Housing Matters.

What we know

Housing has two main areas of interest for Legal & General. Firstly, the ability to get on the housing ladder and then, once you have a house, how to protect its contents and for it to feel safe. Legal & General Network and our General Insurance Business are engaged in these important social issues.

It′s all too easy to forget, living as most of us do in comfortable homes, with good jobs, that for many people in the UK, finding somewhere safe, dry, warm and affordable to live is a real struggle. Over a million children live in overcrowded housing in this country, and nearly 1.8 million households are currently on local authority waiting lists.

Housing is the key factor in determining a person′s wellbeing and possible future prospects in life. Poor housing leads to poor health, poor education and job prospects. We believe that it should be a given in our civilised society that this basic need is met.

Stephen Smith, Director, Housing and External Affairs at Legal & General comments, “With the recession, we′re now all too aware of the rise in mortgage and rent arrears and repossessions. So, as our business benefits from the housing market, we feel we should also put something back into this market and our partnership with Shelter is our chosen way of doing this.”

What we are doing

Highlights for 2010 have included:

• Funding an Advisers post within Shelter’s Gloucestershire homelessness prevention project educating 2,476 children and young people on housing and homelessness issues.
• Funding two key Regional Co-ordinator positions – working as champions for homeless children’s rights across the country.
• Thought Leadership – Following Legal & General’s Headline sponsorship for Shelter’s 'Ground breaking' publication launch event in July 2009, which provided a forum for senior representatives from across the housing sector and government to identify and discuss new approaches to housing delivery.
• Funding of a post within Shelter’s West Sussex and Surrey service for three years – which helps 1,800 people a year to avoid repossession.

Stakeholder Awareness raising activities

There have been many opportunities in 2010 to get the important issues around housing provision through various mainstream communication channels and events.

• Here’s how we engaged our employees on the issues that Shelter campaigns for.
• We have integrated Shelters housing issues into our external communications.
• A 'Seeing is believing' day for senior Legal & General executives who attended an afternoon at Shelter’s West Sussex service, hearing from the advisers about the type of issues they tackle. This day launched our commitment to fund part of this service for three years and looked at ways in which the Housing team can further support the service.
• Shared Legal & General and Shelter stand at the Mortgage Business Expo, helping introduce Shelter to a number of new potential partners.
• Shelter’s ‘Architect in the House’ fundraising scheme was promoted to Legal & General’s Intermediaries.
• Shelter was the charity partner at Mortgage Club Awards and Mortgage Strategy Awards raising thousand of pounds for Shelter.
• Finalists for the Third Sector Business Charity Awards for 2011 for our work together with Shelter.

Challenging Working Assumptions

Our work with Shelter also creates a better understanding of commercial realities in both organisations. In particular we have had discussions and exchanges on important issues with the aim of changing behaviour on both side of the partnership.

• Home contents insurance – we have had initial discussions with Shelter’s Policy and Campaigns departments and around home contents insurance targeting the potential inclusion of low–income households and social tenants.
• Housing development – we explored the possibility of running a joint pilot with local authorities and Legal & General Property on pre–engagement on proposals for housing development to smooth the planning process.
• The Legal & General team have been involved in an advisory capacity with Shelter in 2010 to help them secure more income from corporate partners and advised Shelter’s partnership team on best practice within relationship management.
• Post 2010 election – we were also part of a core team with Shelter looking at the state of the housing market post–election, which was then circulated across our business decision–makers for their input.
• Hosting round table debates – Stephen Smith from the Legal & General Network hosting Shelter’s round table debate on how Shelter can influence decision–makers to reinstate housing as a key priority at the 2015 election at our Coleman Street offices.

Campbell Robb, Shelter CEO, commented on the depth of the partnership:

“Shelter is delighted to be working with Legal & General to help us directly alleviate the problems people face in housing need. This unique partnership looks at more than just funding the charity but also how to increase support from different areas through employee engagement and the Housing industry”

Emerging Housing Agenda – Safer Homes

In 2010, our general insurance business increasingly campaigned about the issue of safer homes in the media and with consumers, highlighting trends that are putting consumers at risk. For example, the growing popularity of social media has meant that consumers are often relaxed about providing personal information, putting them more at risk of burglary than ever before.

As a business we need to highlight these issues to consumers and work with partners to help us to understand what impact these emerging risks will have on providing general insurance in the future.

Looking forward

Home ownership is clearly at the centre of the UK population’s mind when thinking about personal safety, security and long-term wealth. But we are seeing an increasing disconnect between those people’s motives for owning homes and the people who end up living in those homes. Ownership and occupiers are increasingly unrelated and rarely the same people.

Some of the big unanswered questions for our sector are:

• How do we effectively move towards a more European continental model where homeownership is not linked to pension provision and renting is more accepted.
• How does home insecurity link to health and educational issues.
• If people are spending more time in their homes because of a lack of movement how can they make them more secure.

We aim to continue to work with our key third sector partners in 2011 to better understand these issues. In particular:

• In response to the Government’s Comprehensive Spending Review we will be sponsoring a piece of work looking at the human costs of not investing in good quality housing. This pioneering work will bring a new dimension by establishing the economic cost to society and the state. The economic case for housing will be launched in the summer.
• We will continue to engage staff on the issue of homelessness particularly those in our housing related business areas and to raise funds for Shelter.