Some of the most pressing questions facing senior housing leaders will be tackled in a new series of high-level forums bringing together decision-makers from across the sector.
Housing Executive is launching its Senior Leaders Forum, a series of professionally filmed roundtable discussions designed to put the biggest challenges facing social housing under scrutiny – and take the conversations to a much wider industry audience.
Almost a decade after Grenfell, what still hasn’t changed? And as Awaab’s Law reshapes landlords’ responsibilities, is the sector ready for a new era of accountability?
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Those will be among the first questions on the table, with Building Safety After Grenfell: What Still Hasn’t Changed? and Awaab’s Law: The New Era of Accountability forming two of the headline discussions in the new series.
The first will examine how far social housing has really travelled since the Grenfell tragedy – looking at what has changed in building safety, regulation, leadership and culture, but also where serious gaps remain.
Awaab’s Law, meanwhile, has brought another fundamental question of landlord accountability to the fore.
Housing Executive will bring leaders together to examine what the changes mean in practice – not simply for compliance, but for repairs, housing management, organisational culture and, crucially, residents.
Darren Hayes, Head of Partnerships at Housing Executive, said: “There are some huge questions facing social housing at the moment and the people leading organisations across the sector are having to make difficult decisions in response.
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“We want the Senior Leaders Forum to put those questions on the table and create conversations that are genuinely worth listening to.
“This isn’t about getting a group of people together to repeat the same messages they might give in a presentation or press release. We want informed people with different experiences and perspectives discussing what is really happening, what needs to change and what the sector should be doing next.”
The new format will also attempt to address a familiar problem with industry roundtables. Valuable conversations too often remain behind closed doors or emerge as lengthy, poorly produced recordings few people ever watch.
Each Housing Executive forum will instead be professionally filmed and edited, turning the discussion into high-quality video and social content distributed to a wider industry audience.
Karl Holbrook, Housing Executive Editorial Consultant and former national newspaper editor, said: “Social housing is dealing with questions around safety, accountability, net zero, standards, technology and the changing relationship between landlords and residents – and many of them don’t have simple answers.
“That is exactly why these conversations should be interesting.
“We don’t want polite discussions where everyone agrees for an hour. The ambition is to bring together people who know these issues from the inside, ask direct questions, explore where opinions differ and get beyond the rehearsed answers.
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“And if we’re asking senior leaders to give their time and expertise, the end product should reflect that. These will be professionally produced discussions designed to be watched, not a boardroom meeting with a camera left running in the corner.”
The agenda will continue throughout 2026 and 2027, with further forums tackling retrofit fatigue and whether residents are quietly rejecting net zero, the Competence and Conduct Standard in Social Housing, overheating and the threat of a growing climate crisis, and the ethics of housing data and whether predictive analytics can go too far.
Future topics will also include the future of social housing; making social value work; automation and the future of housing management; tenant voice; community safety; and the challenges posed by an ageing population.
Nick Fellows, Managing Director of Crosby Media Associates, publisher of Housing Executive, said the Senior Leaders Forum is part of a wider push to create more ambitious ways of covering the issues confronting the sector.
He said: “Some of the biggest changes social housing has faced in a generation are happening now and that creates a responsibility for a publication like Housing Executive to do more than simply report that change.
“We want to bring the people making these decisions together, challenge them on the issues that matter and then make those conversations accessible to the wider sector.
“The combination of strong editorial, senior-level participation and professional production is important. We want the Senior Leaders Forum to become somewhere the sector goes to hear serious discussion about what happens next.”
The forums will feature leaders and organisations with direct expertise in each subject, with Housing Executive shaping each discussion around the challenges currently confronting landlords and residents.
Senior leaders and organisations interested in contributing to forthcoming Housing Executive Senior Leaders Forums can contact Darren Hayes at Darren.hayes@crosbyassociates.co.uk to find out more.
