housing

Anti-Social Behaviour: new research report launched today

As a timely reminder that my research goes beyond Islamophobia, Muslims, religion etc into the realm of social problems more widely, I was today involved in the launch of a piece of research undertaken last year by a team I led at the University of Birmingham.

Working with Peabody Homes in London, the research sought to understand the views of residents and staff about anti-social behaviour (ASB) and crime on its estates. It hoped to identify best practice to improve intervention and develop better preventative measures.

Launched earlier today at the London Wellbeing Conference in the plush surroundings of Glaziers Hall on London Bridge, the research came up with almost 50 direct recommendations for tackling ASB in the housing sector.

Liz Chambers, head of community safety and support at Peabody said:

“We are very excited about the launch of this research. ASB can cause fear and distress to residents, affecting their health, wellbeing and home life — and there’s a widespread perception that housing providers aren’t doing enough to tackle it. We hope that the research will outline ways in which housing providers can refresh their approaches to ASB.”

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New Report: “Building the capacity of housing providers and refugee communities”

HACT today published a new report that myself and Jenny Phillimore produced for them.

The report is an evaluation of the first three waves of HACT’s ‘Reach In’ programme, which facilitated 80 volunteer placements for refugees within housing providers to improve refugee employment prospects, address the skills gap within housing and enable housing providers to deliver better services to refugees.

The evaluation assessed the effectiveness of the project in helping refugees to become more employable, develop relationships between housing providers and refugee organisations and to help housing providers better meet the needs of their refugee communities.

You can find out more about both HACT and the ‘Reach In’ programme by clicking here.

You can read and download the report here.

Anti-Social Housing: ‘Right to Buy’ and Thatcher’s Legacy

Radio 4′s ‘Analysis: Anti-Social housing’ broadcast on Thursday 26th February 2009 explored the role, function and challenges facing the provision of social housing in today’s Britain. Much of the focus was on the Aylesbury council estate in Walworth, south London where Tony Blair, when Labour came to power in 1997, pledged to defeat poverty and social exclusion (a slide show of images from the Aylesbury Estate can be viewed here).

Central to this was the research undertaken by Tamsie Thomson from the Royal Institute of British Architects who has made an in depth study of the estate:

This estate was built in the mid 1960s in response to acute housing need and it had some of the most dilapidated housing in London. It was the densest ward in the densest borough in the densest city in England.

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Vote BNP and this is what you get…

Following the success of Richard Barnbrook in winning a seat on the London Assembly for the BNP after getting 5.3% of votes, I thought that I would trawl the BNP’s current manifesto to see what Mr Barnbrook has in store for Londoners…here are some of the delights:

IMMIGRATION & IDENTITY

The BNP’s policy is to:

• deport all the two million plus who are here illegally.
• deport all those who commit crimes and whose original nationality was not British.
• offer generous grants to those of foreign descent resident here who wish to leave permanently.
• stop all new immigration except for exceptional cases.
• reject all asylum seekers who passed safe countries on their way to Britain.

CRIME & JUSTICE

The BNP’s policy is to:

• deport the tens of thousands of foreign criminals to serve their sentences abroad.
• make prisons more austere and make criminals serve their full sentences.
• use electronically tagged ‘chain gangs’ to provide labour for projects such as coastal defences.
• introduce automatic prison sentences for all repeat offenders.
• give judges the option of the death penalty for premeditated murder where guilt is incontrovertible (eg. through DNA evidence).
• put police back on the streets and remove the political correctness shackles from them.
• allow victims of crime full freedom to defend themselves and their property.

DEFENCE

The BNP’s policy is to:

• strengthen our conventional forces.
• retain a genuinely independent nuclear deterrent and produce all our weaponry in Britain.
• only commit British forces when British national interests are at stake.
• preserve and restore our historic County Regiments.

ENVIRONMENT & FARMING

The BNP’s policy is to:

• remove unsightly overhead power lines from beauty spots and bury these underground.
• ban the ritual slaughter of animals without pre-stunning, and the sale of such meat.
• eliminate the unhealthy, energy intensive and cruel factory farming of livestock.
• abolish all ‘stealth taxes’ and other charges on household rubbish collections.

EDUCATION

The BNP’s policy is to:

• restore discipline – including corporal punishment – uniforms, traditional teaching methods and stricter exams (eg. ‘O’ levels).
• reintroduce grammar schools with entrance exams at 11 and 13.
• reverse the closure of special needs schools which penalises the most vulnerable.
• reintroduce competitive sports and daily Christian assemblies.
• ensure all students are literate and numerate and are taught British history.
• abolish fees and restore full grants to university students studying proper subjects.
• improve school food as proper meals have been shown to be linked to behaviour and achievement. Food should be sourced from local suppliers whenever possible.
• end the scandalous and racist neglect that has left working class white boys at the bottom of the table for academic achievement.
• give home-schooling parents tax-breaks or their fair share of the education budget.
• introduce a compulsory Community Award Scheme for all school-leavers to teach them work ethics and social and community values.

DEMOCRACY & FREEDOM

The BNP’s policy is to:

• abolish ‘anti-discrimination’ laws which prevent people from making a free choice.
• abolish all restrictions on traditional free speech; common law provisions against incitement to violence are the only proper limits in a free society.
• reject ID cards, intrusive surveillance and the retention of DNA samples of the innocent.
• introduce an English parliament within the United Kingdom.

WELFARE & HOUSING

The BNP’s policy is to:

• make all benefits and social housing only available to British citizens.
• introduce a system of workfare for those on unemployment benefit for more than six months with compulsory work and training in return for decent payment.
• make length of residency in an area the key criterion for council house allocation

Good luck London…