Delegates Call for Policy Certainty

Social housing providers are at the heart of two political hot potatoes in the United Kingdom: the ongoing housing crisis and, with registered providers’ 4.4m homes contributing significantly to the nation’s carbon emissions, the drive to net-zero by 2050. Bringing up the quality of homes through retrofit also alleviates the burden on the NHS and social services.

The challenges faced by social housing providers were recently expressed during a roundtable meeting of senior social housing representatives co-hosted by the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) and the Chartered Institute of Housing as part of CIOB’s Client Strategy.

The roundtable delegates confirmed the variety of ages and types in their portfolios of homes makes the task of upgrading them complex. Because of this, making efficient and effective progress along the path to net-zero is tricky, especially when some of the technology has yet to mature and past government policy (on gas boilers, for example) has wavered.

The complexity for providers is compounded by conflicting priorities, not least to do with health and safety, innovation, the need to adapt to climate change, and meeting Decent Homes standards. As one delegate put it, putting these pieces of this policy jigsaw together at the moment is like “trying to pin jelly to the wall.”

Cash of the sort provided by the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund (SHDF) isn’t all that’s needed to greenlight decarbonisation work. Housing associations frequently have overriding commercial pressures. Take homes featuring older, solid-wall construction, for example. Insulating them as part of a fabric-first solution is not only comparatively expensive but runs the risk of actively damaging the assets’ value, making the work hard to justify in the business case.

Even when SHDF cash does greenlight retrofit work, structural barriers in how the fund works make it less efficient and cost-effective than it could be. Instead of piecemeal upgrades around the country, the money could be better spent funding regional partnerships of providers for joint procurement of work focused on single areas, perhaps governed by the relevant local authority.

Not only would this lessen the resource-intensive administrative burden of running multiple contracts – lowering prices and achieve economies of scale – but it would also encourage a greater emphasis on placemaking (in line with the Building Beautiful Places plan and the National Policy Planning Framework). The resulting pipeline of work would encourage industry investment in recruiting labour and upskilling in retrofit work, which are currently in massively short supply. According to the roundtable delegates, though, making it happen requires a more “grown-up strategic partnership” between the social housing sector and government.

Despite these barriers, there is goodwill in the sector and, indeed, progress towards net-zero is already well underway. Housing providers are reskilling, reorganising and reprioritising their investment goals with the help of carbon literacy training and better data. The forthcoming UK Net Zero Carbon Building Standard is providing a robust benchmark and springboard for agreed cross-sector action.

Importantly, providers are increasing their focus on social tenants by paying due attention to their justified anxieties about work that disrupts daily life and might tip them into, or further into, fuel poverty without competent technical oversight.

Asked about their hopes and aspirations for the UK’s new government, the delegates were unanimous in wanting adequate long-term funding, a national retrofit strategy, reform of town planning and, especially, relief from policy uncertainty. These should, perhaps, feature in the new Labour government’s housing policy.

Source: The House