Support for CIH members - what’s been happening in your area?

Wherever you live in the UK, you’ve got our support as a CIH member. Our team works hard to engage with professionals, organisations, and members of the community interested in housing. Read our rundown of what’s been happening in your local area and become a member if you’d like to get involved. 

Supporting professional wellbeing in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland 

At CIH, we know that engaging with our local members is essential if we want to continue advocating for the housing sector and giving professionals, residents, and housing organisations a voice. Whether it’s working with the Housing Academy to contextualise a qualification for a housing officer in Belfast, or building a training programme that reflects the concerns of Northern Irish members, we listen to what you need.  

We want to make sure housing is a career people want to succeed in. By going into schools and supporting early-career professionals, we’re showing the next generation that housing is a vocation, not just a fall-back job. We also want to be there for those in Ireland and Northern Ireland already working in the sector – we understand the pressures that come with a job in housing. Alongside CIH president Julie Haydon’s Rooted in Resilience campaign, we’re supporting the wellbeing of our Irish members by listening to your concerns and pushing for your psychological safety.  

Election preparation and looking to the future of housing in Wales 

Just like many interested in the Welsh housing sector, we’ve been getting ready for the upcoming Senedd election. Using feedback from CIH members, we produced our CIH Cymru Housing Manifesto, highlighting our key asks of the next Welsh government. Enshrining the right to adequate housing in Welsh legislation, ensuring everyone has access to affordable housing, and tackling fuel poverty are just some of our priorities. For more detail, you can read our full Cymru housing strategy here. 

To help you out during the lead up to the election, we’ve also created handy pledge cards and door hanger cards. These summaries are designed to prompt you during community or candidate engagement, ensuring that the important topics are always close-to-hand. 

Another exciting development in Welsh housing is the resurrection of our Rising Stars Cymru Award. The CIH member-only competition celebrates the achievements, commitment, and passion of the emerging talent that’s set to shape the future of the Welsh housing sector. The finalists spoke brilliantly at our annual TAI conference – congratulations to the 2026 winner: Katie John! Her passion for housing shone through in her presentation and the judges applauded her for being a positive role model for the sector.  

Board updates and school visits in the Midlands 

The CIH Midlands regional board recently welcomed its new vice chair: Philippa Mckenna. She works to make homes more affordable and accessible in rural areas, as well as lending her time to CIH to serve as a mentor. Mentoring, a member-only benefit, is a brilliant way to encourage growth in the housing sector and to offer advice to housing professionals at the beginning of their journeys. Both mentors and mentees gain insight and perspective from their conversations, building a more connected and knowledgeable housing sector. 

Looking to connect young people with career options in housing, CIH has also been attending career events, like the one in March at a secondary school in Sutton Coldfield. Over 800 students visited throughout the day – hopefully some future CIH members in the making! 

Election preparation and policy updates in Scotland 

CIH Scotland announced Gillian McLees as the new national director for Scotland at the beginning of this year. Gillian’s years of experience working with Scottish government, local authority leaders, and a range of housing stakeholders have already been invaluable for CIH and our members. 

Scottish members have also benefited from training sessions on key topics for housing professionals such as damp and mould, trauma informed hoarding and ARC data. Whether it’s a bespoke package for your organisation or a session with one of our excellent instructors, we’re proud that we’re able to provide discounted training for members.  

As our Scottish members get ready for the parliamentary elections, our Scotland housing manifesto and its digestible companion document are great resources to read through. If you’re interested in improving the safety and availability of homes in your area and across the nation, it’s important to think about who you’d like to see driving these changes in parliament.  

Getting event-ready in the South East 

We’ve been working hard with volunteer members to support programme planning for Housing Brighton: our annual conference for London and the South East. It’s an exciting event, especially with the new content stream,: People and Place, which will offer insights on critical issues around planning and development. 

If you need more reason to attend Housing Brighton, we’ve also built a programme of activities for our CIH stand at the event so you can get involved in a more informal way. Come and chat with us the start of each day – if this is your first housing event, we’ll help you settle in and find your conference community! We’ll also be hosting speakers from conference sessions Learning from Complaints and Further Investigation and The Trials of Mrs Tranter: When Murder Mystery Meets Customer Centricity after they’ve finished, so you can pop by for more information if you attended. You might also be able to drop in and meet with members of the Professional Standards Committee, our regional group members, and our policy team throughout the event. Have a browse through the programme so you know the best times to visit our stand and become a member today to attend Housing Brighton for free – you don’t want to miss out! 

As always, it’s been an eventful few months across the UK at CIH! We’re pleased to support our members where they need us, and you can read the full list of member benefits here.