6 July 2022
6 July 2022
SHDC and whole-house retrofit: a carrot that really can cut the carb
Paul Tucker
Sustainability Manager, Northampton Partnership Homes
Image: Jonathan Kemper/Unsplash
Bidding for Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund pilot grants opened in late August 2020 and closed barely eight weeks later. NFA member Northampton Partnership Homes, which manages 12,000 West Northants council homes, managed to get a successful bid in by the skin of its teeth – and that was just the start of the nail-biting. Yet NPH’s sustainability manager Paul Tucker has come to the conclusion that this project from the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is a disrupter that can change the way we think about retrofitting homes to meet 2050 zero carbon goals.
IN THE SUMMER of 2020 an email dropped into my inbox from BEIS announcing the opening of the bid window for the SHDF demo. I had been waiting for more information to be released, and here it was, finally, via our parent council, my managing director and the departmental director. This journey meant that all the key senior figures had seen it and read it and it had reached me because those people understood, as I did, that this was a significant opportunity.
I felt that this was an innovation not just for NPH, but for the social housing sector. And I can’t underplay the significance of the backing from senior figures and the council for our bid. It gave us a sense of purpose.
Where to start?
The terms set for funding gave us a tight eight-week bidding window. This meant no time for a tender process, a detailed stock analysis, recruitment, or even tenant consultation. In any case, like all other social housing providers, we are always limited to working within our means – so, in a way, this time pressure was a key enabler. NPH already had a programme of planned investment and neighbourhood regeneration, so it was clear that our SHDF bid should develop that.
- We would use our established partnering contractor.
- We would work from our ten-year plan to identify estates with the worst performing stock on energy efficiency.
- We would use NPH’s existing talent, rather than recruiting.
Working with what we had unlocked NPH’s potential and helped us develop a bid quickly. Looking back, I see that we had everything in place to make this work. But we couldn’t have done this without the support of our partnering contractor. They had expertise and experience in whole-house retrofit; They became our critical friend and brought in support from specialists in domestic retrofit, M&E expertise, and crucially, an understanding of the all-important PAS 2035. They made it possible to get the technical specification right in the short time we had – the bid submission deadline was 5pm on a Friday; I submitted at 4.56.
We didn’t talk about carbon savings or climate change – we talked about better homes, cheaper and more comfortable to live in, warmer in winter and cooler in summer.
Engaging with tenants
Bid success came the week before Christmas – and this was when the hard work really started. I was worried. Our goal was 150 retrofitted homes. There had been no time to ask how residents felt before we put in the bid, and without their support the project would fall flat on its face. What would they say when we asked if we could do work that would have an impact on every part of their home?
PAS 2035 is a specification for what is called ‘whole building’ retrofit. It takes into account the needs of an entire building, whether strictly technical or addressing more subjective factors such as the comfort of occupants.
The standard guides assessment of dwellings for energy retrofit, identifying improvements needed and specifying and designing the relevant improvements. It also sets out how retrofit projects should be monitored.
We didn’t talk about carbon savings or climate change, or anything like that. We talked about better homes that were cheaper and more comfortable to live in, warmer in winter and cooler in summer. I spoke to more than a hundred households myself, asking what problems they faced and explaining how this work could tackle those problems.
The overwhelming response was positive – but we also had to accept that a few had very good reasons indeed not to welcome so much disturbance. A 94-year-old lady who had lived in her house most of her life explained that she didn’t know how many summers she had left – and although she supported the project, she couldn’t face the disruption.
Challenges to capacity
Heading into Spring 2021, with a starting date in April, it became clear to everyone – including the government department funding the scheme – that this project was far more complex than originally anticipated. We weren’t even close to starting construction because the assessment and design stage was taking more time than planned, and the commercial supply chain was being hampered by the continuing pandemic.
But the very purpose of a pilot is to learn. Wave 1 of retrofitting, the phase that follows this pilot demo, will benefit from the lesson that assessments and design for retrofit must start well in advance. You can never be too early with this stage.
Our partnering contractor told us it was no longer possible to complete the full 150 retrofits within the deadline of Christmas 2021. What were we to do?
We decided that reducing the scope of the pilot, giving funding back and letting down residents who had been promised these improvements was not an option. Instead, determined to meet that goal of 150 retrofitted homes, we looked for more capacity – a second main contractor and an architectural firm. We decided to see this as an opportunity to double our learning. The second team were given a brief and the PAS 2035 remit, but not told how to do it.
It’s shifted our thinking from incremental improvements with no long-term vision and a strategic approach to achieving fully net-zero homes.
Outcomes
A key operational learning: Construction eventually began in Autumn 2021, the original contractor team starting first and the second team a couple of weeks behind. This was where differences in the mindsets of the two teams became apparent. The original contractors had been with us from the start, developed the specification and the bid alongside us, and were determined to meet the criteria of the funding. Their approach was thorough, highly detailed and, in many ways, ‘by the book’, sticking rigidly to PAS 2035. Our second contractor team, appointed to get us out of a sticky situation, were focused on getting the job done. They were pragmatic, designing out time-consuming and difficult elements of the retrofit and committing whatever resource was needed to get the work done on time. Neither approach was ‘wrong’, but we saw that a balance needs to be struck between strictly sticking to the brief and delivering for our tenants.
A key community learning: As we’ve completed and handed over retrofits of older properties that are now comparable to new-build, some of them EPC A-rated homes, this hasn’t gone unnoticed by the local community. Homeowners in the neighbourhood have asked how they can get involved in the scheme – we don’t have a solution at the moment but we’re keen to help our parent council develop a community partnership that can deliver this.
A key national learning: As the saying goes, we make the road by walking it. And as Henry Ford said: “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t – you’re right.” Repurposing existing homes to become net-zero is the biggest infrastructure challenge the UK has ever faced. There’s no time to delay, and this work should convince us all that we certainly can – by being positive, being brave, and by listening to our tenants and our communities.
My personal take-home learning: The SHDF has been, in my view, a significant disruptor. It is an extremely effective carrot. At NPH, the funding and particularly the requirement that we follow PAS 2035 has pushed us to really up our game. It’s shifted our thinking from a focus on individual measures – insulation, low carbon heating and so forth – to a holistic overview of what we want to achieve. It is the difference between incremental improvements with no long-term vision and a strategic approach to achieving fully net-zero homes.
Let me add that the three fundamental elements of good social housing management – tenant satisfaction, listening to the tenant voice, and partnership and place – are key to all of this. We’re dealing with homes – so much more than just bricks and mortar.
Really good quality, healthy homes that people are happy to live in are the foundation of a successful, thriving community, and net-zero work will be an increasingly vital part of that.
Paul Tucker joined Northampton Partnership Homes as Sustainability Manager in 2019, bringing expertise in building energy management to West Northants Council’s ALMO through both technological innovation and behaviour change.