SOCIAL HOUSING
A SPOTLIGHT ON SOCIAL HOUSING
Lee Venables, Chief Operating Officer of social housing service providers Kinovo plc, looks at how the housing sector is meeting the challenges of retrofit.
Whether a commercial facilities manager or a social housing asset manager, the ultimate goal is to create the very best buildings and homes for those who live and work in them, but the social housing sector is undoubtedly facing far more significant challenges in making that happen.
UK social housing landlords are under some of the greatest pressure they’ve ever experienced, battling to implement new measures that have formed a huge overhaul of regulation following the Grenfell Tower tragedy in 2017. These include new Fire Regulations, the Building Safety Act, the new Procurement Act, Awaab’s Law on Damp and Mould, the reviewed Decent Homes Standard, implementation of the Tenant Satisfaction Measure Standard and of course, the elephant in the room, decarbonisation. All of these need to be delivered against a backdrop of desperate skills shortages, inflationary pressures, and a spike in housing repairs post-pandemic.
At the time of writing, the election looms and regardless of the results, the social housing sector is likely to have to continue to grapple with all of the challenges, with retrofitting being one of the biggest, but most critical, asks.
The roadmap to Net Zero by 2050 When you look at the data, it shows just how critical this ‘ask’ is. It’s no secret that some of the oldest and most energy-inefficient homes in Europe are to be found here in the UK. To date, the Government has drawn on decades of independent research and provisions, but the
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resulting energy efficiency schemes and initiatives have not delivered as standalone measures. Over the last two decades, we’ve seen mixed success in the large-scale delivery of energy efficiency attempts and I can recall several: HIPs; CERT; CESP ECO 2,3, now 4; Green Deal; Green Homes Voucher Scheme; LAD schemes; HUG 1, 1b, now HUG 2, to name but a few.
But the stats are stark:
• Domestic properties account for 23% of the UK’s carbon emissions. There is no way to achieve the legally binding pledge of Net Zero by 2050 without addressing how we currently heat and insulate our homes.
• 27m homes in the UK will need to be retrofitted by 2050 – 1.7 homes per minute, every minute for the next 30 years.
• National Energy Action estimates that in 2024 there are six million households in fuel poverty, unable to heat their homes to the temperatures needed to keep warm and healthy.
• Each year around 10,000 people die as a result of living in a cold home.
Retrofitting our national housing stock is the most critical climate problem to solve and without ‘joined up thinking’ from Government and our supply chain, we will not beat climate change. Put simply, getting our 27m homes retrofitted and renovated is the biggest engineering challenge the UK has ever faced. More than 80% of
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