Dispatches from Housing 2025: day two

On retrofit, ensuring the quality of the work by improving skills and workforce capacity, were described as “fundamental” to successful projects that meet climate targets.

High-quality retrofit is “fundamental to success” and not an “optional luxury”, said Rowena Claydon-Smith, head of retrofit at Abri, during a panel discussion.

She said that a retrofit done “poorly” is a waste of money, and that collaboration, innovation and commitment must be considered.

In a separate session, a local government official made a similar point when she warned that retrofitting homes could lead to “huge” damp and mould problems in the future if it is not done carefully.

The concern was raised during a session on preparing for Awaab’s Law, which will bring in new legal time limits on investigating and repairing damp and mould.

Sophie Tuffin, who has led greener housing strategies at New Forest District Council, was asked about her concerns around the potential clash between the implementation of Awaab’s Law and the roll-out of retrofit measures.

While delivering energy-efficiency improvements for residents via government funding is a “really positive thing”, the timescales for delivering this are generally very short, she explained.

“When you’re making these improvements with increasing the air tightness of that property, if people haven’t considered very carefully their ventilation strategy and what they’re going to do around that, you are potentially storing up a huge problem for damp and mould,” Ms Tuffin said.

Problems will be seen at least a year later when residents used to having their windows closed and not using ventilation suddenly have a very damp and mouldy property, she explained. “I think we do have to be very, very careful when we are going at retrofit at such speed that we’re not building up a problem for the future,” Ms Tuffin stated.

While professionals discussed its implementation, the housing secretary set out in a written statement how the government will “clarify and adapt” its approach to Awaab’s Law “if we need to”.

The Spending Review also came with a promise from the government to take more of a place-based approach. However, councils face a “real challenge” in attracting talent and upping their capacity to leverage greater devolution to meet their local housing needs.

The concern comes around half a year after the government published its Devolution White Paper, which outlined the extra powers and funding local authorities could get, including for housing and regeneration.

Speaking about the challenges his clients face, particularly from a local and central government perspective, local authority recruitment expert Marek Dobrowolski said: “There’s a real sense, and there has been a real sense I think, that devolution has given real keys to opportunity.

“But it’s only going to be as good as the talent and the capacity and the system to be able to deliver against that ambition.”

While these discussions were ongoing, an embargoed press release from the Department for Work and Pensions suggested that the government is listening on construction workforce capacity.

It revealed plans for more than 40,000 industry placements, ranging from bricklayers to project managers, will be funded through £100m from the government, alongside a £32m contribution from the Construction Industry Training Board.

There was some good news for councils on the consumer standards, the Regulator of Social Housing’s chief executive said the regulation has helped them to refocus on housing.

Fiona MacGregor said that local authorities were “responding really well to the new standards”, despite the fact that they were getting slightly more C3 and C4 gradings.

“One of the reasons that we’re getting so much reactive, responsive work coming in is that as local authorities prepare for the new consumer regulation regime, they’re realising for themselves that they didn’t meet the outcomes of the standards and were self-referring,” she said.

Ms MacGregor said the RSH received feedback that the regulatory standards had been helpful in encouraging councils to refocus on housing services. “Having that reason to get everybody’s attention back on it, including councillors when they are covering so many areas, has been a very helpful conversation,” she said.

Mel Barrett, chief executive of Metropolitan Thames Valley and former chief executive of Nottingham City Council, reiterated that the regulation is “helpful in terms of bringing [housing] up the agenda and giving you that focus”.

Ms MacGregor added that for registered providers, the English regulator will continue to focus on value for money.

“Every penny will count going forward, and that’s true even when there’s more money coming into the sector. We want to see a really strong understanding of the cost base,” she said.

“It’s about being a really good steward of resources, regardless of how many of those resources you actually have.”

On the topic of modernising tenant engagement and increasing participation, Maureen Bristow, chair of Hull City Council, said that although the council uses a “blended approach” of digital and non-digital methods to engage with residents, people who have reading difficulties or do not have access to the internet pose the biggest challenge.

Methods include sending online and print newsletters by post, social media reels and QR codes on posters around neighbourhoods. The council’s tenant participation team is arranging a sign language course to help communication with deaf residents.

Other inclusivity efforts include newsletters sent out in Braille for blind tenants and having a women’s voice tenants and residents association. Meetings can also be held outside of normal hours.

Sarah Mitton, head of customer engagement at SNG, said the landlord launched Engage, a digital engagement platform, to send out questionnaires and surveys.

Paul Smith, head of Frameworx, added that tenant engagement is very important because those closest to the problem are often closest to the solution. Landlords should be designing services with tenants rather than for tenants to produce better results, he said, and tenants do not want to be consulted, they want genuine influence.

One early morning session set out why sector leaders will have to seek out new ways of working in partnership and forging alliances across other sectors to help the government deliver on its housing strategy.

Much of the talk was on leadership and how boards without the right skills and capacity could take a step back and seek the support of others who can provide the needed expertise.

Nick Walkley, principal and UK president at Avison Young, said: “The fact that housing appears in the national infrastructure strategy – that suddenly we’ve left from being an afterthought to sitting alongside railways, social infrastructure, water, power as absolutely crucial to the economy and to the sustainability of the United Kingdom as an economic force – is a very important moment.”

The former Homes England boss said the sector must experiment and take risk and identify more ways to work in partnership, even if some of these ideas fail.

Mr Walkley said: “The government, without announcing it, is involved in a grand governance and leadership experiment of a scale we’ve not seen for probably my lifetime.

“Devolution, new forms of government, moving things to the centre, moving the centre out into the country – that represents a really fundamental challenge to the way we lead organisations.

“I think the answer to the question about where is the appetite to develop is actually a broader question about where’s the capability and capacity for leadership around different issues.”

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