Stakeholder Perspectives on Sustainability in Social Housing: Insights from Wales, UK

Student Paper. This paper reports the results of interviews held with stakeholders of a South Wales housing association, Coastal Housing Group (Coastal). The interviews were conducted as part of Coastal’s devising and implementing of its sustainability strategy with the aim of establishing stakeholders’ expectations of Coastal, as well as their understanding of the barriers Coastal might face. Literature to date has shown that stakeholder consideration is important for businesses’ sustainability shifts, but nuanced consideration of stakeholders’ wants is often lacking. For housing associations, most stakeholder work is undertaken with residents, so this paper is novel because it presents the views of a wider stakeholder population as regards a Welsh housing association. Semi-structured interviews were held with 20 stakeholders. Inductive analysis was used, befitting the exploratory nature of the work. Whilst stakeholders appreciate that costs are a significant barrier to Coastal’s sustainability work, they expect housing associations to lead the way for other built environment actors by testing new technology and being open about their learning. This should all be done with consideration of residents’ needs at the heart of decision-making. Residents’ voices are notably absent from this paper, but that major stakeholder group will be considered in a further piece of work by the authors.