Report to incommunities on the About Turn project

This is an independent account of the work of the Incommunities About Turn project to support households in difficulty with ther tenancy. The project has run for 3 years and has a track record in dealing with difficult tenancies. LSE Housing has examined the tenancy records, evidence from staff interviews and family development, in order to highlight how much progress is being made, what barriers and difficulties are faced and how this work fits within the wider national and Bradford city context. Our aim is to present an overview of the costs and benefits of this project from the perspective of new social priorities in te housing world and its difficulties with the most marginal tenants

‘Teach in’ on energy and existing homes: restoring neighbourhoods and slowing climate change.

Homes that have already built account for 99% of our total housing stock. We estimate that 86% of the current stock will still be in use in 2050. Building new homes is carbon intensive and implies many wider environmental impacts. But the existing stock can be made more efficient, at a reasonable cost, to realise many environmental and social gains. Homes are responsible for 27% of our total CO2 emissions through their energy use, for half of public water use, and they generate large amounts of total UK waste. Large savings can be achieved using technologies that are readily available, cost effective and cheaper than many alternatives. In addition, construction waste contributes to 33% of the total UK waste stream. LSE Housing held two workshops in June 2008 to explore how to retrofit the existing stock. The workshops specifically looked at demonstrating the links between neighbourhood renewal, social cohesion and energy conservation. Participants included managers of existing homes, regeneration companies, local authorities, and housing associations as well as policy makers. The aim of the workshop was to share experience on how to make the existing stock both more attractive and more energy efficient with big gains for the environment and communities. Tackling resource efficiency in existing homes requires a comprehensive package of measures to deliver a step change. But the payback from implementing these changes will be great. This report summarises the aims of the workshops, together with the views of participants on the main barriers to retrofitting the existing stock, and key ideas on ‘where to start’.

Report to incommunities on the About Turn project.

This is an independent account of the work of the Incommunities About Turn project to support households in difficulty with ther tenancy. The project has run for 3 years and has a track record in dealing with difficult tenancies. LSE Housing has examined the tenancy records, evidence from staff interviews and family development, in order to highlight how much progress is being made, what barriers and difficulties are faced and how this work fits within the wider national and Bradford city context. Our aim is to present an overview of the costs and benefits of this project from the perspective of new social priorities in te housing world and its difficulties with the most marginal tenants.

How multi-agency teams made decisions in a simulated terror attack

In setting goals, seeking ‘least worst’ outcomes might lead to faster adaptation and decision-making, write Nicola Power and Laurence Aliso

Redundant deliberation about negative consequences:decision inertia in emergency responders

Major emergencies are high-stakes, ambiguous, dynamic and stressful events. Emergency response commanders rely on their expertise and training to mitigate these factors and implement action. The Critical Decision Method was used to interview n=31 commanders from the Police (n=12), Fire and Rescue (n=15) and Ambulance Services (n=4) in the UK about challenges to decision making. Transcripts were analysed in two ways: (i) using thematic analyses to categorise the challenges to incident command; and (ii) grounded theory to develop a theoretical understanding of how challenges influenced decision processing. There were nine core challenges to incident command, themed into two categories: (i) those relating to the perceived characteristics of the incident itself; and (ii) those relating to uncertainties about (inter)personal dynamics of the team(s) responding. Consideration of challenges featured prominently in decision makers' prospective modelling, especially when thinking about goal accomplishment (i.e., 'What if I deploy now? What if I don't?'). Commanders were motivated to 'save life' (attack/approach goal), yet also sought to 'prevent harm' (defend/avoid goal). Challenges led commanders to redundantly deliberate about what to do; their prospective modelling was related to the anticipation of potential negative consequences that might arise both for acting (attack) and not acting (defend). Commanders identified this difficult trade-off, yet described how experience and their 'responsibility as a commander' gave them confidence to overcome decision inertia. Future research is needed to identify whether decision making training on how to anticipate and overcome difficult cognitive trade-offs would lead to more flexible and expedient commanding

Mapping our underlying cognitions and emotions about good environmental behavior:Why we fail to act despite the best of intentions

Despite the widespread recognition of climate change as the single biggest global threat, the willingness of people to change their behaviour to mitigate its effects is limited. Past research, often focussing on specific categories of behaviour, has highlighted a very significant gap between people’s intentions to behave more sustainably and their actual behaviour. This paper presents a new approach to this issue, by using more open-ended questions to map a much broader range of cognitions and emotions about good environmental behaviour. Two key findings emerged. Firstly, participants were aware of the contradiction between their level of concern about the environment and their willingness to act in more sustainable ways. The qualitative analysis further revealed that this discrepancy often hinged on a lack of knowledge about how to act more sustainably; the analysis also revealed a desire for more information about genuinely green behaviour. Secondly, pro-environmental behaviour was often conceptualised by participants in essentially ‘social’ terms; anticipated emotions relating to sustainable/non-sustainable behaviour were as closely tied to the behaviour of one’s peers as to one’s own behaviour. This finding suggests that we must highlight the social dimension in any interventions to increase sustainable behaviours amongst the public