Retrofitting homes to meet 2050 climate targets could also create a healthier way of living
An Inside Housing roundtable, in association with Morgan Sindall Property Services, considers how retrofitting to meet climate targets links to addressing fuel poverty, poor living conditions and healthier communities. Photography by Belinda Lawley
An @insideHousing roundtable with @morgansindallps considers how retrofitting to meet climate targets links to addressing #fuelpoverty, poor living conditions and healthier communities #UKhousing (sponsored) Phil Copperwheat @morgansindallps says tenants worry about costs when moving from gas to electric: “When a tenant is living in #fuelpoverty insulating a home can significantly improve it. We need to consider tenants in whole retrofit process” (sponsored).@KateHand2 @londoncouncils says: “Decarbonisation targets are a big challenge – London Councils recommends that £98bn is spend exclusively on London homes” #UKhousing (sponsored) @morgansindallpsIn association with:
In 2019, the government committed to achieving net zero carbon by 2050. The transition to reaching this goal will be a challenge for the housing sector, however, with social landlords having to plan to cut emissions from their five million homes. Energy use from housing accounts for around 14% of greenhouse gases, according to the Climate Change Committee, so their contribution is vital.
The journey towards 2050 sets out several milestones for emissions – a 37% reduction by next year, 57% by 2035 and 78% by 2035 (compared to 1990 figures) – to achieve the final goal. Combined with the introduction of the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act in March 2019, it is intended that all rented homes will be meeting a minimum standard of living, be safe, compliant and healthy because they are low-carbon, well ventilated and low cost to maintain and heat.
Inside Housing’s roundtable, sponsored by Morgan Sindall Property Services, and chaired by Inside Housing editor Martin Hilditch, brought together housing experts to ask how the sector might formulate a strategy to work towards these targets, and how technology and metrics can play a role, combined with how to ensure that the homes of the future are sustainable and healthy.
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Healthy homes and inhabitants
A good place to start is what the healthy home of the future will look like and what it means. For Kate Hand, head of climate change at London Councils, it is about the public health benefits gained from healthy tenants. “If you’re stopping people in a rudimentary way from going to A&E for symptoms such as respiratory disease which has developed from poor living conditions, then that is a saving,” she says.
Jonathan Rickard, head of sustainability and design at Abri Group, agrees, noting that BRE Group, the charity dedicated to improving the built environment, published research in November – The Cost of Poor Housing in England – that suggests unhealthy homes cost the NHS £1.4bn a year, and the costliest issue is those suffering from excess cold.
When building a net zero carbon strategy two years ago, Sovereign Housing Association first took a step to evaluate the bigger picture, says Jim Dyer, its construction and technical director. “We are not chasing the carbon metric… We have social purpose at the heart of our organisation and we look at issues holistically. This is about health, well-being, affordability and carbon reduction across the business, both in existing and new build properties.
“During the pandemic, the most vulnerable were suffering the most from COVID-19 and we were housing these people. It has taught us to reflect more on the influence of the built environment. Placemaking also plays into this – green infrastructure, travel infrastructure and social infrastructure – it’s not only about the home. Carbon is the bolt-on issue here.”
Delivering a solution
This is a big challenge, says Ms Hand. “The reality is the government is not going to be able to meet the scale of the work to be done [when it comes to funding]. We recommend that £98bn should be spent exclusively on homes across London – that is the scale of the challenge we have.”
Matt Harrison, programme director of the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund at the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, feels that the £800m allocated to the housing sector over the next three years “is really substantial” but that it is more than a question of how to finance the work to reach targets. “A supply chain needs to be developed, communication is vital, from good leadership to engagement… and research to share the information is also key,” he says.
Many around the table nod in agreement. Donna Williams, director of sustainability and climate change at Sanctuary, says her organisation has been on an interesting journey in the past year. “We went out to market for a seven-year contract for whole-home retrofit in January and our new contract started in April. It is one of the first contracts out there actually saying, ‘This is a whole home retrofit and is flexible.’ How can we say we have a consistent pattern of work, and work with suppliers, when we don’t necessarily know what the next few years look like? We’ve had to ask, ‘Be flexible with us on this journey.’”
Mr Hilditch asks what the key issue is right now with recruiting people to do the work. Ms Hand replies: “There is a real danger of under-delivery because of challenges in the supply chain, which damages the trust and competence with residents, the supply chain themselves and the government all believing we can deliver on these targets. We need a long-term plan that involves training.
“Councillors themselves have a great role to play here in terms of direct labour organisations. They can link up with local people and get in front of school programmes [to encourage the next generation to train in this area], and ask, ‘How can we build a local green economy?’”
This is something that Morgan Sindall Property Services can help with, says Phil Copperwheat, its information systems director. “Our teams go into properties every day throughout the year to look at services. However, we could also identify people in the existing workforce that we could upskill to meet new requirements. And where there are gaps in this, we will invest, build and train our own supply chain,” he says.
Now is the time to start training people and to look to the long-term goal, says Mr Harrison. He describes the retrofit environment as very different from new build. “It tends to be very local. If we can get that local ethos
in a local sense, then that’s our route to market.”
Cecily Church agrees. She is the sustainability manager for The Guinness Partnership, working across around 140 local authorities, “and while engagement and collaboration with local authorities is good, we have to focus on different local authorities where different targets have been set”.
Mr Hilditch asks about how success can be measured. Monitoring to ensure what is planned is actually delivered is key. Loreana Padrón, head of sustainability at ECD Architects, suggests that the building should not only be monitored during the retrofit for the changes in performance, but also “two or three years post-completion to ensure the building is performing as expected and to ensure quality or to change it if the SAP [the government’s Standard Assessment Procedure for calculating the energy performance of a domestic dwelling], or EPC [Energy Performance Certificate] isn’t as predicted”.
The EPC is based on projected costs of energy usage in a home. This is not enough for the sector to work on, says Ms Hand. “What the sector needs at present are some metrics that sit below that which speak to how you actually reach net zero,” she says.
Right data
The right data is key, says Mr Dyer: “The only way change happens is if regulation dictates that it has to happen – or there’s a financial incentive – and regulation dictates behavioural change. It provides certainty about what investment is needed to make change happen. Pension funds are knocking on the door for a financial opportunity and for them, environmental, social and governance [ESG] values are needed to start to feed into this sector.
“They want data, certainty and they want feedback loops, and we don’t have it. We need to embrace innovation, the digital future, benchmarking digital twins and capturing data measurement validation to demonstrate what we’re doing with investment money.”
“I would like to defend EPCs,” says Ms Church. “They are a valid, important starting point that allow us to build other metrics. It is also a measurement that our tenants relate to and are engaged with.
“Recently we’ve had a flurry of enquiries from tenants who can see their EPC score online and would like to know how to change it. It’s been a good opportunity to start a conversation.”
Ms Williams explains how Sanctuary Group started its retrofit plan by prioritising the properties that were most poorly performing. “However, a property can’t just work from a technical perspective, but has to work for the tenant – there has to be fundamental thinking about how people will live there. That’s the only way you’re going to get a home that’s truly healthy and delivers the outcomes that you set out to achieve,” she says.
Mr Harrison notes: “We know 53% of social housing tenants who are in properties with a low EPC rating are in fuel poverty.”
Some tenants may be wary of switching from gas to electric heat sources. “It is about perception of costs. If people correctly think gas is the cheapest fuel and their landlord wants to move them onto electric, they will worry about the cost because they see electricity as being expensive,” says Ms Hand.
Echoing this point, Mr Copperwheat says that many of the residents in Morgan Sindall Property Services clients’ homes worry about the potential increase in fuel costs as they move from gas to electric, and about whether [landlords and contractors] are focused on improving the EPC level rather than looking at how to reduce their energy usage. And it is not only about the energy switch. “When a resident is living in fuel poverty, their lives can be significantly changed by better insulating the property. We need to think about how we can involve tenants in the whole process,” he notes.
Engaging residents
Bringing residents along, and ensuring they understand the changes that will be necessary to cut emissions, is going to be pivotal.
Mr Rickard says Abri Group has found that tenants are engaged. “Tenants are leading on it as well,” he says. “As a result, we are trying to involve ‘community champions’; people who have already had retrofit work done to their homes and can talk to other residents about it because residents trust residents – perhaps more than they trust us.”
Participants
Martin Hilditch (chair)
Editor, Inside Housing
Cecily Church
Sustainability manager, The Guinness Partnership
Phil Copperwheat
Information systems director, Morgan Sindall Property Services
Jim Dyer
Construction and technical director, Sovereign
Kate Hand
Head of climate change, London Councils
Matt Harrison
Programme director – Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund, Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS)
Loreana Padrón
Head of sustainability, ECD Architects
Jonathan Rickard
Head of sustainability and design, Abri
Donna Williams
Director of sustainability and climate change, Sanctuary Group
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