Chief executive's blog

The outlines of the new world that Welfare Reform is creating are still pretty blurred. Every week brings new suggestions as to how we should respond. I recently attended a Housing Summit for Tooting organised by Sadiq Khan, the local MP. The meeting was held under the Chatham House Rule so I cannot attribute comments to particular attendees, but there were some useful ideas that emerged that I can report. They included:

It has become a bit of a cliché to say that change is happening faster than ever before. But it’s true and, in the world of affordable housing, there’s no question where that change is happening fastest – in welfare benefits. Hardly a day goes by without another suggested reduction in benefits. So this is just an update and the numbers may change. I will return to this subject in future blogs as the picture becomes clearer.

I was lucky enough to go on a visit recently with a number of other Chief Execs of Housing Associations to talk to Cisco (the huge US company behind most of the routers in the internet) to get their thoughts on where technology is taking us. Here are some of the key points that came up: