When the average SHDF completion rate is 35%, how have we reached 185% of our retrofit programme goal?

Despite it being a great result in the end, speed of delivery was not one of the success factors with this project, and some customers in the blocks opted out of the improvements. This reduced our delivery rate, so this experience told us that if speed was a key part of the funding going forward, then our next programme needed to focus on houses and not flats. This was lesson one.

We listened to others, too. We took all the best practice we could find from schemes being delivered by other housing associations and we found that there were three main things causing slow completions.

First, we spotted early on that some of the delayed delivery was down to poor data. Most housing associations had a list of homes they were targeting with these improvements, and it was based on historical data showing homes rated D for energy performance or lower.

Meanwhile, when our homes were fully assessed by energy experts, some were actually recording a C energy performance rating. That removed some of the homes we were planning to improve with this funding. You then have to move on quickly to the next home on the list, but your delivery options are reducing each time you move on.

The second issue impacting improvement completions in the early days was that many of us picked the wrong types of improvements to make to our homes. Some lengthy improvements just didn’t help us to get motoring fast enough, such as EWI, which is very difficult to do in winter.

We were strategic with the procurement process, too. We knew everyone would be going to market at the same time, so we procured for the longer term, not just Wave 2. This gave our programme an edge over others, something extra to get a partner hooked. This decision is also helping us to make quicker progress on Wave 3.  

Finally, finding the right partner and working closely with the combined authority has also helped our success. Next Energy, our partners, have been fantastic. They had the specific energy knowledge and capacity to throttle up and down as we have progressed.

The Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, meanwhile, has been flexible at times with funding timescales, and was able to pass on additional funding to us when others were struggling to deliver on time while we had homes and a team ready to go.  

It’s not all been rosy, though. Around half of the homes we improved in Wave 2 and 2.1 had unknown and unreported damp and mould issues. This had to be fixed before we could even start the improvements.

This was an unforeseen additional cost and slowed us down at first. But, in the long term, we knew this was a really important discovery, so we invested in it, put it right, and cracked on with the energy efficiency improvements.

Our customers have been fantastic, and despite the disruption and mess in their homes, they are seeing the benefits. They have been using word of mouth to share their experience with neighbours about how much warmer their homes were after the work, and that encouraged these neighbours to approach our teams, wanting their home on the list to be improved.  

So what’s next? Earlier this year we successfully secured funding from Wave 3 of the Warm Homes Social Housing Fund, through the combined authority.

We then matched that funding to create a £6m programme, which will allow us to deliver energy efficiency improvements to more than 100 of our homes in the Bootle area of Sefton in phase one, followed by a further 200 homes across the Anfield, Everton, Wavertree and Kensington areas of Liverpool.

This is our third successful round, and takes our total investment to £16m since the start of Wave 1. This time we have budgeted for any unforeseen damp and mould issues, and taken on board all of our other lessons learned. Although work has only just started, we are already off to a flying start. Home number one is complete, and we have 306 homes booked in for improvements in the coming years.

We would love to roll this out to our homes in Cheshire in the future too. We know what works, we have a proven delivery model, so we just need further match funding programmes to help us improve more of our homes, as we aim to make sure all our customers live in homes rated EPC Band C or above by the end of the decade.

Chris Morris, executive director for customer, communities and homes, Plus Dane Housing