A new research programme is underway to examine the UK's housing system and explore potential future housing policies.

The new UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence (CaCHE) is being led by the University of Glasgow.

It features a consortium of nine universities and four non-academic professional bodies who will advance knowledge of the housing market, provide evidence to inform UK-wide housing policy/practice and tackle housing problems at national, devolved, regional, and local level.

Six overlapping themes of the programme include;

• Housing and the economy

• Understanding housing markets: demand and need, supply and delivery

• Housing aspirations, choices and outcomes

• Housing, poverty, health, education and employment

• Housing and neighbourhood design, sustainability and place-making

• Multi-level governance

The CaCHE will receive £6 million in funding as well as a further £1.5m institutional contribution from consortium partners. The majority of funding is provided form the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), with support from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council).

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Apart from the 29 co-investigators from the partner organisations, the programme will involve 220 named individual collaborators and more than 12 additional non-academic partners.

A housing data navigator hub will also be based at the University of Cardiff, while the Programme will operate a 'network of networks' to share existing expertise.

Professor Ken Gibb, Director of Policy Scotland and Professor of Housing Economics at the University of Glasgow, will be Principal Investigator and Director of CaCHE.

He said: "In the UK, housing is one of the main policy challenges facing national and devolved governments. This major new programme will allow policy makers and practitioners across the UK to benefit from the best possible evidence to help them take the robust action needed to tackle chronic housing problems.

“The aim is to use multi-disciplinary expertise to provide relevant and rigorous housing evidence and research to influence and ultimately alter housing policy for the benefit of all.

“I am delighted that the University of Glasgow and our partners will be taking the lead on this incredibly important subject. The serious and complex problems of the housing system are too important to ignore. This is why I'm looking forward to this major new initiative making a serious contribution to tackling one of the most pressing policy problems in the UK today."

The core CaCHE partners are; the universities of Glasgow, Sheffield, Reading, Cardiff, Heriot-Watt, Bristol, Ulster, Sheffield Hallam and St Andrews, along with the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.

The -academic partners in the consortium are: the Chartered Institute of Housing, the Royal Town Planning Institute, and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

An international advisory board will be chaired by Lord Kerslake, former Head of the Home Civil Service.

(LM/MH)