Decent homes can rectify its failings

What is needed now is a decent policy and delivery mechanism to move forward and correct the failings of decent homes. The National Audit Office report, The decent homes programme, highlighted many of these effectively, but there are more fundamental failings.

The programme was shortsighted in the thermal comfort criteria. The minimum standard of energy performance of a household was set as being free of Category 1 hazards. This is incredibly low (equivalent to households scraping into a B and E on the energy performance certificates).

Talk of decent homes plus shows the degree of ‘groupthink’ pervading the sector and how so-called policy experts are trapped in a mindset that prevents them from thinking beyond the current approach.

To ensure no vulnerable or low-income household is subjected to living in a low-quality, expensive-to-heat property, we need urgently to introduce a nationwide programme of retrofit to the entire housing stock. The government must legislate for all properties to attain a statutory minimum standard of energy performance. Meeting this must be a requirement attached to the sale or rental of homes.

Having failed to meet the 2010 target to eradicate it in vulnerable households, the government needs to ensure improvements to the entire housing stock and reducing household energy bills are a top priority. A mandatory minimum standard attached to sale and rental of properties is a primary mechanism that will make this achievable.

This standard should be at least equivalent to SAP 65 (EPC band C), more likely SAP 81 (EPC band B) if the government has any desire to also meet its carbon reduction targets with a significant contribution from the housing sector.

Maria Wardrobe, director of communications, National Energy Action