12 Tackling Fuel Poverty with Smarter Housing Solutions Round Table Review


RESIDENT AFFORDABILITY ISSUES Elaine Middleton homed straight in on the pointed issue of aff ordability in the ongoing cost of living challenge, with not only tenants but many local authorities struggling fi nancially. She asked simply: “How are tenants able to aff ord the upgrades?,” adding that with the varied pressures of everyday life, it was “easy for people to deprioritise energy effi ciency.” Other delegates alluded to both residents’ struggles to aff ord upgrades,


meaning good incentives were needed, but also the need to ensure that residents were closely engaged, to tackle persistent trust issues, and not treated at arms- length. Rachel Taylor of the University of South Wales referred to a “tension” among residents of “feeling ‘your home may not be your home,’” which could be exacerbated by mishandled upgrade projects which didn’t consider their needs properly. One solution, said Taylor, was “consistency of communication; extending to the front door,” therefore importantly including “onboarding” contractors to ensure they were engaged to both visit and undertake measures. Resident decants required to undertake property upgrades are always a


challenge, but the round table chair Elaine said that they could be more easily handled by the larger providers. She recommended that one way of avoiding decanting tenants was to concentrate on upgrading void properties, suggesting: “Let’s take the fi nancial hit and not race to get people in. Let’s worry about our KPIs and not our budget, and actually do the work.” Greg Robinson from Mears agreed, saying “it’s exactly what you should be


doing; why would you not exhaust the potential to improve that property while you’ve got free rein in terms of hours, access, etc,” adding, “we do try and do that as much as possible.” Delegates drew attention to the fact that there is a mixed picture across


social housing in terms of where properties’ energy effi ciency is posing a risk to tenants, including on health criteria. T ey said there are pockets of health risk around the country, but intelligent data gathering would be the viable means to identify these in detail and address them.


COLLABORATION & PLACE-BASED PLANS John Kolm-Murray of Turner & Townsend off ered some considered views around the need for collaboration across boundaries on upgrades, but also place-based planning – this was endorsed by others including Elaine Middleton. Kolm-Murray spoke about how devolution was supporting the regional approach: “One of the things that came out of the Warm Homes Plan is area- based delivery,” said Kolm-Murray. However, while landlords are well placed, he said, the Government is “actually talking about collaboration not just between landlords, but across tenures, that becomes more viable potentially when the devolved mayoral authorities have their arms around a lot more funding.”


He said while “some large housing associations are quite wary of having


to deal with multiple funders, in terms of the opportunities for community engagement, job creation and skills development, having a geographical based approach, having an off er for everyone will fi nally crack the able to pay market.” He added that such cross-agency working could help the grid’s District Network Operators, who were“ very invested and making sure that’s done properly, because it has signifi cant impacts for their loads – which on some areas are very stretched.” Elaine Middleton said it remained a “diffi cult one, because landlords play well


in place-based areas, but I’ve also seen why we don’t do that as well, especially when it comes to retrofi t, and you’ve got diff erent sides of a road owned by diff erent people.” She asked where there was a role for “suppliers, tech providers, partners, contractors, to bring people together and potentially off er more commercially attractive deals.” Kolm-Murray said he believed the Government was “slowly thinking about how it could start to incentivise this.”


TENANTS’ ROLE Piers Williamson raised some provoking questions around tenants’ roles in increasing energy effi ciency and reducing bills, saying there was an “implicit problem around the use of assets as designed” to fi x. He asked the group whether it would be more fruitful not to focus on


fi nancing mechanisms for upgrades, but instead to “encourage all owners and tenants to use their property intelligently. He gave a related example of people “living in passive houses, and the fi rst thing you see is them opening their windows when they have air recovery going on.” He added that there are “embedded issues around overcrowding, particularly in large conurbations,” and that it was “important to think about solutions behaviourally.” He said that it was crucial to give tenants realistic, citing a social housing


upgrade “during the last energy crisis, when people weren’t told that the aim was for bills not to go up; they were disappointed they didn’t go down. T ey were paying £20 to disconnect the installations.”


DATA T e use of data on homes’ energy performance almost presents a ‘general’ approach to solving the issues, as it cuts across so many diff erent areas of optimising retrofi ts and the consequent monitoring of installations to ensure effi ciency. Harnessing the potential of huge datasets across social housing portfolios, which is particularly relevant to the larger RPs, can help provide unprecedented transparency of the eff ectiveness of measures to tackle fuel poverty. Piers Williamson made this point, suggesting the most value would be gained by the larger landlords, but delegates accepted that data collection is another challenge to address for providers, particularly the smaller ones. But delegates also cautioned that it was diffi cult to be sure that the project


data would work as intended, and also that it would be able to accommodate the changing demographics inherent to a lot of social housing tenancies. People move fairly frequently and experience life changes, so the data gathering needs to be sophisticated and fl exible enough to cope with this reality. T e ability of diff erent data sets to work eff ectively with, and communicate


with, each other is fundamental to future success, said the group, though this was in its infancy in the sector. Greg Robinson of Mears suggested there could be “a gap in terms of asset management strategies that have led to this current position,” and whether there is a risk that they’re going to be repeated? Kyle Brown from sponsor Chameleon Technology said “no-one [in the


TENANTS AS ALLIES Delegates including Rebecca Rieley of HACT and Rachel Taylor of University of South Wales stressed the benefi ts of developing ‘allyship’ with tenants


sector] is doing Internet of T ings data right yet,” and “the biggest barrier is cost.” John Kolm-Murray of Turner & Townsend said that this was a “big challenge for small housing providers.” Both Brown and Robinson from Mears said that more rapid deployment of approaches to tackling data were needed, and Brown asserted the current data standard for smart meters was 15 years out of date. He added that the sector did not need to build all brand new datasets, but instead can “use the existing data.” Kolm-Murray said that in terms of tackling


Housing Management & Maintenance Summer 2026


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