From red lights to green

There is retrofitting and then there is retrofitting - and Wolverhampton Homes is definitely doing the latter. The arm’s-length management organisation has picked out 13 ageing houses in one of the city’s least desirable areas and is looking to turn them into eco-homes. Oh, and all of the pre-1900 houses are empty - some having lain vacant for nearly a decade.

The houses are all in the All Saints area which, despite being located near the city centre, has remained low demand due to its reputation as being Wolverhampton’s former red light district. Using grants totalling £180,000 from the new deal for communities All Saints and Blakenhall community development partnership, the ALMO is trying to kill three birds with one eco-stone. It is hoping that by turning on the green light in these homes it will address the vacancy problems, act as a stimulus for regeneration and, simultaneously, trial the cost-effectiveness of sustainable retrofit technologies for the rest of its stock.

Ultimately, the scheme aims to find out whether improving the eco-standard of empty homes in undesirable areas is enough of an incentive to attract social tenants. It is an intriguing test of tenants’ appetite for sustainability. If it works, there are a lot of people and social landlords that stand to benefit. Inside Housing’s Empty Promise campaign last year revealed that there are 762,735 empty homes in England alone - despite social housing waiting lists exceeding 1.8 million people. Judging the scheme’s likely success, however, is tricky given the scale of the challenge.

‘The ladies of the night have long since departed the All Saints area but the stigma remains,’ says Steve North, eco-homes project officer and regeneration head at Wolverhampton Homes.

‘We only have around 60 homes in the area and when private landlords see homes neglected and empty it suggests a lack of investment and has a negative impact on the rest of the neighbourhood. If you have one property empty then you soon have 10 empty. So, we decided that to attract tenants, we wanted to do more than just refurbish these homes.’

The properties that have been picked out for this project are pre-1900 solid wall buildings. This means that from the outset they were always going to be especially challenging to insulate. On top of fundamental structural issues, they were also suffering from neglect with damp problems, no heating and requiring extensive replastering. As a result, they were also damaging the surrounding properties.

To retrofit each of the homes, the ALMO spent an average of £28,000 to £30,000 per property - although, the contractors agreed to do the first two for free. It has installed a wide range of renewable technologies, including air source heat pumps, photovoltaic panels, alongside insulation through 25ml internal thermal boarding and ‘sun pipes’, which allow natural sunlight to light dark stairwells in the daytime.

‘Most of the homes started out in a real state,’ says Mr North. ‘We were aiming to achieve a sustainable homes code four, but have found it very tricky given the challenges such old neglected buildings presented. Right now we have reached code three which we are very happy about given that these are targets for new-build homes. Originally, we got a standard assessment procedure rating of 45 [out of 100], but we have now got our energy performance certificate back and got an SAP rating of 65 which is great.’

So, while the ALMO has had success in its eco-venture, has the scheme been able to solve its empty homes problem? So far, tenant demand has been strong. Only two of the houses have been completed and following an open viewing day, which Wolverhampton Homes says was ‘inundated’ with interested would-be tenants, two of the properties have already been snapped up. They have both been let to young families. One tenant has already moved in and the other is in the process of doing so.

It expects similar demand for the remaining 11 homes when they are completed in June. After that the houses will be monitored by Wolverhampton University for at least 12 months and on the back of the results, the ALMO will decide how it should best tackle the retrofitting of the 23,500-homes it manages to meet the warmer homes standard of a 29 per cent carbon cut by 2020.

‘These technologies may end up not actually being much better for tenants’ bills than standard heating,’ concedes Mr North. ‘But at least this way we will know what to use for our future stock - at the same time as reducing the number of vacant homes.’

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