It’s winter once more. The nights have drawn in, the temperature outside has dropped and we’re fast approaching the festive season. As this year draws to a close, it presents an opportunity to reflect on what has felt like another challenging year for many of our clients and their customers.

Despite those ongoing pressures, there is still plenty of inspirational work going on to help people through tough times. We have been proud to support many organisations over the past 12 months to ensure they have been able to continue their life-changing work.

With this in mind, in this CT Brief we have drawn together a diverse range of articles we believe offers valuable food for thought around common thorny problems. This includes developing strong organisational culture, the potential impact of rent convergence, insights into complaints handling using our CultureScan tool, charity risk assessments and consumer regulation for local authorities.

James McHugh provides an update on the Temporary Accommodation Network (TAN), which we helped to establish this year. The network is already fostering greater collaboration between councils, housing providers, developers, funders, managing agents, and homelessness charities leading to shared good practice and hopefully, reduced costs. We hope the network will continue to expand in 2026 to help tackle what is a common problem.

We’re so grateful to everyone who participated in our recent stakeholder survey. This issue includes a summary of the very valuable insight this has provided.

The issue features insightful guest articles, including Dr. David Lehrer's hopeful overview of cross-border humanitarian and environmental peacebuilding efforts in Gaza. Alongside this, we have guest articles on tenant engagement with minority communities and the Economic Crime Act.

As ever, thanks for taking the time to read the Brief and a big thank you to our guest authors for their contributions. The only question that remains is… is it too early for a mince pie?