Homes to Live Well: amplifying the impact of housing providers as anchors though regional partnership
Housing providers have historically acted as anchor organisations within local communities. They manage thousands of homes, invest in neighbourhoods, and provide the foundation for health, wellbeing and opportunity.
Greater Manchester Housing Providers (GMHP) is a network of 27 housing providers, working together to improve the lives of people and communities across Greater Manchester. GMHP works collaboratively with Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) and NHS Greater Manchester (NHS GM), to implement the Greater Manchester Tripartite Agreement and deliver integrated solutions to challenges centred around housing and health. More recently, they have been working to amplify this impact, aligning their community engagement and customer support work around Live Well - a shared city-region movement to reduce inequalities.
This case study explores how GMHP are raising the level of ambition for the role housing providers can play in building a system-wide approach to supporting community health and tackling systemic inequalities.
Introduction
With high-levels of health and wellbeing inequality persisting across Greater Manchester, traditional service models which wait for a crisis to occur rather than taking a preventative approach are no longer fit for purpose. Live Well is Greater Manchester’s commitment to tackle inequalities by ensuring everyday support is available in every neighbourhood, led by communities and enabled by a more connected and preventative system.
GMHP are present in nearly every neighbourhood across the city region, managing 260,000 homes in total, around one in four across Greater Manchester, and collectively, they contribute £1.2 billion to the regional economy every year. GMHP recognise the vital role they have to play in collectively delivering the Live Well vision, combining local presence with system-wide learning and scale.
Background to the work: the challenge and the shift
Live Well builds on Greater Manchester Combined Authority’s (GMCA) long-standing commitment to public service reform, with a continued focus on people, place and prevention.
Supported by GMCA, and guided by the Greater Manchester Tripartite Agreement, GMHP have worked in partnership with Innovation Unit to articulate their vision for growing consistent, community-led support in neighbourhoods, and to understand and enhance their collective, system-wide impact as a regional partnership. GMHP’s strategic commitment to Live Well demonstrates both their support for community-led work, and the pivotal role they play in creating a more preventative, enabling system.
Developing a Live Well Playbook
Recognising the need to demonstrate how GMHP is growing their contribution to Live Well, a playbook was created to share how GMHP work side-by-side with partners across local authorities, NHS, VCSE sector, uniformed services and specialist teams, to pioneer practice that is rooted in collaboration, prevention, and community-led action.
Emerging from this playbook are four key strands of work that tell the story of how housing providers across GMHP are working with partners to actively contribute to Live Well:
Connecting around a common purpose, by acting as conveners.
Leading collaboratively by hosting, not directing.
Building collective accountability, by always connecting to outcomes
Growing community power together
This work is an invitation for partners to work together, align investment, and build a Greater Manchester where everyone has the support and connections to live well. Download the playbook here.
The impact of working in partnership
By working as a connected anchor network, GMHP has enabled initiatives that bridge the gap between housing, health and community support. These examples of providers working collaboratively demonstrate how collective impact is amplified through the regional partnership:
Greater Manchester Housing First
Greater Manchester Housing First addresses long-term homelessness for people facing multiple disadvantages across Greater Manchester and requires a radical shift in how organisations work together. Housing First is delivered across all 10 Greater Manchester boroughs through a cross-sector partnership of 11 organisations, including five housing providers, led by Great Places Housing Group and GMCA. The partnership shares risk and power in a whole-system model that places no preconditions on housing. The programme has achieved a 78% tenancy sustainment rate, drastically reducing reliance on emergency services and temporary accommodation.
Manbassadors
To tackle high rates of male suicide and barriers to accessing traditional mental health services, Bolton at Home used its trusted position to recruit local businesses, such as barbers, cafes, and gyms, to act as advocates. Known as "Manbassadors," they are trained to spot signs of struggle and signpost support. This approach has successfully engaged over 600 men and raised £24,000 for community activities, significantly reducing the burden on mental health services. Manbassadors has become a movement across GMHP, with other providers across the partnership adopting similar models of support in their neighbourhoods.
Project 500
Project 500 is a collaborative programme led by the Manchester Housing Providers Partnership (Jigsaw, MSV, Guinness, Great Places, Irwell Valley, One Manchester, and Southway), who work alongside Manchester City Council to deliver 7,800 affordable homes across several council-owned sites. Beyond just building houses, they embed social value requirements into every contract, using a joint social value tracker to monitor contributions across employment, skills and social spending. This coordinated citywide model ensures that large-scale development translates into tangible neighbourhood benefits, including 98 apprenticeships and job starts, over 100 apprenticeship weeks, 130 volunteering hours and nearly £12,000 donated to community groups.
Ageing in Place Pathfinder
The Ageing in Place Pathfinder (AIPP) has developed ten resident-led partnerships, bringing together residents, Housing Providers and other partners to develop age-friendly neighbourhoods. Residents shape neighbourhood action plans, delivering improvements to social infrastructure, the local environment and services. More than 2,500 residents have been engaged, and had a say about what matters to them for ageing well. In Salford, Salix Homes helped establish a resident-led Partnership Board where older people and local organisations set shared priorities for their neighbourhood. In Tameside, Jigsaw Homes Group supported residents to form Ridge Hill Together, a community group now running local activities and digital inclusion sessions. In Wigan, Wigan Boroughwide Housing helped residents and VCFSE partners co-design improvements — from warm hubs to better green spaces. And in Rochdale, Rochdale Boroughwide Housing supported residents to design and co-manage the Kirkholt Community Garden, now a shared community asset.
Key learnings for others
For housing providers looking to increase their impact, GMHP offers the following learnings:
Housing providers are most effective when they act as "local conveners", creating the space and conditions for partners to work together rather than dominating the agenda.
Building trusted relationships requires being open about organisational constraints, competing demands, and budgets from the outset, rather than hiding the challenges.
Embedding community-led ways of working cannot simply be added to existing roles; it requires dedicated capacity and resources for staff to work differently.
Effective partnership means inviting partners and residents to the table at the very beginning to co-design solutions as equals, rather than consulting them on pre-made decisions.
For other regions looking to support this model of anchor collaboration, GMHP offers the following learnings:
Bring providers to the table from the start, to co-design and co-deliver as equal partners
Lean into being bold with providers, to find new ways of working that genuinely prevent crisis
Tap into providers' experience as anchor institutions, their knowledge and everyday presence in neighbourhoods are key assets to the public service reform and prevention agendas
Looking ahead
Greater Manchester Housing Providers continue to demonstrate the foundational role that housing providers have to play to help improve outcomes and tackle inequalities across neighbourhoods. By leveraging their collective power as a network, they are fostering honest collaboration and acting as a shared voice to influence wider systems.
GMHP’s next steps involve embedding this work through their Live Well Leadership Group, further prototyping in neighbourhoods, and ensuring that the Live Well principles are embedded in the governance and regulation of housing across Greater Manchester.