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Collaboration, commitment and devolution: what we learned about systems change from our place-based work in Greater Manchester  

Posted on by Amy Chapman
Aerial view of Manchester city centre, showing high rise buildings in the forefront, but in the distance, showing lots of residential areas and fields
30
Jan
Achieving change in a system requires more than just focusing on policy at a national level. Local innovation and action play a significant role in implementing national policy and testing new ideas to drive system transformation.  

By Samantha Stewart, Head of Programmes

Everyone needs a home that is decent and affordable, but the UK is deep in a housing crisis, leaving millions of people in unsafe, insecure and unaffordable housing. Over the past decade, we have been dedicated to tackling the issues within housing systemically and redesigning the system for the better.  

Transforming the private rented sector (PRS) is crucial to this work and that’s why, in 2016, we decided to test a place-based approach to transforming the PRS, to see if doing so could have the potential to create lasting change in the area, and act as a blueprint for work in other places. This became the Fair Housing Futures project.  

Today, we’re publishing our learning and evaluation report, which provides key learning and recommendations for funders and their partners undertaking place-based systems change. 

Read the full report Read the executive summary find out more about the project
What the project sought to achieve 

Fair Housing Futures (FHF) was a significant project – running for six years (2017-2013) and supported by over £1m in funding. It was designed with one goal in mind: for the private rented sector (PRS) in Greater Manchester to provide more decent, genuinely affordable homes for people in need.  

Our approach for FHF focused on three key themes:  

  • Learning: we wanted to understand not just the impact of the work we were funding, but how the approach we were taking as a project, and as a funder, impacted the conditions in which change could happen 
  • People: change doesn’t happen without the commitment and courage of pioneers to drive innovation, so the choice of where we chose to work, and with whom, was fundamental  
  • Power and collaboration: we went into this project with a clear intention of not wanting to be the ‘funder in the room’ but as an equal partner in the change, bringing more than just funding, and doing ‘with’ and not ‘to’. 

The project set out clear outcomes and was approached with three fundamental elements in mind: 

  • The devolution of decision making: Establishing a partnership board with stakeholders from across the Greater Manchester PRS, including renters, landlords, powerholders, researchers and charities (including the Nationwide Foundation). 
  • Being evidence-led: at the start of the project, the Partnership Board decided to ‘map the patch’ by commissioning a two-stage research programme, which built an evidence-based understanding of the PRS in Greater Manchester and the change that was needed. 
  • Test and Learn: The establishment of a test and learn grant fund to trial innovative local solutions to problems in the PRS in Greater Manchester 

Upon its end, we commissioned an independent evaluation, building on the learning surfaced over the six years. Given the Foundation’s focus on understanding how systems change happens, the evaluation was designed and delivered through the lens of the Six Conditions of Systems Change – a model we use to understand our work and its impact. 

What did we learn? 

For me, the biggest lessons come from, not from what the project did or didn’t achieve in terms of its outcomes, but what we learnt about changing a complex system, particularly given the government’s strong focus on devolution and the increasing opportunity for place-led change this presents.  

Learning 1

Relationships and connections are a key ‘condition’ of systems change, and collaboration is an essential part. But these relationships and connections needs to be designed in. Stakeholders should be ready to invest the time and energy to build trusting relationships across all sides of the debate.

  • The PRS is a contentious area with many conflicting views. And yet, successful collaboration between stakeholders across the private rented sector was possible, even amongst those with strongly opposing views. And this caused change to happen! 
  • The creation of the Partnership Board and the way it operated was a key factor in the project’s success and this was based on collaboration from the start. But this culture of collaboration didn’t just happen and relies on the right methods and conditions:  
    • Building trust and relationships takes time, skill and investment from all parties. Establishing common ground early is important, as is allowing space to safely disagree and examine the points of conflict to generate honest collaboration. 
    • Empathy and understanding needs to be consciously designed into programmes and partnerships. There is a strong need to take the time and honesty to understand the drivers behind behaviours, which are often formed by mental models and the multiple identities that partners bring into the room. 
    • The mindset of collaboration is itself a mental model that all the project partners brought with them. However, we also realised that it is difficult to maintain collaboration in the partnership, when it is lacking in the wider system. 
Learning 2

Place-based initiatives aimed at changing how a system operates locally, need early commitment from local powerholders alongside a shared understanding of the change you are seeking to achieve together.

  • Fair Housing Futures influenced Greater Manchester Combined Authority’s policy approach to the PRS, but a significant advantage for the project was that they were already invested in wanting to change it. One of the reasons we chose Greater Manchester as a test bed was because of the existing commitment and collaboration to change the PRS by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, evidenced by the Head of Housing Strategy and the Deputy Mayor being on the Partnership Board. If you don’t have the early buy-in of local powerholders, the change you are trying to achieve will be significantly harder, albeit certainly not impossible! 
  • You need to fully understand how the current system is operating – a key aspect to the project was the early ‘map the patch’ research work which informed the change the project was seeking to achieve and gave the work credibility and focus alongside creating a shared understanding. 
Learning 3

Funders are part of the system and how they behave really matters. When trying to solve systemic issues in a place, funders should be prepared to devolve decision-making, allow for failure, be flexible, and recognise the power they hold. 

As stated earlier, we went into this project with a clear intention of wanting to be equal partners in the project. The evaluation tells us that this was achieved, the key takeaways being:  

  • Devolving decision making from the Foundation to our partners created autonomy and trust. 
  • Letting go of the power enabled us to be a participant in the journey of the project. We learnt a good deal about how change happens by being part of the process through our place on the Partnership Board and close involvement in the project throughout.   
  • Being flexible in our funding approaches and lengths of funding left room to test, fail and try again, and nurtured the creation of new ideas that will have long-lasting effects on some of the grassroots organisations involved in the project. 
Learning 4

Focusing on the structural and visible parts of a system (i.e. policy, practice, resources) will only take you so far. Working at the deeper levels of systems (relationships and connections, power dynamics, and mental models) is essential to transform a system. 

All those working to change the housing system should recognise this, the time it takes, and the imagination and commitment needed. 

  • At the beginning of the programme, we didn’t understand the depth of change that was required across the system, and how long this would take. We took an iterative approach to funding the FHF programme which did not provide the programme with the longer-term stability it needed to achieve its outcomes 
  • Focusing on shorter term, and perhaps shallower, more structural change, can briefly alleviate stressors but it can continue to hold the existing system in place. Funders have a responsibility to recognise this and be prepared to invest over the long-term – possibly up to 10 years.  
  • Evaluating the programme through the lens of the conditions of systems change helped us to understand the project’s impact across the system and the level of commitment in terms of time and funding needed at the start. In designing another place-based programme, the six conditions model would, for us, be at the heart of our approach.   

 

System change is challenging, and the lessons above were learnt from our first place-based system-change collaboration. However, the full report contains so much richness, and I would encourage anyone interested in embarking in place-based system change to read the detailed report – and to get in touch if you would like to discuss more.