I am delighted to be here today at this very interesting conference, and to have the chance to meet with you all. Issues of Faith, and of housing are both firmly in the news at present. Unfortunately, often not for positive reasons. But the moving force behind this conference is wonderfully positive. This event, a joint venture between national agencies and local Muslim communities, chimes very well with the Government's aspirations to create truly sustainable and cohesive communities.

[reflect on Minister's speech]

The Corporation recognises, and is very grateful for, the achievement of faith organisations in the social housing sector. Your mission shares much with that of the government and ourselves, and we recognise the value and contribution which faith based providers bring. Faith based housing associations often operate in areas that need a lot of improvement, meaning you have a lot of experience of working with tenants and residents and with many other partner organisations to find solutions.

That's immensely important to us, because to succeed, the initiative has to come not only from a national strategic level, but also locally, from the grassroots. And it has to involve not only housing, but also a myriad of other services as well. Community cohesion involves everyone.

That is how this event fits into the national policy context, then. I also believe that, working together, we can help to find practical ways of promoting inclusion and empowerment among Muslim households, and also, by extension, to other members of society. After all, good practice should be for the benefit of everyone.

We're here to talk about the future, but I would just like to stop for a moment to reflect on the past. The development of the UK's Black and Minority Ethnic housing associations - faith based associations among them - has been a hugely valuable and unique achievement, due 99% to energy and vision of people from BME communities.

The Corporation has supported and enabled that movement, probably not always as consistently or effectively as possible, but still we are proud of the part we've played. The ODPM, politicians, local authorities and other associations have also played supporting roles, but the real achievement has been by the associations themselves.

In recognition of this, the Corporation's BME Action Plan cites Faith as a critical factor in race and housing and equality and diversity; and we are committed to working with and through BME associations and other BME community organisations such as refugee community organisations, in meeting housing needs.

We want you to succeed, then - and we know you have already done extremely well. Housing associations are in many ways the unsung heroes of the regeneration process. The sector has a fine record in delivery, diversification and innovation.

At the same time, they are engaged in many additional activities, taking pressure off the State - neighbourhood management, environmental management, recreational facilities, care services, child care and nursery provision and so on. The best housing associations are true social businesses, where providing housing is only one part - albeit a core part - of the jigsaw. The Corporation is supporting social landlords in providing this wider range of services, and adding value to their communities over and above simply the provision of houses.

Back in 1999, the government published a series of reports from Policy Action Teams which it had set up to look at ways of improving community cohesion. One of the recommendations they came up with was that greater recognition should be given to the vital role of faith communities, and that models should be developed to involve them in regeneration.

The Corporation was the first government body to make a practical response to the Government's recommendations, working with North London Muslim Housing Association to set up Faith in the Future in 2000, and later helping to establish Faith Regen UK in 2002. These are both Muslim-led organisations which work with all faith communities, using their networks and social capital to deliver training and capacity building to clients considered 'hard to reach' by more conventional agencies. There are some leaflets about both of these organisations in the conference area downstairs if you would like to know more about their work.

The Housing Corporation has also taken the lead in developing the faith agenda in social housing, especially by supporting research. Last year, we published a major review by the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies on Muslim housing experiences. Before that, we supported case-study reports by North London Muslim Housing Association on Muslim experience in Hackney and Kensington and Chelsea, and also a video for housing providers on working with Muslim tenants.

Most recently, our latest national survey of housing association tenants included a question about religious affiliation, enabling us for the first time to carry out a national analysis of housing association tenants in terms of religion. The findings are published today in the sector study which you have received with your delegate packs. I would like to run through some of the key findings from that analysis, which I thought made fascinating reading.

First of all, the tenants survey confirmed the vital importance of religion in the daily lives of many housing association tenants, especially those originating from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Africa. Almost no respondents from these communities said they had no religion. The study by North London Muslim Housing Association in Kensington and Chelsea found that 97% of its Muslim respondents considered their religion to be 'very important,' with the remaining 3% considering it 'important.'

Going into the detail, our survey confirmed that Muslims are the largest non-Christian religious minority, both nationally and within the Housing Association sector. 4.7% of all Housing association tenants are Muslims, compared to 3.1% of the total population of England.

Since the proportion of Muslim housing association tenants is higher than their representation in the general population, this suggests strongly that housing associations are responding to deprivation within Muslim communities. The Census revealed that Muslims suffer disproportionate housing disadvantage - one third of Bangladeshi and Pakistani homes are deemed unfit and 12% of Muslim households have no central heating.

Housing associations are playing a part in tackling the serious problem of overcrowding by providing homes for large Muslim families. 10% of Muslim Housing Association tenants are in households of 7 or more people, compared with 2% of tenants overall.

This is an important contribution, but we need to do much more because because, as the Minister said, the figures are shocking - and they bear repeating. 42% of Muslim children are living in overcrowded households and over half (53%) of all Muslim children in London are in households defined as overcrowded.

The demand for large homes still outstrips supply and the Housing Corporation encourages housing associations to increase provision to relieve overcrowding among Muslims and other minority communities in the following ways:

We require Housing Associations to work with Local Authorities when putting forward bids & to take account of local housing needs assessments when developing schemes - meaning that, if they are developing in areas where overcrowding is a problem, we expect their schemes to include a higher proportion of large family dwellings than elsewhere.
To avoid any risk that targets based on units might lead to an over-emphasis on smaller homes, we have started reporting to government on the basis of the number of people to be accommodated, not just the number of units.

I am sure overcrowding and the supply of large family homes are topics which will be discussed in detail in the workshop on faith and housing.

On a negative note, the tenants survey appears to confirm the importance of racism, with the proportion of Muslim tenants who said that they or a member of their family had been physically assaulted, mugged or robbed in the street, or suffered verbal abuse or sexual harassment in the last year nearly double that for all tenants a whole.

Any level of anti social is unacceptable. Anti social behaviour disrupts lives, creates fear, and can drive wedges between individuals, groups and whole communities. Racial, religious and ethnicity motivated harassment and ASB is particularly destructive. At its worst it leads to the sort of problems we have seen in Birmingham recently.

As key players in many of the most deprived neighbourhoods, social landlords must be alert and bring in other agencies to ensure that issues that can arise such as harassment and anti social behaviour are tackled at their source.

The Corporation promotes a tripartite approach to tackling anti social behaviour based on prevention, enforcement and support - for both perpetrator and victims. And all housing associations, whatever their size, whatever the context in which they operate, now have established policies on how they will deal with anti-social behaviour, and their tenants should have received information about those policies.

Back to the survey, it is disappointing that Muslim tenants' satisfaction with their landlords, their repair services and their homes were lower than tenants overall, although overall satisfaction, at 73% (compared to 77% for all tenants) was still moderately high.

More research is needed to find out precisely what lies behind these relatively lower satisfaction ratings, but as a first step, landlords need to consider whether they have responded to all the issues raised in the NHF's good practice guide on Accommodating diversity, and whether their staff training prepares them to deal sensitively with all their tenants needs.

On a more positive note, one of the findings from the survey that I found most interesting was the substantial demand for home ownership among Muslims. 29% of Muslim tenants aspired to be home owners in 10 years time compared with 13% of tenants overall, and they are ready to make financial sacrifices to achieve this - 24% said they were willing to pay more than their rent to become homeowners, compared to 17% of tenants overall.

Potentially, this is a tremendous opportunity, and one that we are keen to exploit. There is a new range of new low cost home ownership products available: New Build Homebuy, Open Market Homebuy and Social HomeBuy. These will offer choice and flexibility to key workers, first time buyers, as well as social tenants. There will be renewed emphasis on affordability to the customer, ensuring we are helping priority target groups, and on fairness.

The promotion of home ownership is not just valuable as means of meeting individual housing aspirations. It can also be beneficial in acting as a catalyst for change in local housing markets. By changing tenure and income profiles within local populations, it is possible to help re-establish and raise confidence in local housing markets.

Home ownership can also provide a route into the accumulation of asset wealth that would otherwise denied, thereby opening up a greater range of life choices to individuals and communities.

From the Corporation's perspective we are particularly interested in the potential of these changes to help with regeneration objectives, introducing more mixed tenure to mono-tenure estates, as well, of course, as the potential for liberating more resources for new homes.

Today it is simply unacceptable that there are still communities in which all or near all the homes are for social rent. This isn't because social rented housing is a bad thing - indeed I would hope and expect that the Housing Corporation's 2006/08 programme will deliver the most new homes for affordable rent in many years, well over 70,000.

Still, it is fundamentally wrong to ghettoise and stigmatise large groups of people by consigning them to lives in neighbourhoods where you would never live if you had either money or choice. We need to turn mono-tenure estates around - it is a challenge that will require imagination and resources, but it is within our reach, with your help. Extending home ownership is a significant part of the way forward.

Another of the main questions that is raised when looking at community cohesion is what we call 'clustering', where people of similar ethnicity, or social background live near each other.

Often people cluster together as a result of positive choice (for example, proximity to family members, access to cultural resources, strong community ties). But it can also occur as a result of systematic discrimination and a lack of choice - when clustered areas are invariably deprived.

Whatever the reasons are, we know that it is in areas of deprivation that community cohesion issues are most prominent.

Sustainable communities, then, are based around diversity of membership and diversity of tenure. About integration, not isolation.

And speaking of isolation, I will make one last reference to the survey. A surprising finding, both from the national research and our tenants' survey, is that there is a high proportion of Muslim lone parents - 18% of Muslim housing association tenancies, compared with 14% of all tenancies. Almost all of the lone parents are women, and women also make up the majority of Muslim Housing Association tenants (55%). We have a workshop on women and housing to look at these issues more fully.

Well, I hope I have touched on some issues which you will find interesting to discuss in the workshops. I am sure there are many also many other points you will want to raise as well. The intention is that this conference should lead to practical results, so we would like each workshop to conclude by proposing three key points for action which the facilitators can bring back to the plenary session.

The issues raised in discussion during the day will be written up into a paper which we plan to publish in the New Year. This will set out actions which we, housing providers and community representatives can discuss locally and nationally to improve service delivery to Muslims and other faith communities. The paper, or rather the dialogue it promotes, will, we hope, be the main outcome of this conference. We want today to be the start of a process of improved engagement between service providers and communities.

In summary, then. Faith based housing associations, have a important role to play both as major landlords - often in areas that need a lot of improvement - and as the providers of management services and consultancy to others. You have the experience of working with tenants and residents and with many other partner organisations to find solutions at local level. And the Corporation is committed to supporting you in those roles.

And I also want to take this opportunity to thank you for what has been achieved so far. Because that effort has already made a unique contribution to community cohesion; empowerment of residents; providing homes and services to people in some of the greatest unmet housing need; righting some of the historical injustices arising from racism and neglect; identifying and supporting talented leaders and managers; and highlighting your community and housing needs.

We all have role to play a role in promoting sustainable and cohesive communities into the future. Because social housing is at the heart of the community cohesion agenda. There are some 2000 housing associations in England, currently managing around 2 million homes and housing at least twice that many people. Based on this I think I can safely say that at least one in every ten people in this country lives in a home managed by a housing association. And this doesn't include the almost additional three million homes managed by local authorities and ALMOs. That's a massive sphere of influence in which we can work. But it all starts from the very local level - with inclusion, and with empowerment.

If we cannot create communities where people choose to live and work - and actually enjoy living and working - then all our efforts will have been in vain. If we all work together, I believe we can make it happen.

Thank you.