Improving housing for vulnerable residents
Academic research helps council understand needs of vulnerable residents
The background
Tendring near Colchester has several areas of extremely high deprivation. Tendring District Council aims to ensure a safe and clean environment, with decent housing and better public spaces for residents. In order to achieve these priorities, the Council is tasked with enforcing housing standards in large amounts of private sector rented accommodation. In the more deprived central areas of Tendring’s coastal resorts much of this accommodation takes the form of bedsits.
The issue
Across the Tendring District, it is estimated that there are at least 12,500 people experiencing mental health difficulties and many of these vulnerable people live in bedsits. The Council aimed to improve the social and environmental conditions of vulnerable people living in bedsits, but found that the extent, nature and complexity of the problem was not sufficiently understood to be able to put any measures in place.
The solution
Tendring District Council was fortunate to have the University of Essex’s School of Health and Human Sciences on their doorstep. Professor Gill Green, a medical sociologist with a wealth of experience in conducting research focused on vulnerable groups, agreed to supervise a Knowledge Transfer Partnership project to address the issue. An exceptional Associate, Dr Caroline Barratt, was recruited to lead the project which, over 27 months, explored the barriers and challenges to improving vulnerable residents’ experience of bedsits.
"The KTP has enabled a real world situation which has for many years been viewed through a fog of anecdotes to be academically evaluated to establish a robust position in respect of what is really happening on the ground."
Paul Price, Head of Life Opportunities, Tendring District Council
The benefits
The KTP provided an insight into issues which were not fully understood and provided a focus for future interventions. As a direct result of this project Tendring District Council has started to review how data can be collected and analysed to enable a better understanding of the relationship between different social and health factors. Because the benefits of the project have been significant, the Council envisages that the KTP will lead to more interactions between academic research and operational interventions. The Associate has also benefitted from the project with a new role as a Lecturer of Health Studies at the University of Essex.
Who to contact
Please contact Knowledge Exchange Manager, Jenny Young for more details.
