How successful resident engagement helped with an ambitious retrofit project
Beyond Housing’s ambitious retrofit programme in North Yorkshire has paid off thanks to effective resident engagement
Beyond Housing’s ambitious retrofit programme in North Yorkshire has paid off thanks to effective resident engagement (sponsored) #UKhousingIn association with:
At E.ON Green Funding Solutions we’ve been involved with energy efficiency and retrofit for many years now, working with housing providers across the country. Our long-term goal is to support the UK’s transition to net zero, and we do that by installing three types of measures to homes.
These are insulation, which helps prevent heat loss from a property; low-carbon heating measures, to provide a more efficient heating system; and renewable energy generation measures, such as solar PV, to reduce demand on individual customers’ homes.
Through our partnerships with housing associations and local authorities, the first step of a journey for residents is a retrofit assessment.
During these assessments, we enter the home and carry out individual surveys to understand the condition of the property in terms of its energy efficiency. We can then take our findings to the client to present some proposals for what we feel would improve the energy efficiency of their residents’ homes.
We understand that the housing providers we work with have limited resources to look into these matters themselves, and that’s where we can really add value by bringing our expertise to the table.
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Our teams of retrofit co-ordinators, project managers, site managers and site supervisors run these projects from start to finish. Our teams of bid writers also support the client to help secure government funding.
During the delivery of these projects, transparent communication is uppermost in our minds. We prioritise making sure that residents are kept informed and reassured throughout the works. Community events and a consistent on-site presence help build this level of trust and minimise disruption to residents’ lives.
The work we do in E.ON Green Funding Solutions is really rewarding, as we can see how we’re directly impacting people’s lives in a positive way. Over the previous two years, we’ve delivered more than 28,000 measures across more than 19,000 homes.
As a whole, this has achieved around £135m worth of lifetime savings for residents, or the equivalent of five years of free energy for individual customers, and we look forward to working with even more housing providers in the future.
Adam Jones, head of business development and pre-contract, E.ON Green Funding Solutions
Case study: Hungate Court, North Yorkshire
Size: 32 flats
The residents of Hungate Court – a sheltered housing block of 32 flats in Hunmanby, North Yorkshire – loved where they lived. It was a familiar place for them with a real community spirit. It was their home.
Yet they admitted that it wasn’t comfortable and it wasn’t warm. Their surroundings were tired and the electric storage heaters in their flats were inefficient. “You might have radiators on, but you don’t feel them,” said one resident, and their hot water system, powered by immersion heaters, was antiquated.
Meanwhile, their fuel bills were high. Reportedly, some were thinking of leaving because of the cold and the cost.
Something needed to change, but Beyond Housing – Hungate Court’s owner-operator – faced a dilemma. The fact was, the fabric of the building was old; it had been converted into flats in 1971 but the bricks and mortar dated back to 1945. Cosmetic changes wouldn’t be enough; a bespoke retrofit programme was necessary to make it properly warm and energy efficient.
The question was: would work on that scale be effective? “We were sat on the fence because it was such an old building,” says Ian Tennant, investment programme manager at Beyond Housing.
In the end, it was Hungate Court’s residents who convinced Beyond Housing to greenlight a retrofit programme that would benefit all 32 homes.
“Steve Rawson, our chief operations officer, went down and had a meeting with [the residents] and thrashed it all out,” Mr Tennant says. “They were very vocal and passionate. They said, ‘We love the place. Just spend some money on it, bring it back up to date.’ When he came back he said, ‘Let’s get it done.’”
Beyond Housing partnered with E.ON Green Funding Solutions to deliver what turned out to be a hugely complicated but ultimately rewarding project. Costing £2.2m – supported by £650,000 from the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund – it required work including external wall insulation, loft insulation, improved ventilation, new double glazing and the installation of solar panels on the roof.
Alongside this complex and varied portfolio of additions, ground source heat pumps were part of the design, complicating the process both for E.ON and for Beyond Housing.
“Numerous boreholes had to be drilled between 250 and 300 metres deep,” remembers Jamie Whitaker, asset sustainability manager at Beyond Housing. “And they had to be in exactly the right place to get the energy from the ground.”
Changing residents’ lives
The drilling equipment was large and extremely noisy, but on a project of this size and complexity it was just one of many disruptions that residents might face. Good resident engagement was therefore critical.
Darren Pearson, site supervisor from E.ON, and Stephanie Lake, community partnership and engagement manager at Beyond Housing, were constantly available to update residents with progress reports and answer any questions they had. Mr Tennant remembers: “The site team were excellent, and the relationships they built with customers really helped.”
From planning to delivery, the project took nearly two years (from April 2023 to March 2025) and the results have transformed Hungate Court. Every flat is better insulated and now meets an Energy Performance Certificate rating of C or better.
Residents can expect to save up to £630 a year on their energy bills. Plus, the building is greener, with 176 energy-saving improvements reducing CO2 emissions by 81 tonnes per year.
To top it all off, the retrofit recently won ‘Large-Scale Project of the Year’ at the Yorkshire Energy Efficiency Awards.
The work has the seal of approval from residents, who say their living spaces feel warmer and more comfortable. And because the building looks so much better, they now take even more pride in living there.
Mr Whitaker saw their satisfaction first-hand, on a particularly special occasion. He was at Hungate Court when David Skaith, mayor of York and North Yorkshire, came to admire the completed project.
“He called into a couple of properties to speak to [residents],” Mr Whitaker says. “It was overwhelming how much [the project has] improved their quality of life and well-being at the same time.”
He recalls one resident being especially pleased about how the works had changed her home for the better.
“[She was] talking about the damp and mould issues she’d had before, [how] her energy bills were too high [and how the retrofit programme has now] changed the scope completely. She was over the moon.”
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