Improving Opportunities: How to support social housing tenants into sustainable employment

This Housing and Social Mobility All Party Parliamentary Group inquiry report outlines the challenges facing working age tenants in finding employment, and presents recommendations for the social housing sector and government to support those looking for work.

The report includes:

A diagnosis of the current situation – finding strengths and limitations of the current social housing allocation system on the ability for residents to find work
A good practice section, consisting of background qualitative and quantitative research on the barriers to work – recommending that social landlords should promote services which support their residents to take up work
A policy section, which summarises that there is further need for central government funding to support the social housing sector to play a larger role in helping residents find and stay in work

Among the recommendations, there are a number of key recommendations in this report resulting from the research carried out as part of the Workhome Project (opens new window), which the Housing Learning & Improvement Network has been a founding member of.

These are:

To flexibly taper the benefits system to allow social tenants a gradual shift to full self-employment
To abolish the Bedroom Tax - as many people had little room for comfortable home-based working as a result of this policy during the pandemic
To enshrine the right ot work from home in law
To reclassify interent provision as a utility service that is available for all to access and use - to allow more people to work from home

The report additionally refers to Housing LIN's involvement with the response with their APPG submission - through which digitial connectivity was highlighted to be of importance to providing individuals with the capacity to find work.