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Dispatches from Housing 2025: day one
A daily round-up of the most important headlines from day one of the Housing 2025 conference. Photography by Guzelian
Dispatches from Housing 2025: day one #UKhousingA daily round-up of the most important headlines from day one of the Housing 2025 conference #UKhousingDelegates attempting to get to Manchester for the Housing 2025 conference this year could be forgiven that public transport and the elements were against them.
Delays in London and congestion at Stafford. People who did get closer to the city were held up by news of a fire near the station.
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True to the North’s reputation, the recent heatwave had been replaced with torrential rain. But once inside the relative safety of the convention centre, much of the attention turned to the fall out from the Spending Review.
On the first day of the annual conference, Sir Keir Starmer set out how his government intends to keep its promises to the sector, in an exclusive comment piece for Inside Housing.
Elsewhere, there was clarity on the timing of a consultation on rent convergence and when the new Affordable Homes Programme (AHP) will open for bidding. Working in partnership to ramp up delivery, devolution and how to make the most of AI were also on the agenda.
Here is our round-up of what was discussed on Tuesday.
Big questions for Homes England
Just before lunch, senior leaders explained why Homes England needs to put devolution at the heart of the new AHP and distribute the cash quicker in a way that moves away from a site-by-site approach.
Delegates heard of viability concerns in bringing brownfield sites forward, alongside the ability to deliver larger numbers of social homes on larger sites.
Senior leaders from Sheffield and Manchester shared their experiences of how devolution and partnerships would help make the most of the £39bn AHP cash.
The government has promised details on the make-up of the AHP “shortly”. One delegate heard that 30% of the money will be directed to shared ownership, which holds up against Homes England’s previous admission that 60% of the top-up AHP cash before the Spending Review had gone towards social rent.
While the details are still being thrashed out, there was clarity on timescales in an afternoon session. Eamonn Boylan, chief executive of Homes England, revealed that the consultation on rent convergence “will be starting later this month” and the new AHP will open for bids by the end of the calendar year.
While delegates debated the role Homes England will play in the sector going forward, the government’s housing and regeneration agency announced it has appointed a new chief investment officer, who is set to start in September.
Simon Century joins from Legal and General, where he is head of capital investing and responsible for leading the firm’s investments and strategy. He will lead on Homes England’s investment activities, particularly to shape the set-up of the National Housing Bank.
Pat Ritchie, interim chair of Homes England, told a roundtable that the housing bank will enable Homes England to “blend products that we already use to invest in housing – so loans, equity, guarantees – but to do it in a much more flexible way than we’ve been able to do up to now”.
“For some types of equity and guarantees, we need to go through the Treasury to get those approvals. That can take a while. [Once] the bank gets set up in the right way, we’ll be able to do that within the bank itself,” she explained.
This will mean “quicker decisions, more flexible decisions”, Ms Ritchie added. “We’ll be able to leverage private sector funding and go alongside private sector investment to really get housing moving.”
Regulatory concerns
Some housing providers expressed feeling regulatory overload. However, the Regulator of Social Housing’s director of strategy put it to them that this is because they are realising “how much catching up” they have to do in order to comply.
Will Perry told delegates that when landlords feel overloaded, they have reached the point at which they discover what they have to do to get themselves to the place where they should be.
“The regulatory standards are a minimum; they’re not an aspiration,” Mr Perry said.
Plus, the English regulator expects to see “how things are day to day”, as opposed to changes carried out in preparation for an inspection.
Housing ombudsman Richard Blakeway (above) called the Spending Review a “golden opportunity” for the housing sector, but warned that landlords must make sure current tenants see the benefits.
Speaking with senior sector figures on a range of topics, including learning from complaints, Mr Blakeway said the 10-year rent settlement and £39bn AHP are an opportunity for the sector “to really think about its future and shape its future”.
“That’s a great opportunity. Within that, it’s important that existing residents are taken on that journey and that existing residents experience improvements,” he said.
“A lot of that still comes back to some things which are fundamental, around culture and behaviours, as well as processes, systems and, obviously, resources.”
Other areas for regulatory concern were the roll-out of Awaab’s Law and the Decent Homes Standard.
One panel discussed how transitioning to the standard could be impacted by supply chains that are not there yet, as well as not receiving enough feedback from residents on what they want from the new rules.
Branwen Evans, group director of sustainability and policy at Places for People, highlighted how the transition to implementing the Decent Homes Standard was “very expansive”, with “a lot to do” instantly.
It needs to be supported by a supply chain, which is currently “not there”, and tenants need to be engaged further to understand what they want so the money could be allocated there, she said.
For Awaab’s Law, social landlords are preparing for new strict time limits on investigating and repairing damp and mould. This is set to be brought in October this year under a law named for two-year-old Awaab Ishak, who died after being exposed to mould in his home.
One landlord pointed out that complying with the legislation will provide a huge challenge over the next three years, as all the hazards come online. This is because the association would be looking at sending out 50,000 reports a year to customers within 48 hours of the inspection taking place.
Is AI the answer?
Ian Johnson, executive director of customer services at Karbon Homes, seems to think so.
He said machine-learning technology that predicts repairs has probably saved the housing association around three-quarters of a million pounds.
Mr Johnson added: “We will have to get to grips very quickly, I think, with AI. I personally believe that will be the only thing that really makes Awaab’s Law effective for us.”
In another session on using data and AI to improve the tenant experience, representatives from different housing associations explained their approach.
Shaun Holdcroft, chief growth officer at Legal & General (L&G) Affordable Homes, outlined how L&G has embedded AI into its own digital platform, My Brolly, which deals with data all the way from new developments to onboarding customers and delivering services.
He said AI has helped to drive priorities for L&G’s service design by using customer feedback to draft ‘user stories’; improve repairs, with 5,000 jobs completed in 2025 so far via AI interfaces; and to inform L&G on points of failure in its system.
Other suggestions to improve tenant interaction included multilingual chatbots, AI dubbing for multilingual video communications, and so-called ‘sentiment analysis’ of surveys, which can detect early dissatisfaction among customers.
Retrofitting existing stock and future-proofing new builds for a changing climate
On existing stock, one panel outlined challenges to decarbonising homes to make them “warmer, cleaner and greener”. These are:
- Financing the transition
- Accessing data on buildings and their performance
- Energy and grid access to buildings that use more electricity
- Retrofitting heritage and listed buildings
Future-proofing for a changing climate needs to ensure that the quality of new builds is maintained so that they are resilient and adaptable for long-term sustainability.
Experts in planning and sustainability came together in one session to discuss how an increasing number of new homes are being built in line with government targets. However, one warned that “political levers”, such as the Future Homes Standard, can lead to siloed views of what needs to be done and how, which can be counter-productive.
Also debated was how to implement the Decent Homes Standard holistically when retrofitting, alongside the potential introduction of similar English legislation to the Welsh Well-being of Future Generations Act 2015 and the Proposed Ecocide (Prevention) (Scotland) Bill, which criminalises ecocide.
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