Campaign Showcase: 2017 Public Affairs Awards Best In-house Consultancy Collaboration

Campaign: #ForAccessibleHomes 

The #ForAccessibleHomes campaign is the epitome of agency and in-house collaboration. By working together – agency and in-house colleagues acting as one team – we changed the law and changed the conversation about accessible housing in our country.

Campaign objectives

There are 11.6 million disabled people in Britain and our society is ageing rapidly, yet only 7% of our homes provide even basic accessibility features. Habinteg asked Connect to work as part of their team to raise awareness and achieve policy and legislative change to increase the number of lifetime homes and wheelchair standard homes that are built in the UK.

The success of our campaign was dependent on a multi-audience approach: government, parliament, local councils, tenants, the media and members of the public. We recognised that we needed to win hearts and minds by persuading people of the need and urgency for more accessible homes. The core argument that Connect and Habinteg developed together was that accessible housing is not someone else’s issue or problem, it is an issue for all of us.

Achieving political change

Early on in the campaign we secured a meeting with the Minister for Disabled People which Habinteg and Connect both attended. The minister agreed to raise increasing the number of accessible houses with ministerial colleagues and, crucially, committed to raising accessible housing as an agenda item at the next bilateral ministerial meeting with the Minister for Housing.

As well as direct engagement with ministers and officials, we worked with a wide range of other parliamentarians to build pressure for change. At meetings with the Chair of the Women and Equalities Select Committee and Chair of the Communities and Local Government Select Committee, which were attended by both Habinteg and Connect, we successfully lobbied for two separate parliamentary inquiries. Together these inquiries have raised the profile of accessible housing, engaged a wide range of organisations and led to government ministers being put on the spot. Habinteg drafted written evidence to the committee’s inquiry and Connect provided bespoke preparation for the Habinteg Vice-Chair to give oral evidence.

In parliament, Connect and Habinteg identified the passage of the Neighbourhood Planning Bill as the best opportunity to change the law in the short term. We worked with MPs, particularly at Committee Stage, to help draft amendments and the government were persuaded to introduce Neighbourhood Planning Bill Amendment 18, which stipulated that the Secretary of State must issue guidance for local planning authorities on how their local development documents should address housing needs that result from old age or disability. This amendment was passed by both the House of Commons and House of Lords and written into the Act.

The amendment to the Neighbourhood Planning Act was a hugely significant win for the campaign and Habinteg are we are now working closely with the government to help develop the guidance for local planning authorities. Heidi Allen MP tweeted her congratulations, saying “great team work!”

Working with local councils

Alongside government and parliamentary engagement, Connect and Habinteg identified local government as important stakeholders in affecting change, particularly as local plans and planning policies are being finalised across the country. Through a major survey of councils, using Freedom of Information requests, we revealed that only 3% of councils outside of London have plans in place to deliver and monitor the number of accessible homes built in their area. This Freedom of Information exercise gave us the first ever national dataset looking at the extent of local government commitment to deliver accessible housing.

As a call to action, we created an interactive map to clearly show the best and worst councils, and we sent all local authorities a local scrutiny toolkit to help them review and improve their policies.

Activating members of the public

Together we organised national campaign ‘days of action’ for Habinteg tenants and members of the public to get engaged in the campaign. We made highly effective use of social media to capture activity and increase the impact of the day. We launched thunderclaps, got the hashtag #ForAccessibleHomes trending, used Instagram to tell stories of the day, and delivered our message 311,874 times. We also gained national, sector and local media coverage, including using a letter co-signed by 12 highly influential organisations.

We secured a campaign visit from Rt Hon Justine Greening MP, the cabinet minister responsible for equalities. The Secretary of State visited Habinteg tenants in their own homes and learned first-hand what accessible housing meant to a range of disabled people. Across the country other MPs got engaged and shared their own messages of support.

Spreading the word

In the past year our joint campaign has achieved a huge amount. By working together, Connect and Habinteg have:

• Engaged directly with more than 60 target parliamentarians to raise awareness of the need for change and to build pressure on the government for action
• Successfully engaged with key government ministers and officials and helped to create ongoing relationships and long-term commitment
• Mobilised tenants and the public, helping them to engage with the political process and make their voices heard
• Achieved significant media and social media coverage

All of this joint activity combined to achieve a change in the law and new guidance from the government which will have a major and long-term impact on the availability of accessible housing.

Connect Managing Partner, Andy Sawford, said: “We are very proud to have worked jointly with Habinteg to put accessible housing on the political agenda. Through our hard work together we have not only changed the law, we’ve also set the direction to change people’s lives for the better. We look forward to working in partnership with Habinteg to achieve further change in the future.”

Habinteg Head of Communications, Christina McGill, said: “We had a message that resonated with people and that has helped influence decisions, resulting in real policy outcomes and cross-party support for accessible housing. By working together with Connect, everyone has taken part in making the campaign a success.”