CFRC’s Professor Hal Pawson has been appointed to an Advisory Panel to oversee a GBP 7.5 million housing research program shortly commencing in the UK. The initiative, funded largely by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), is named the Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence (CaCHE). Led by Glasgow University and involving a consortium of other academic teams across the country, CaCHE represents the largest official UK investment in housing research for many years. Its aims are:

•        To advance knowledge of the housing market
  
•        To provide robust evidence to inform housing policy and practice, and
  
•        To join together a comprehensive range of stakeholders with the goal of tackling housing problems at a national, devolved, regional, and local level.
  

The CaCHE five-year work program will be structured around six themes:

•        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 advisory panel will be chaired by Lord Kerslake, a former head of the Homes and Communities Agency and, latterly, a leading opposition member of the UK’s upper house of Parliament.