What the Warm Homes Fund means for social housing

While the issue of fuel poverty has increasingly shifted to the private rented and owner-occupied sectors, the most vulnerable are still social housing tenants.

“The new fund is great news for the social housing sector, which has been facing an increasingly challenging financial environment.”

Therefore the WHF is an important first step towards providing sufficient support for social housing and eliminating fuel poverty in this sector.

Deadlines for the fund are relatively tight; bids can be submitted from today (7 August) until 8 September, during the summer holiday peak.

That said, the fund offers a number of important benefits to those who apply:

• Of particular note is the way that WHF differentiates between urban, rural and health-related drivers – since these do require different approaches.
• There are also positive signs that WHF is seeking a holistic approach, by ensuring that all properties involved in the scheme reach ‘appropriate insulation standards’.
• Holistic action is valuable because it improves the experience for occupants and also ensures higher returns on investment. There is potential for WHF to be more integrated in its approach, for example by ensuring comprehensive assessments are conducted for each property, but this is an important start.

While there are several attractive features of WHF, there are some areas for potential improvement:

• The overall standards are arguably too low. Tackling fuel poverty in F and G-rated homes to bring them to the government target of an E essentially means these properties will need to be revisited for additional measures when the standard rises again, which it will need to in order to meet 2030 emission targets. If homes were dealt with comprehensively now, the process would be slightly longer and more expensive in the short term, but ultimately the return on investment would be improved.
• Implicit in the criteria is the need to show additionality. With this approach comes the risk that successful applicants will be those who are already the best hoop-jumpers, rather than necessarily being those in the areas of greatest need.

Sustainable Homes is taking a great interest in lessons that can be learned by social housing following its report Touching the Voids, which looked at the on-cost to social landlords of low Energy Performance Certificate homes in terms of rent arrears, evictions etc.

“We would like to see much better connection between funding sources.”

The outcomes were compelling, including evidence from the 500,000 homes covered in the study, that as houses become more energy efficient they are void for shorter periods. On average, band B properties were void for 31% less time than E and F properties.

Additionally, other cost savings identified include time spent seeking overdue rent payment, legal costs and court costs which decline by around 35% for more energy efficient homes.

The savings for landlords can add up to millions over a decade, so the return on investment is clear for landlords as well as for the tenants.

So in summary, while the Warm Homes Fund is to be broadly welcomed, we would like to see much better connection between funding sources so that social housing providers can spend less energy on jumping through multiple hoops and more on creating holistic, effective and efficiently executed interventions.

We would also like to see the deadlines extended on this initiative to give all 407 local authorities and the many thousands of housing associations a better chance to apply.

While we understand that this may not be attractive logistically to AWS, it would create a bank of quantifiable evidence as to the scale and scope of the required funding to meet the national need to eliminate fuel poverty in the social sector, at least.

Sarah Daly, director of strategic sustainability and partnerships, Sustainable Homes