Community research

bchs has worked extensively with residents and communities to ensure that the views and aspirations of local people are built into neighbourhood regeneration plans and to ensure there are opportunities for local people’s active involvement in choosing the best way forward.

Through focus groups, questionnaires and door to door surveys, local exhibitions and events, bchs has canvassed views on the delivery of local services and aspirations for future housing and neighbourhood developments.

bchs has trained and supported local people to carry out surveys and community consultation. Wherever bchs has worked with residents to investigate options for more involvement in the management of their housing, through the ‘Right to Manage’ process, for instance, we have ‘skilled-up’ local residents to enable them to explain what they are trying to do and build support from the community.

The employment of local people to undertake research has a number of benefits. It inputs skills and sometimes jobs and money into the local community and also ‘adds value’ to the research, local knowledge and empathy with the local community and local ‘culture’, which is a core strength upon which other skills can be developed.

In Welsh House Farm, Birmingham, bchs has worked alongside the local Housing Action Group to enable them to carry out door knocking surveys in the local community.  In Northampton and Tamworth, as part of the housing stock options appraisal processes, community researchers were trained and supported to carry out face to face interviews.  In Birchills, we have trained local people to undertake a community consultation as part of a neighbourhood management programme.