18 November 2022
Housing can’t wait: Why social housing decarb is urgently needed
Lisa Birchall
NFA Policy and Research Officer
Image: © Northampton Partnership Homes
This post was first published on the HQN Opinion page on 17 November 2022
Climate change has hardly been the hero issue of politics during the last few turbulent months.
Yet another change of prime minister and government, combined with the energy crisis and an imminent return to austerity, have put extraordinary pressure on that 2019 Conservative manifesto commitment to reach zero carbon by 2050.
It is difficult to see just now how the dice will fall.
However, across the country a host of housing organisations are doing what they can with what they’ve got to inch forward on decarbonisation. At the NFA, we have been talking to members about their energy efficiency work and we publish our findings today [17 November] in Decarbonising Social Housing: Lessons from the ALMO sector.
We’ll be discussing this work with colleagues across the sector in more detail in the coming months to share what members have learned as widely as possible. Every gram of CO2 saved is worth it – as is every penny we can help residents cut from their heating bills.
The most important conclusion to come from what members have told us is that there is no wriggle room to slow down work on making homes in the social rented sector more energy efficient. It is no longer just about meeting zero carbon targets; this work is the most effective way our members, other social landlords and government can help tenants living in fuel poverty at a time when energy prices have become a huge burden on household finances.
Social housing landlords need long-term funding streams to deliver on zero-carbon targets.
The government’s Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund has been a welcome injection of money into this work, allowing landlords to trial approaches and develop decarbonisation strategies. Importantly, the learnings from these projects will undoubtedly be useful well beyond this sector, for private sector landlords and homeowners.
Even so, this is no more than a start. Our members have made it crystal clear that to get this job done well, and as quickly as possible, they need continuity of funding to get anywhere with their plans.
They need long-term funding streams that allow them to develop project pipelines. To make sure we don’t lose momentum, the sector needs a commitment from the new Prime Minister and his administration to the net zero agenda and Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund.
There are concrete steps that could move us along more swiftly, Many are not specific to the social housing sector and would speed up the de-carbing and insulating of all tenures of UK housing stock and even some non-domestic buildings.
For instance, government policy could usefully focus on the retrofit industry skills gap; on urgently updating the domestic EPC energy rating scheme to make it fit for purpose; and on reviewing PAS2035 – the mandatory standard for retrofit work – to make sure that it maintains quality but does not create unnecessary barriers to decarbonisation projects.
Absolutely vital is an urgent upgrading of energy networks so they have the capacity to cope with the demand that will come from large-scale installation of lower-carbon heat pumps and solar PV panels.
Our sector’s desire to deliver has to be matched by support from the centre to have any chance of success.
Local authorities and ALMOs would also be able to do much more, and deliver much better value for public money, if government would look at how social housing is funded and shift focus to policies that will make councils’ housing revenue accounts sustainable.
Our findings show that our members, at least, are trying to do their bit.
They and many of our fellow social housing landlords are getting a handle on the condition of their stock, including accurately measuring the energy efficiency of homes. At the NFA, we are actively encouraging our members’ boards to set out a clear, explicit approach to decarbonising that explains what ‘zero carbon’ means for their stock and how long it will take. Our boards, in turn, are working closely with their parent councils who must make the final decisions on how all this is done.
So many demands are being made on the social housing sector just now, from putting into practice new regulation to somehow finding ways to increase housing supply. All with less funding, not more.
And on climate change, as with these other pressures, our sector’s desire to deliver has to be matched by support from the centre to have any chance of success.
Lisa Birchall is the author of Decarbonising Social Housing: Lessons from the ALMO sector, published 17 November 2022. She has been NFA Policy and Research Officer since 2018.
Read the full Decarbonising Social Housing NFA Best Practice report here: