Why embedding Equality, Diversity and Inclusion across the social housing sector is so important

Kim Long, NHF External Affairs Manager and EDI Lead, talks about the work we are doing in partnership with members to create positive change at all organisational levels.

Towards the end of last year, we produced a report called Making an Impact – a summary of our work from 2022-25.

It looks back on our journey over the last three years, charting the major milestones, achievements and progress made on behalf of the sector, in partnership with members and other key stakeholders.

What I noticed when reading the report was several common themes that ran like a golden thread through every area of our work. One of the most important of these was the progress made around Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in social housing.

At the NHF we aim to show leadership on EDI, driving action to create a sector that better represents our communities and where all people have equal opportunity to thrive.

Every year we host events, webinars, groups and networks that shine a spotlight on EDI issues, as well as publishing blogs, resources and toolkits to educate and inform.

Our first EDI newsletter launched in June 2024 and grew in readership by 36% in its first year. We already have 584 subscribers. Combined with our network membership, each publication goes out to over 1000 people twice a year.

Our EDI professionals’ network currently has 348 members following a 65% increase in membership between June 2023 and April 2025.

Our CEO EDI network has also grown but we are keen to see more people driving inclusion from a leadership level, ensuring organisations are representative of the diverse communities they serve.

One of our members said in our Impact Report: “The NHF EDI steering group has driven the agenda of EDI into boardrooms, where we know real impact can be made.”

We know that housing associations are working hard to create change at all levels of their organisation, leading from example at board level.

Many of our members have signed up for the NHF Chairs’ Challenge, a call for all housing association board chairs to commit to embedding equality, diversity and inclusion into their work.

A big focus for our EDI work in the 2025-2030 strategy will be leadership, boards and culture. This will include an update and refresh of our board member EDI resources, The Chairs' Challenge, our Inclusive Recruitment Toolkit and Succession Planning for Inclusion.

We will soon be surveying those that did sign up for the Chairs’ Challenge to see how it is working for them, as well as ensuring new chairs are involved and aware of the challenge.

We have also worked hard to progress our long-term programme focused on using data to better understand EDI within the housing association workforce.

In 2023 we improved our EDI data toolkit and published an updated report on the sector's workforce, giving us the most accurate picture yet. Alongside this we've published over 20 case studies and blogs sharing best practice.

We will launch an updated version of the toolkit next year for our third sector-wide EDI data collection.

The Better Social Housing Review highlighted how important good quality data is to understanding the quality of residents’ homes, the support residents need, and how equitably services are delivered to different groups of residents.

The panel recommended that social landlords improve how they use data to assess how equitably services are delivered, to address structural inequalities and the experiences of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people.

To help the sector with this, we launched a project called Knowing our Homes which aims to improve how social housing providers collect and use data about the condition of the homes they manage and the people who live in them.

Our report – Making Every Contact Count - sets out how social landlords of different types and sizes can use routine and planned interactions with residents to gather information effectively and efficiently.

We are very proud of all the work we do in partnership with members to tackle inequality and ensure our sector is providing the best possible services it can.