Mr Gove, partner with us and let’s enact real change

For example, Lockside, which is our first joint venture with national house builder Lovell, was made possible with support from the West Midlands Combined Authority and Walsall Council. This private-public sector, multi-agency solution is transforming a long-derelict former steelworks to deliver 252 homes. This site will become a flagship location and form part of the Wolverhampton to Walsall corridor.

“Policymakers often talk about ‘left-behind’ or ‘forgotten’ neighbourhoods. We have never forgotten our communities in Walsall”

But we know that just building more houses is not enough to truly level up. We need to build thriving sustainable communities, build social infrastructure and community capacity with resident voices at the centre leading the way.

We need to help tackle the chasm in employment and skills, health and wealth that serves our country so badly, and we are ready and able to play our part. Key to this will be finally unlocking funding to enable us to regenerate our neighbourhoods so desperately in need of investment.

For years, housing associations of all shapes and sizes have honed their role as ‘social glue’, helping sustain place and community. Policymakers often talk about “left-behind” or “forgotten” neighbourhoods, but this somewhat misses the point.

We have never forgotten our communities in Walsall. Neither have housing associations up and down the country which are working with residents to build and strengthen their communities.

It is hard to think of a not-for-profit provider that does not complement its housing offer with some level of support services, and this provides our sector with a unique platform to do even more.

“We are the sector that should be at the very centre of delivering this vision for the country”

This agenda is not just about what the government, councils or even social landlords can do for communities. It is about how we all come together to work with our customers and communities to pool and leverage every ounce of economic and social capital we have and can create.

This is why it is so important that all government departments are being redirected to universally focus their work through the levelling-up lens. The challenge is too big not to take this approach. Throwing the collective weight of Whitehall behind the vision is right and proper, and I think there is a learning we can take from this.

It is something we talk about at PlaceShapers, something we hear at sector conferences and often a topic of discussion at informal get-togethers. Let us finally commit to collaborating instead of competing. Let us play to our strengths and learn from each other’s experience for the benefit of our own customers and communities.

We can mirror the government’s cross-departmental shared focus on levelling up. We are the sector that should be at the very centre of delivering this vision for the country, in partnership with our existing – and I believe unrivalled – nationwide network of collaborators.

This must-succeed agenda has to be delivered by local leaders rooted in their communities and it has to put our customers and communities at the centre.

My message to Michael Gove is simple: partner with us and let’s enact real change.

Gary Fulford, chief executive, WHG