Knowledge exchange (KE) is a process that brings together academics, users of research, wider groups and communities to exchange ideas, evidence and expertise. It is a process crucial to the work undertaken by the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence (CaCHE). We believe that solutions to housing challenges will only emerge by harnessing the expertise of world-leading academic researchers from a wide range of disciplines, drawing on knowledge from within different professional communities, and combining the work of existing networks operating at a variety of scales and in different locales. This permits the development of a holistic, systematic, and rigorously evidence-based approach to understanding the workings of the housing system, exploring the complex and dynamic connections and inter-dependencies between different parts of the system, and to tackling the sources of our housing problems.  

Crucially, the Centre recognises that there are very different challenges to be found across the UK; it is therefore configured as a distributed ‘hub and spoke’ model, active in all parts of the country, designed to ensure geographic reach and nationwide relevance. It is a collaboration between Centres and Networks with a permanent presence in London, Sheffield, Cardiff, Belfast, and Glasgow. Our KE team is overseen by Gavin Smart and includes Moira Munro and Gareth James in Scotland; Ed Ferrari and Gareth Young in Northern England; Jeff Matsu and Chris Foye in Southern England; Stanley McGreal and Joe Frey in Northern Ireland; and Peter Mackie and Bob Smith in Wales. Together, the KE team is responsible, inter alia, for building and maintaining a wide-reaching ‘network of networks’ and establishing five sub-national KE hubs, which will bring together key stakeholders, representative of the main component parts of the regional housing system. 

Inspired by the Harvard model of the Tobin project, we will undertake a series of prioritisation exercises with these stakeholders at national and sub-national (hub) levels. These exercises will take the form of intensive, expertly facilitated workshops to identify priority research questions. Prior to these exercises, we will facilitate focus groups to capture residents’ voices and feed these into the prioritisation process. We anticipate it will be an intellectually stimulating and inclusive process which sets priorities in a way that is consensual, transparent, independent and dynamic.  

The resulting projects will inevitably take several different forms (syntheses of existing knowledge; reviews of international evidence; analyses of existing data; learning from and sharing best practice; new primary research; and/or integration of knowledge from different fields, international policy transfer workshops or other KE events) and will have different durations. In the meantime, we are already working on 12 evidence reviews. The subject and the primary KE contact for each project are included in the table below.  

CaCHE Evidence Reviews (Year 1-2017/18) & KE contacts 

In addition to the prioritisation exercises and specific research projects, we will hold up to 20 KE events annually, which will help to test, refine and promote evidence from our reviews, collaborative projects and new research. These workshops and conferences will focus on specific problems. Recent events include a forum on housing and cities and a workshop entitled ‘Fixing our broken housing market’, the latter with contributions from representatives of the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG). Future events will include an annual housing and policy conference which initially will explore challenges in the Private Rented Sector and, in time, will focus on the problems identified via the prioritisation exercises mentioned above. There will also be a number of ‘incoming’ and ‘outgoing’ secondment opportunities and public engagement through major annual lectures, as well as bespoke regional activities such as our recent contribution to the ESRC Festival of Social Sciences at the Women’s Library in Glasgow’s East End.  

This is but a flavour of what we’re doing and what we have planned for the next five years. There are several ways in which you can stay informed, engaged and/or become actively involved in the work of CaCHE. You can follow this blog, sign up for our mailing list and follow us on Twitter. If you’d like to know more about CaCHE projects, join our KE network, or become involved with any of the projects listed above, please get in touch with a member of the KE team (see the above table for guidance). If you think there is a gap in the evidence base that CaCHE can help fill then the KE team would also be keen to hear from you. KE is the enabling of two way exchange and we look forward to sharing ideas, research evidence, experiences and skills with you, to better understand and tackle housing problems in all regions of the UK.