater Manchester focussing on employment and skills.

A strong advocate for social justice and tackling enduring inequality, Matt has a genuine focus and commitment to focusing on customers,  delivering the best possible services and improving lives. Matt has worked in social housing for 25 years, has a strong reputation within Greater Manchester and the wider sector and is very keen to work with customers to affect the necessary changes to services at MSV.

Ibby Ismail, tenant, MSV Board and Customer Committee member

Ibrahim Ali Ismail (Ibby) has over twenty years’ experience working locally, regionally and nationally in the Voluntary and Community Sector in the field of community development. Ibby has held or holds director positions at Bolton CVS, Mosscare St Vincent Housing Association and Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Ibrahim’s passion is how to enable public or active anchor institutions that are rooted in the local community.

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