Our work
Sutton Housing Society
Discover how Frontier PR made social landlord Sutton Housing Society front page news with ‘tall tales’ of rooftop homes.
The Challenge
How to raise awareness of a unique solution to London’s social housing shortage, presenting our client as a bold housing innovator.
The Frontier PR Solution
Use our knowledge of the issues faced by the social housing sector and changing planning rules to turn Sutton Housing into a pioneer on the subject of airspace rooftop homes.
Who is Sutton Housing Society?
Sutton Housing Society is a small specialist landlord based in the London Brough of Sutton, on the South-East edge of the Capital. The housing association owns almost 500 social rent homes, with around 75% of the stock designated for older people over the age of 55.
As with many social housing providers, demand for property often outstrips availability, so Sutton Housing Society developed an innovative solution under the leadership of visionary Chief Executive, Robin Roberts.
In 2021, following a highly technical planning process, Sutton embarked on the development of 70 airspace homes constructed on the rooftops of existing buildings, to be built in a number of different locations over two phases.
These new airspace homes resulted in Sutton Housing Society increasing its housing stock by around 30%, delivering valuable, high-quality new homes to the community.
Such was the level of innovation required in both securing planning for the new homes and building them, Robin and his executive team wanted to share the valuable lessons learnt with fellow housing associations, local authorities, and the wider supply chain.
How Frontier PR helped?
While developing our PR campaign it became clear that rooftop development has the potential to deliver thousands of new homes across London but had, to date, failed to do so. Why was that?
Frontier PR seized on proposed changes to planning laws that could favour airspace development and, using Robin Roberts knowledge, we developed a highly successful media relations campaign that pitched the Chief Executive as an evangelist for airspace homes.
The main thrust of the campaign was how a small but nimble housing association focus its resources to achieve what larger landlords and developers had so far struggled to deliver.
We tapped in to the knowledge of Robin and key members of Sutton Housing Society’s supply chain to understand the technical aspects of the planning, design, and construction process.
We also gained insight from award winning London architects of the airspace homes, Hoban Design, who were keen to share the technical challenges and specification of these rooftop schemes and benefit in the profile generated.
We developed a campaign of impactful news releases and features and case studies to tell the story, accompanied by high-quality photography of the new modular built homes being lowered into place.
This was supported by custom designed colourful, engaging graphics that brought the whole project to life and highlighted the scale and complexity of the development.
The result
Frontier PR secured 26 pieces of individual media coverage across the social housing, housing, planning and local authority focused media.
This included news and an in-depth feature in industry bible Inside Housing, and a contribution to an airspace focused feature in the London Standard.
The campaign also generated frontpage and lead stories in Housing Executive Magazine, positioning Robin as an industry pioneer.
Such was the level of awareness and interest generated in the industry, Sutton even hosted a knowledge sharing event in one of the recently completed rooftop developments.
Considering Sutton’s small stature, particularly when compared to the ever-growing G15 London landlords, the media coverage generated was quite remarkable and highlights what can be achieved when a high-quality message is crafted and communicated by the right PR support.
What did Sutton Housing Society say?
Robin Roberts, Chief Executive, Sutton Housing Society, said: “We wanted to share our unique experiences in planning and delivering airspace development to a much wider audience, passing on valuable knowledge and good practice to our industry peers and supply chains.
“Frontier PR used its specialist knowledge to quickly understand our brief, but also created a compelling media campaign that reached a far greater audience than we had ever hoped.
“It was an excellent campaign both for its intelligence, attention to detail and results.”
Outstanding Campaign Activity
High-quality media coverage, including:
Inside Housing’s Development of the Month
Comment and analysis on proposed planning law changes in The Planner.
If you’d like to talk to Frontier PR about this campaign, or share in Sutton Housing Society’s success story email david@frontierpr.co.uk or call 07939 137 098 - or download Frontier PR’s latest brochure for social housing below.