About us

Social Housing Innovation North East (SHINE)

Our story

In July 2023, believe housing hosted a design sprint at Northumbrian Water Innovation Festival, which looked at how social housing providers might come together with other professionals to reduce the impacts of damp, mould and condensation in our customers’ homes. The sprint was attended by a number of housing providers including Northumberland County Council and Karbon Homes. As a result of this, the solutions we designed over the five days were

Creating a partnership of social housing providers to collaborate to problem solve
Work on sharing data on our homes to better understand the issues and potential solutions
Collaborate on messaging to residents to encourage behaviour change that would impact on negative effects of damp, mould and condensation

Over the coming months, Social Housing Innovation North East (SHINE) was created. With believe housing and Karbon Homes working hard to engage members from all northeast housing providers. The first meeting was in September 2023, and was attended by almost 50 social housing professionals, where we facilitated a session on some of the work we wished to collaborate on over the coming year.

Over the next two years we have gone on to create working groups, including the Learning and Skills Group that leads the Professionalisation of Skills pilot and also the GIS Club that leads technical delivery of OneMap, which launched from a design print hosted by SHINE at the 2024 NWG Innovation Festival.

Who we are

SHINE is an informal partnership, led by members. We meet every few months to explore areas for collaboration and have some smaller working groups that have been pulled together from subject matter experts from member organisations, the working groups deliver within the problem spaces that have been identified by the wider group.

The main SHINE meetings are usually attended by one or two key people (usually one director/SLT member) and subject matter experts as required by the agenda. Meetings are held every few months, hosted and chaired by members on a rotating basis. The membership is open to all social housing providers in the northeast region.

Regular attendees include believe housing, Karbon Homes, Gentoo, Thirteen, Home Group, Bernicia, Livin, Places for People, Railway Housing, North Tyneside YMCA, Northumberland County Council, Beyond Housing, Castles and Coasts and North Star Housing. The Northern Housing Consortium also attend.

Attendance by those outside of the social housing sector is by invitation only.

Ops team

The SHINE Ops group plans the meetings and project manages the development of the problem spaces and activity. This is open to all members and is currently attended by believe housing, Karbon Homes, Gentoo, North Star, Places for People and Northumberland County Council.

Become a member

Sign up today to find out more about us

Become a Member