The End of a Journey

Well, that’s it, I’ve finished my PhD and it has now been approved. It’s taken me longer to get to this point than anticipated (but I imagine many PhD students say the same). The important thing is I got here and I enjoyed a lot of the journey along the way.

My last post on here was about submitting my thesis, last November 2019. After submitting my thesis I took a little break away from it before I started preparing for my viva. I wanted time to reflect, to think about other things, to recover from the intensity of writing such a long and complicated document. I discussed with my supervisors who we would like to have as examiners and thankfully they both said yes (thank you Paul Cairney and Noemi Lendvai)! My viva was then set for the end of January, so I began preparing at the start of the month. I was nervous about the idea of discussing my thesis with two experts, I was worried about what they would think of it, I was concerned about the idea of them ‘marking’ it. But I worked through that. I persuaded myself that whilst they would undoubtedly know more about some of the theory than me and might be able to make different connections, I knew my research better than anyone, therefore I was at least an expert in that!

Preparation for the viva mostly meant re-reading my thesis, thinking about the types of questions that I might be asked and then thinking through some points I could make in response. I tried not to overthink things or over prepare.

On the day of the viva I started out a little nervous but then began to look at the process as an opportunity to talk about my research with two people (a captive audience), who both knew a lot about the theory and issues and who would be able to help improve my research, to make a better end product. That was how I tried to approach the discussion, as an opportunity, and a learning exercise, as well as a test, to demonstrate my understanding, my thoughts and my ideas.

I really enjoyed my viva. I was immediately put at ease by both examiners. It was a positive, challenging, interesting and thoughtful discussion. I was tested on key areas, encouraged to discuss, question and challenge, and provided with a supportive atmosphere in which to debate my findings. The areas I was asked to think about made sense to me, by making changes I could improve what I had done. So whilst I’m sure it would have been great to come away with no corrections, I understood why some corrections were necessary and helpful and in the end would be beneficial.

After the viva I took a few weeks off, including a lovely holiday abroad. I then waited to get the official feedback. Whilst waiting the UK went into lockdown, so my world and everyone else’s changed. I found it quite hard initially to get back into thinking about my thesis and the changes I needed to make. It took a while to regain my focus. But I got there, the corrections were approved and I passed my PhD, at last! People keep asking me what next? I have no idea yet, really. An article or two maybe?

A final word of thanks to everyone who has helped and supported me along the way, to all those who put up with me asking them questions and being nosey. I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to do this, even though it’s been pretty tough at times, I have lots of positive memories of doing research, meeting different people, and being part of the School for Policy Studies at Bristol University, a wonderful place to study and do research.

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The End of a Journey (almost)

Finally, after nearly 5 years I have submitted my thesis. It was never meant to take this long and it has been quite a challenge. But I’m on the final stage of the journey now, waiting and preparing for my viva (Feb next year), whilst also taking some time out to do other things. There’s a lot about doing a PhD that is fun and interesting, I enjoyed most of it. I love writing and making sense of information, talking to people, finding out what is happening and why, and then crafting that information into something that is understandable and readable. It was a challenge for me because I’m more of a practitioner than an academic, I came into this after 25 years of doing policy and strategy for different charities and business organisations. I spent a lot of that time writing, but for non academic audiences, so moving into the academic world was a whole different discipline with a different language to understand. I met some great people along the way, who gave up their time for me during my research, to be part of it and to help me with it. I was lucky that so many people were willing to participate and support me for so long.

When I first started my PhD people used to ask what my research was about, now the question I get asked is – what did you find out, what does your research say? That’s always the trickiest question to answer. I found out so much throughout the process – about myself, about other people, about doing research, about what others have written, about different theories – and only some of it found its way into the thesis. it would be impossible to cover everything!

My research questions were as follows:

How do issues get onto the policy agenda during an election campaign?

• How are political manifestos developed and how are priorities decided?
• How do candidates prioritise their engagement with different actors?
• Who do they listen to and why?

Who is trying to influence the agenda and how? 


• Who are the main actors trying to influence the election agenda?
• What tactics and strategies do those actors use to get attention?
• What keeps issues on the candidate’s agenda or raises them up/down that agenda?

My research used Kingdon’s multiple streams framework (MSF) to explore the issues and develop my findings. I used housing policy as the basis for discussion and developed the MSF to provide an understanding of how mayoral candidates set their priorities pre- and post-election. The impetus for the study came from an interest in why some issues grab policy makers’ attention whilst others do not and how priorities are set during an election process. It stemmed from a desire to develop a better understanding of the role local elections play in framing policy agendas, the role and impact of different influencers, as well as how politicians make decisions about priorities when time is limited.

The research rests on three basic premises. Firstly, using housing policy as the focus for attention was justified as it was widely acknowledged thatthere was a housing crisis in the UK generally and at a local level in Bristol more specifically. It was also a time of constant, ad hoc policy change at national, sub national and local level.

The second basic premise of the research was that Bristol provides an interesting case study for research. It was the only core city to vote yes to having a directly elected mayor in the city referendums held across England in 2012. Bristol it seemed had a particular set of local circumstances that led to this vote, including perceptions of unstable local leadership with constant changes in political control and leaders, and a lack of visibility, with the council frequently criticised for being inward looking.

Thirdly, an understanding of how issues get onto, and move up and down, the policy agenda during a period of political change at a local level is an area of research that has not received particularly extensive attention over the years. The focus of much agenda setting research is either at a national level or is historically focused, looking back at how a decision was taken or a policy change generated over a longer time period. My research looked at local agenda setting as it happened, at a moment in time, and sought to understand why it was happening, who or what was influencing the process and how those under influence responded and reacted. It focused on an election period where there was a concentration of political activity, over a short period of time, when influence, engagement and responsiveness were likely to be greater than at most other times.

The research considered how, in Kingdon’s terms, a predictable window opened in the politics stream as the election began, and how the streams came together as party agendas were produced and diverged again once the election was over, as a new, smaller window opened before the new mayoral decision agenda was set. The research identified how mayoral candidates operated across the streams, seeking ideas and solutions, from within and outside of the party system. It also highlighted the strategies and tactics used by policy entrepreneurs to bring their issues to the attention of the candidates. It identified key stages in the process where the opportunities for influence were greatest and where agendas were set.

I came up with my own diagram to highlight the process, it’s a combination of the MSF and the stages model of the policy process. I may do a more detailed blog on what this all means:

My research drew conclusions on who and what influences the agenda before, during and after an election and demonstrated the role local political parties and policy entrepreneurs play in party and decision agendas. It illustrated how coalitions and networks bring opportunities for greater influence to the individuals and groups involved in them. The research also demonstrated the benefit of bringing solutions alongside problems, as local actors displayed a willingness to work with the council to achieve more desirable outcomes in the delivery of affordable housing in Bristol.

I identified the types of strategies and tactics people and organisations used to try and influence the candidates, using the work of Cairney (2018) and Aviram et al (2019) as a framework:

• Positive engagement: get to know the candidates and decision makers, use existing connections, professional credibility and reputation, demonstrate willingness to work in partnership;
• Framing a problem: understand how best to position an issue, use emotional connections and stories from real people to demonstrate impacts;
• Indicators and evidence: provide clear, accurate data to demonstrate the extent of a problem. Use simple visuals to highlight a problem. Simplify research information into short briefings. Suggest targets for candidates to include. Engage with others to present the extent of a problem.
• Providing solutions: understand the cause of a problem and provide a range of solutions, and offer to be part of the solution;
• Networking: join with others, coalitions of interest, policy communities, network of interests inside and outside of government;
• Triggering events: use crises and events to focus attention. The election itself provided that opportunity;
• Media attention: tap into the public mood, maximize size of audience, use media to promote policy and attract attention to an issue. Use of publicity stunts, visuals and stories attract media and public attention;
• Salami Tactics: divide policy into stages, provide less risky steps towards policy change, simply the problem and the solution to make it more accessible and acceptable.

I plan to write a more detailed briefing note to send out to all those involved in my research, highlighting the more practical elements of my findings.

The Challenge of Embarking on a PhD at Fifty

Embarking on a PhD in your 50s is a challenging process, not just because re-entering academia after several decades away from it is scary but also because life is very different in your 50s compared to your 20s. For me, at the beginning, the challenge was mostly about confidence, could I really do this now, at my age? Would I have the staying power, the ability to understand all that theory and the motivation to stick with it over several years? When I set out on this journey back in 2015, I couldn’t have anticipated just how challenging it would be, for such different reasons than I initially thought.

Life, family and health interventions have made mine a longer journey than anticipated as my initial plan was to finish last year. I’ve now had over 12 months of interruption across the last couple of years, with 2 major surgeries and associated illness and recovery times (I’d never even been in hospital before this).

During my fieldwork, which was time limited as I was studying activity during an election period, I was actually quite ill but had to carry on regardless. I tried hard to organise interviews, attend meetings, discussions with individuals and other observations so they were spread out and gave me time to recover, but this was not always possible, I naturally had to fit in with the timetable of others. As we got closer to the election this was particularly the case, as meetings, discussions, hustings, campaign launches, and follow up interviews all had to be attended and arranged. There were days when having done one interview I was also due to attend another meeting but just couldn’t manage it, so had to cancel. I missed out on observing and attending some discussions because it just wasn’t possible. Having said that, I am still more than pleased with the amount of access I did get to individuals, meetings and discussions and the number of interviews I was able to carry out. If I’d been well enough though I would have done more (but maybe every researcher thinks there’s more that could be done).

After the fieldwork and just as I began the analysis and initial writing up stages I underwent major surgery and had a total of 7 months off from my studies because of illness beforehand and recovery afterwards. This was a major interruption at just the wrong time, just as I was closest to all the information and my own research, I had to take a break. In the end it was worth it, as my health was much improved afterwards and I was able to concentrate on my research once more. I got back into the analysis, additional reading, and writing first drafts of the main analysis and discussion sections. I even got to the point of revisions to some of the earlier chapters and had finished writing most of the remaining chapters before I had to take another break for another operation.

I am currently resting up after knee surgery and hoping to get back to full time writing over the next few weeks. Each time I’ve had to take time out I’ve found it really hard to get back into the subject matter and to immerse myself in the detail again. Whilst it does provide an opportunity to step back, I find it difficult to re-establish my engagement with my research, particularly at the stage I am at now, which is the final writing stage. An enforced absence of a couple of months has been both liberating and frustrating. Liberating because it does provide that space you sometimes need when you are too close to what you are writing and need to step back from it all to see a clearer picture. Frustrating because I was so close to finishing when the NHS provided a quicker date for my surgery than originally anticipated (which I am grateful for), so I had to stop before I wanted to, before I’d got to the end.

But now it’s time to get back to it, to get on with the writing. I’m at the stage now where I’m mostly revising chapters rather than writing from scratch, and hopefully I am now only a few months off completion. I’m re-reading what I have written with a fresh look, checking on the latest articles in my field and tightening up some of my arguments. My challenge now is to ensure the ‘golden thread’ goes right through my writing, from beginning to end, so the story is clear and my engagement with both the theory and my original research is inextricably linked throughout.

Who influences what and how? A study of agenda setting and policy prioritisation during the Bristol Mayoral Election.

I thought it was about time I wrote another blog, and this time it’s a quick summary of what my PhD research is all about. I’ve written blogs before about my PhD Journey, but have shied away from too much detail on what my research actually covers. So time to give it a go, in a few hundred words, explaining the theoretical framework and the questions I am attempting to address!

My PhD research is about housing policy, agenda setting and how policy priorities are defined at election time. The impetus for this study comes from an interest in why some issues are rarely discussed and why some issues grab policy makers attention whilst others do not. It stems from a desire to develop a better understanding of the role local elections and new models of local governance have on framing policy agendas. It also comes from an interest in agenda setting theory, particularly Kingdon’s multiple streams framework (MSF), and how that can be applied at a local level in the UK.

Kingdon’s MSF has traditionally been used to explore agenda setting at a national level, initially in the US, and more recently across a range of countries. Most of the research has been qualitative, using interviewing and documentary evidence as the main form of data collection. Very little research has been carried out at a local level in the UK and none of that has specifically looked at agenda setting as it happens during an election period or within the new model of local governance where there is a directly elected mayor.

Using Kingdon’s MSF as a starting point enables my research to consider the relevance of the framework to agenda setting activity during a local election for a directly elected mayor in Bristol. My research is based on a live study of that activity as it took place, pre and post election. It explores the relevance of the idea of ‘windows of opportunity’ and the role of ‘policy entrepreneurs’ throughout this process, highlighting where the MSF provides a useful framework for understanding as well as where the gaps might be. It is not, however, a study that seeks to test a theory or hypothesis. Rather, it seeks to use the Framework to help understand what is happening and to construct a story of events as it is seen by the people at the centre of the action. The approach adopted seeks to use the idea of constructing and interpreting actors own constructions of what they are up to through an analysis of their beliefs and everyday practices. It focuses on a local case study of Bristol using a live ‘ethnographic’ approach to examine how, if and why housing policy is prioritised and in whose interest. It does this through a detailed exploration of the approach, beliefs, reactions and perceptions of local political decision makers and the individuals, groups and networks trying to influence them.

My research seeks to understand the way in which different actors perceive and make sense of the world and aims to understand how individual actors influence a specific policy agenda during an election. The intention is not to generalise about the findings in empirical terms but to use the case study to provide input to the theoretical development of policy agenda setting and policy prioritisation during elections.

My research aims to provide an insight into the world of policy prioritisation during the Bristol Mayoral election in May 2016. It uses Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) as a starting point for discussion on agenda setting before, during and immediately after the election to identify who influences what and how. The story that emerges details the influencers, their tactics, what works and what doesn’t, and at the end of it all, after the election, what makes it onto the policy agenda of the new mayor. The story is about a local policy prioritisation process, at a moment in time, where action and change is prompted by the Mayoral election.

The story of how things get onto the agenda and into political manifestos at election time is not a simple story. It is built around a myriad of different influences that are formal and informal, covert and overt, direct and indirect. It is difficult to piece these together in a timeline or coherent and logical manner, as the process is anything but logical. It seems to be an ad hoc process involving different people and organisations at different times and one that in the end appears to come down to personalities and individual preferences and beliefs, as much as it does evidence, identified need and viability.

The justification for the research is constructed around three basic premises. Firstly, that there is currently a national housing crisis, an issue accepted and acknowledged by many, with constant, ad hoc policy change occurring at national, sub national and local level. Nationally the talk is frequently focused on the supply of housing, with different political parties competing to set the highest target for new build. The wider approach to housing policy varies from supporting people to buy their own home and reducing the unnecessary restrictions of the planning system, to encouraging landowners and property developers to release more land for housing and supporting buy-to-let landlords. The ability to approach the problem comprehensively seems to get lost in a myriad of politics, ‘big ideas’ and short-term thinking. In Bristol the crisis is played out in terms of both the overall supply and affordability of housing. Outside of London and the South East, Bristol and the West of England is one of the most expensive places to live in the UK.

The second basic premise is that Bristol provides an interesting case study for research. It was the only city to vote yes to having a directly elected mayor, with an Independent Mayor (George Ferguson) elected in November 2012. The local circumstances that led to this vote were commonly quoted as being about poor and unstable leadership, constant changes of leadership and lack of visibility in terms of leadership. There has also been considerable recent debate about devolution and the role of city regions, with Bristol featuring as one of the areas that has been given increased powers and resources from central government in exchange for adopting a combined authority and metro-mayor. My research focuses on the Mayoral Election in 2016, where the first re-election of a directly elected mayor will take place alongside a full council election (for the first time in nearly 20 years). This was therefore quite a significant local election, coming just a year after the general election, and potentially a period of significant change for the city.

Thirdly, an understanding of how issues get onto, and move up and down, the policy agenda during a period of political change at a local level is an area of research that has not received particularly extensive attention over the years. The focus of much agenda setting research is either carried out at a national level or is historically focused, looking back at how a decision was taken or a policy change generated over a longer time period. My research looks at local policy prioritisation as it happened, at a moment in time and seeks to understand why it is happening, who or what is influencing the process and how those under influence respond and react. It focuses on an election period where there is likely to be a concentration of political activity, over a short period of time, when influence, engagement and responsiveness are likely to be greater than at most other times.

The two main questions this research seeks to address are as follows:

1. How do issues get onto the policy agenda during an election campaign?

• Who is responsible for putting issues on the policy and political agenda during an election?
• What keeps those issues there or raises them up/down that agenda?

2. How do the political candidates respond and react to different influences before, during and after an election campaign?

• Who is trying to influence the candidates during the election process?
• What tactics do different local actors use to get attention?
• Who do the candidates listen to and why?

I’ll return to write another post soon about some of the findings, that begin to put some detailed responses to the questions outlined above.

Getting the story right – the final phase of my PhD!

I’m now entering the final phase of my PhD! Now that sounds vaguely ridiculous as it only seems like yesterday that I started. But I am now at the point of finishing off my fieldwork and beginning that rather daunting bit that means I have to try and make sense of it all. For me it still feels like I don’t know much, like there is so much reading still to do and so much data to make sense of, that it’ll take years to get to that end point of the completed thesis.

This middle stage, the second year, has been fun, manic, challenging, frustrating and rewarding all at the same time. It’s involved talking to and interviewing people I have never met before, as well as many I know well. It’s involved taking up other people’s time, often at times that are most busy for them. It’s also involved a significant degree of personal learning, confidence, engagement, listening and energy. There were times when I have felt stretched beyond what I could cope with, completely out of my comfort zone, bombarded with information and exhausted from long days and late evenings full of meetings, interviews and debates. There have also been times when I’ve felt extremely grateful for how cooperative people have been, energised by what I have heard, motivated by discussion and a fair amount of empathy for the people who have shared their challenges with me.

There have also been times when I’ve wondered whether or not the questions I am asking are the right ones, whether the information I am gathering is actually what I need. In fact there have been many times when I have wondered about that and indeed still do – only time will tell.

I guess I’ve reached that stage now where all of those questions and self doubt begin to take centre stage, where a year to analyse data and write up just doesn’t seem long enough. For me I know what I need at this stage, I need to be able to see the story that I’m trying to tell, the story that takes the reader through my research. At the moment I’m not quite sure what that is, but gradually as I write up notes, transcribe interviews, go back to the theory and keep reading and thinking, little parts of that story begin to emerge. It’s almost like it’s there, but just out of reach! There’s also possibly too much, too many different routes I could take through the data, that would confuse the main messages and reduce the main characters to a minor role. So picking out the right story and the right main characters is all part of the trick going forward.

At the moment, there’s a story about influential people and how they operate overtly and covertly to influence policy agendas. There’s obviously a story about the importance of elections in providing opportunities for policy change, where policy priorities are debated and framed before, during and after the election. But more likely there’s a story about personalities, about key influencers and decision-makers, their style and approach, as well as who they talk to and take notice of. There’s also something there about solutions, looking at the same solutions that keep cropping up, year after year, to the same problems, but never quite seem to gain traction, but just maybe they will this time? Add to this the role of party politics and the media in influencing the policy prioritisation process and you can see that there’s a lot to consider.

Whilst it’s a daunting prospect, I’m actually looking forward to the writing process. I love making sense of information, bringing it together in a story that others can read and hopefully enjoy. The process is inevitably frustrating, long and painful at times, but that moment when it comes together, when clarity appears and the story is just right, well that’s totally worth waiting for!

I feel privileged to have been able to take the time out to do this research, to have the support and help of so many people, it’s a far cry from where I thought I would be right now and I’m loving it (mostly). The School for Policy Studies at Bristol University have been outstanding in their support throughout. My two supervisors (Alex Marsh and David Sweeting) are just great, providing the questions, support, encouragement and nudges I need at all the right times. Others in the school have put up with me talking about my research, provided feedback, suggested reading and most importantly of all, provided me with the encouragement that says ‘yes’ I can do this.

So now it’s time to get on with it, to make sure I reach the end of my PhD journey.

Pioneering alternative housing models

When we talk about solving the housing crisis we tend to talk about supply and demand, about affordability and about providing homes for people. We seldom talk about people being in control of providing their own home. The whole housing system has morphed into one of dependency, be it dependence on private landlords, house builders or the State, someone will provide it for us. When housing professionals get together they talk about mainstream housing issues, about rent prices, about how difficult it is to build council housing or social housing for rent, about problems of land supply and land-banking by private developers. Rarely do they talk about self-build, custom build or housing co-operatives. It seems, on the surface at least, that we’ve lost some of the creativity and innovation in our debates about housing.

When you dig beneath that surface though you will find all kinds of interesting projects, that take us back to a less dependent realm of provision, where self-help and mutual aid were the guiding principles for action. This type of approach can still be seen in self-build and custom build projects, co-operative housing schemes and community led housing developments. These are schemes that are shaped and controlled by residents, where people have taken back control.

Back in 1975, over 40 years ago, the then Director of Housing at Bristol City Council published a Green Paper on housing with the following title:

“A Decent Home!! (A paper to stimulate thought and encourage participation so that policies can be evolved to tackle effectively the Housing problems of this great city.)”

What a great idea. Perhaps it’s time to have that very debate again in Bristol and to encourage participation from neighbourhoods across our city with a discussion that includes some alternative solutions to housing provision instead of focusing on a system that clearly doesn’t work. Maybe it could be a debate that involves those seeking a decent home but who can’t afford what is on offer and who have given up on a social housing system that has been reduced to such a residual service. Maybe it’s also time to listen to those who have solutions but are marginalised, as their solutions don’t support the traditional mainstream approach to housing?

There are many small-scale examples to draw from that could be included in this debate but seldom are. Why don’t we talk about co-operative housing more frequently when we have such a great example here in Bristol that is currently on site and well on its way to developing a sustainable model for converting empty office buildings into homes. Proof if ever you needed it that, even now, ordinary people can refurbish old buildings, create social housing communities and produce a modest return for investors (AEOB Group).

Why don’t we talk more about ‘kit housing’ or custom build, which is factory made, using more sustainable materials, cheaper and quicker to erect on site than traditional bricks and mortar housing? There are many companies out there providing this form of housing, from the original and more expensive Huf Haus, to relative newcomers to the arena like Apple Green Homes and the local SNUG homes developed by Ecomotive. Whilst self-build might not be an option for many, custom build and co-operative housing may just be relevant to a wider audience. Together these models of provision could provide greater opportunities to those that have been failed by our current approach to housing.

Imagine if Bristol could be one of the first in the country to develop these custom build, co-operative models further, as part of the mainstream, using public land, property and resources to support individuals and communities to make things happen? Imagine if we could just find a way to support people to develop their own plans and models of future living? There’s a challenge here for Bristol to make this happen. And there’s a challenge to all of us to support these different initiatives to help effect the change that is needed. As Colin Ward put it so well:

”… if people are given the reins, get the right help and are committed, they can come up with a really excellent viable housing scheme that people want to live in”.

(Colin Ward, 1985:120, “When we build again, let’s have housing that works”)

The text of this blogpost was first written for The Bristol Cable and appeared there in April 2016.

Tackling Homelessness – let’s not reinvent the wheel

It’s difficult to stand back and watch what is happening with housing policy in England at the moment. The transition of the Housing Bill through the legislative process has been complicated, combative and confusing, with endless amendments and changes made along the way. Indeed we are still waiting to see the final outcome, but whatever happens there will be some fundamental changes to the way we do housing in this country.

Within this debate the plight of the homeless in our cities seems to have been somewhat lost, they are an inevitable consequence of our housing and welfare policy  as well as our inability to build enough homes over many decades. However, there is little by way of concrete policy change or real action to actually make a positive difference in this area. It seems we still need to research the issue and find out why people are homeless and how to help them. To this end, in December 2015 the government launched an inquiry into the causes of homelessness as well as the approaches taken by national and local government to prevent and tackle homelessness. Quite what the inquiry will come up with is unclear at the moment as is whether or not it will make any difference.

Perhaps we should be looking elsewhere to see how homelessness has been tackled successfully? We could learn some important lessons.

There’s an approach called ‘Housing First’ adopted in the US and Canada that starts from the premise that housing is a basic human right. This approach was first used in the early 1980s to provide housing for homeless people with multiple and complex needs. It starts from the basis that once you remove the chaos of homelessness then a person is better able to address and deal with the issues that led them to being homeless in the first place.

“Housing First is a consumer-driven approach that provides immediate access to permanent housing, in addition to flexible, community-based services for people who have experienced homelessness” (Canadian Housing First Toolkit)

It seems to me that this concept and approach is well worth revisiting. Instead of demonising and criminalising homeless people maybe we should be thinking about providing them with secure, permanent accommodation and the support they need to enable recovery and improve wellbeing, so they can re-integrate into society. Rather than making ‘housing readiness’ a condition for the provision on housing, it provides the housing first, alongside the support services, so recovery can take place in a secure environment.

The solution to homelessness has been clear for at least a decade: giving homeless people homes. According to a 2014 paper from the Canadian Homelessness Research Network, it could  actually be cheaper in the long term to provide permanent accommodation for homeless people than continue to support them whilst sleeping rough. The paper suggests that levels of homelessness in Canada come with an annual bill of $7 billion in emergency shelters, social services, health care, and law enforcement and judicial costs. Whilst a comprehensive housing strategy would cost taxpayers far less: $3.75 billion in 2015-16 and $44 billion over a decade.

“Studies have consistently shown that – in practice, and not just in theory – providing people experiencing chronic homelessness with permanent supportive housing saves taxpayers money” (National Alliance to End Homelessness)

Another study in Florida (2014) found that Florida residents pay $31,065 per chronically homeless person every year they live on the streets. However, it would cost taxpayers just $10,051 per homeless person to give them a permanent place to live and services like job training and health care. In Utah (2015), another recent programme was established to end homelessness using the Housing First approach. Here, the cost of providing an apartment and social work for clients in the Housing First program is $11,000 annually, while the average price of hospital visits and jail for street denizens is nearly $17,000 a year. Once more illustrating that taking a more holistic view can save money as well as provide the homes that homeless people need.

The key to these approaches is thinking long term about the issue and across different services, something that doesn’t always happen. Maybe we need to remind ourselves why housing is important? Its a basic human right that sets the tone for our lives – everyone should have the right to a decent home that is affordable, but sadly many don’t.

It is easy to sit back and be critical of the inability of local and national political leaders to take strategic long term decisions. We criticise them for having to be sensitive to electoral cycles and for not tackling the difficult issues. Housing is one of those issues that needs a short, medium and long term plan, where the difficult issues need to be faced head on and where linkages need to be made across service areas.

If we believe that everyone has the right to a decent home, then by restricting housing growth and refusing development we are denying people that right. In a prosperous city such as Bristol it is ridiculous that we have so may people on the housing waiting list; too many people in overcrowded and poor accommodation; and others with nowhere to live at all. So what more can we do to deliver the housing that Bristol desperately needs at a price people can afford and how do we tackle the homelessness issue? Perhaps taking a more creative and innovative approach we could adopt the ‘housing first’ principle that starts from the premise that everyone deserves a decent home. This means a new and different approach that puts people first.

Halfway point in an amazing journey

Well that’s me, I have just reached halfway in my PhD journey. I’ve been doing this for 18 months now, which sometimes seems like forever and at other times seems like I only just got started. But that is it, I am halfway through my 3 year learning adventure, and what an adventure it is turning out to be. I’m sure most people will look at this and think really, at 50 you’re doing a PhD and seeing it as an adventure? But that is how I’ve seen it from the start, a learning adventure where I can develop my own thinking, find out more about an area of interest and just maybe by the end of it all, provide something that might be of use to others. It’s also something I’ve always wanted to do, but if you’d asked me 3 or 4 years ago what I would be doing now, it wouldn’t even have featured. That’s life for you, it has a strange way of providing us with the opportunities to do the things we want, we just have to recognise those opportunities and take those first steps to achieving what we want when we can. For me it’s also been about finding a positive out of a very negative situation, where that positive has now successfully eclipsed any negativity that existed.

I’m now at that stage in my PhD where I’m immersed in fieldwork. Where life has been taken over by a constant round of interviewing, observation, and meetings followed by transcribing, writing up field notes and setting up the next round of interviews. It’s relentless and I seem to have fallen a little behind with the transcribing – it is undoubtedly my least favourite activity at the moment, therefore gets put off all too often when other more interesting things spring to mind (even cleaning the house is preferable).

So far I’ve been pretty lucky with the willingness of people to participate in my research, to give up their time to answer my questions, to invite me into meetings and discussions and to provide me with information. Hopefully this will continue as it all helps to provide a true picture of what is happening and why.

Alongside all this actual data collection, there are of course other activities that need to be maintained. Like keeping up to date with what is being published on relevant areas of theory, that is certainly keeping me busy as various useful articles and books keep appearing. There’s also quite a lot happening in terms of government policy on housing, so I need to keep abreast of those changes too, and the commentary that goes with it. Add to that learning how to use Nvivo (software package for qualitative data analysis), setting up thematic codes and a coding framework, loading information into Nvivo and beginning the long process of coding each and every interview and set of notes, and you’ll see that I’ve been a bit busy lately.

The advantage of getting some training on Nvivo was that not only did it teach me to use the software, but it also meant I had to think through what my data was telling me. I had to really delve into the process of taking on board the themes and issues emerging from my data, relating them to the theoretical framework I had established and drawing both inductive and deductive themes and codes from theory and data to try and make sense of it all. This is a challenging process that I am only really just beginning, but it’s like doing a giant puzzle, where you know many of the pieces are there but you don’t have the picture that they’re suppose to make to work from. So you have to work intuitively, making links and finding relationships that work and help to form a picture that makes sense. But you also have to remember all that knowledge you gained from the theory and the methods you spent the previous 18 months learning about and use that to develop the picture, or the story you are trying to tell. It’s a fascinating process and at the moment I’m not quite sure where my story is leading me or what the final picture will look like. That’s all part of the adventure.

I realise at this point that I have succeeded in writing a post all about my research without actually saying what my research is about. So in brief, I’m looking at how policy gets prioritised, who and what influences the process and what different it makes in terms of what actually gets done. I’m looking specifically at housing policy in Bristol before, during and after the Mayoral election that takes place this May. There’s so much to say about this agenda, about how things change, how decisions are made, where the influence comes from and who holds the power. It’s certainly a fascinating time to be doing research on housing policy and how national changes impact locally and by fascinating I really mean challenging. The situation changes so rapidly as does the response from housing organisations, lobby groups, councils and delivery bodies as they find themselves having to adapt to the latest proposal or policy change from government.

This is currently my world, a whirl of data collection and analysis, an ever changing policy framework, new announcements nationally and locally and extensive media coverage of housing issues. I’m enjoying every moment of it during the here and now, whilst also looking forward and trying to anticipate the final picture and story that I’ll be able to tell.

Doing a PhD – Year 2

Last year I was part of the Bristol Doctoral College, Year in the life of PhD blog, which involved providing one blog per term on what it is like to do a PhD. Whilst I’m not involved again this year, I thought I would carry on the practice of blogging about the PhD process and my progress. So here I am, just beginning the second year of my PhD and it seemed like a good time to reflect on my first year and look ahead to what this year will involve.

My first year started with taught courses and assignment writing, continuing my learning on research methods. These pretty much occupied me full time for 4 months and wasn’t quite how I’d wanted to begin my PhD! However, on reflection, I can certainly see the benefit of having to do them as I have used much of the knowledge gained during that time to help me develop my research further.

After completing (and passing) all the assignments it was onto some theory, well quite a lot of theory actually. In my usual logical, methodical manner I decided to start at the beginning and read my way through a logical sequence. Which basically meant starting with theories of the policy process (of which there are many), moving onto agenda setting theories (lots of those too) and eventually focusing in on Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Framework. This then took me on to theories about multiple levels of governance, models of governance, power theory, community power and local leadership. Which is quite a lot of theory to get to grips with, but kind of covers most of the issues I think I need to know about or at the very least it provides a good starting point.

Having buried myself in theory for a few months, I then needed to do more work on my research approach and the methods I wanted to use. I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do but needed to build this into a coherent approach based on some recognisable ontology and epistemology. This took some serious thinking, as my practice based brain struggled to work through some of the more detailed philosophical arguments about methodology and approach. But I got there in the end, mostly thanks to the grounding in research methodology provided in my MSc course and the additional 3 units I took at the beginning of the year. This together with the work of Rod Rhodes, on interpretive political ethnography, was enough to convince me that I knew where my research would fit and how I should go about it.

My MSc Graduation

Then came the point when I was finally ready to put together my progression review/upgrade documentation. This is a key point for any PhD student, where they are formally assessed to see if what they have done so far and plan to do is good enough to allow them to carry on with a PhD. For me this meant providing a total of 15,000 words on my research approach and on some key elements of theory, together with completing the progression review form. I could easily have written 30-40,000 words at this point, so my main challenge was narrowing it down and deciding what to submit for consideration. The next step was the Panel Review Meeting. I approached this as a great opportunity to discuss my research with some senior academics, who could help advise me on how I might improve what I was proposing and who could challenge and question elements of my research. Whilst potentially daunting, it was a really positive discussion, with two extremely helpful and supportive academics. I learnt a lot about my own understanding of some of the issues and about some of the assumptions I hadn’t realised I was making. I also learnt a little more about positioning my research, defending positively what I was proposing and discussing points of interest.

I came away from my review meeting with a lot of issues and ideas whirling round in my head and even more theory to consider (social practice theory in particular). But I did come  away feeling pretty positive, I’d had a good discussion, received some positive feedback and once I’d submitted a bit of additional information, was told I could continue with my PhD. Good news indeed!

During the year I also submitted my application for ethical approval of my research, another key point in any research project. My research will involve interviewing elite actors, potentially ‘shadowing’ them and using participant observation. It’s a form of interpretive political ethnography, that combines methods to try and understand things from the point of view of the participants of the study. It’s also based on a small case study in Bristol, where I was previously a local councillor and have been involved in various aspects of city life for many years. Thankfully, the response from the ethics committee was extremely quick and efficient, and only asked for a small amount of additional information which I was able to provide without too much extra work. I then receive the approval I needed, which was another key milestone for my PhD. Basically, that now means I am pretty much ready to go out and do my fieldwork.

This next year will mostly be about data collection, interviewing, observation, and document analysis. It’s going to be a busy year and the idea of starting my fieldwork is exciting but also daunting and a little scary. I’ve got a bit of work to do on developing my data collection and analysis strategy, making sure I am fully prepared (or as much as I can be) for my fieldwork, but I’m almost ready to go. This next stage involves not only collecting data but also thinking about how it works with the theory, about identifying the right people to speak to, the right events to attend and the right time to be involved. It means reading more theory, working out themes and issues, coding transcripts and analysing data as I go along. A pretty daunting set of tasks, but something I’m really looking forward to.

So that’s what I’ll be doing for the next 10-12 months, burying myself in the Bristol Mayoral election process!

What’s popular on the blog?

As I haven’t written much recently on my blog I thought I’d take a look and see what’s been popular over the last few months. I thought it might help me to decide what to write about next and see what people are interested in. So here goes, a bit of a mixture of topics, some older some newer seem to have attracted attention.

The most popular is actually one I wrote up after I gave a talk to some of my fellow PhD students in the School for Policy Studies at the University of Bristol. The talk was about using social media as a researcher and was aimed at trying to interest phd researchers in the notion of engaging with a wider audience, connecting outside of academia and entering the world of social media to promote themselves and their research. It was a tough audience as many academics are somewhat sceptical about social media. Not sure how my talk went down, but the blogpost seems to have been well received and remains popular!

The other posts that have hit popularity over the last few months include one I wrote back in May on devolution, a topic that is of course hitting the news again at the moment, and one I wrote in July about constraints on growth, another topic that seems to remain popular. More recent posts have been on the Bristol mayoral election and one on neighbourhood planning, both receiving quite a bit of attention. The full top five list is as follows:

• Social media for PhD researchers
• Mayors, elections and voters
• Constraints on growth: what’s holding our cities back?
• The devolution debate: what about Bristol? 
• Neighbourhood plans: nimbyism or localism?

It’s probably about time I wrote another one about housing, but it kind of feels like everything has already been said. It’s such a depressing time to talk about housing policy at the moment, as we slowly but surely watch it all unravel, being systematically destroyed by a government interested only in home ownership, whilst ignoring the very real housing need that exists in many of our cities and towns, which will never be adequately provided for by the private sector.