Social Housing White Paper Note

The Charter for Social Housing Residents Social Housing White Paper was released earlier in November. Introduced by the Prime Minister, the paper sets to make clear the standards that every social tenant in England is entitled to expect from their landlord. They will ensure that people feel safe and secure in their homes, can get problems fixed before they spiral out of control and see exactly how good their landlord is at dealing with complaints, ensuring their voice is being heard.

Working closely with the Regulator of Social Housing, a strong, proactive consumer regulatory regime will be enforced, strengthening the formal standards against which landlords are regulated and requiring them to be transparent about their performance and decision making, put things right when they go wrong and listening to tenants through effective engagement.

Outlined below are the key values that social housing residents should expect:

• To be safe and secure in your home
• To know how your landlord is performing, including on repairs, complaints and safety, and how it spends its money, so you can hold it to account.
• To have your complaints dealt with promptly and fairly
• To be treated with respect, backed by a strong consumer regulator and improved consumer standards for tenants.
• To have your voice heard by your landlord
• To have a good quality home and neighbourhood to live in, with your landlord keeping your home in good repair.
• To be supported to take your first step to ownership

READ THE FULL REPORT

If you would like to know more on how CHIC can help your organisation meet the new landlord requirements, please get in touch at enquiries@chicltd.co.uk

Spending Review

The Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak presented his ‘Spending Review 2020’ to Parliament on Wednesday 25 November 2020, detailing the immediate priority to protect peoples lives and livelihoods as the country continues to battle the covid-19 outbreak.

This paper also promises specific spending to deliver stronger public services, deliver the next stages of its record investment plans in infrastructure to drive the UK’s recovery, investment into local infrastructure and communities and more.

Below we have summarised the key elements for the construction and housing sectors:

• SR20 provides £254 million of additional funding to help end rough sleeping – a 60% cash increase compared to SR19
• SR20 allocates £475 million to make public buildings greener, £150 million to help some of the poorest homes become more energy efficient and cheaper to heat with low-carbon energy, and a further £60 million to retrofit social housing.
• It also extends the popular Green Homes Grant voucher scheme with £320 million of funding in 2021-22.
• The government is committed to spending £3 billion on building decarbonisation.
• SR20 confirms £122 million in 2021-22 to support creation of clean heat networks. This, together with the measures to be set out in the government’s forthcoming Heat and Buildings Strategy, will help meet the target of installing 600,000 heat pumps by 2028, and scale up the other low carbon heating and energy efficiency measures necessary to make buildings fit for net zero.
• SR20 also enables local authorities to access over £1 billion of spending for social care, through £300 million of social care grant and the ability to levy a 3 per cent adult social care precept. This funding is additional to the £1 billion social care grant announced last year which is being maintained.

More funding for reducing tenants heating costs and helping the work towards carbon zero is welcomed. CHIC is working on a range of projects to support the decarbonisation of homes.

READ THE FULL REPORT

Investing in MMC – CHIC’s BuildSmart Service

The Welsh government has allocated £35m to social landlords and developers from its Innovative Housing Programme, which is focused on Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) and low-carbon housing.

12 social housing providers in Wales have been allocated funds to deliver 400 factory-built homes, produced by local Welsh companies and their supply chains, many of which having a strong focus on the zero-carbon agenda.  

CHIC has been an advocate of the UK investing in creating greener offsite manufactured homes for the past few years. We have been involved in great developments and are now starting to see housing providers implementing MMC into their development programmes.

CHIC has a tried and tested route to market with three contracts for the manufacture, supply and erection of new modular (volumetric) homes, all also have options for all site works and turnkey contracts. We also have a long-term contract for a frame and panel offsite manufacturing solution. Also, now with our DPS solution, we can better cater to any of your specific newbuild requirements. For more information, please contact sdavey@chicltd.co.uk

How much will Decarbonisation cost?

A report published by Inside Housing gathered intelligence from 207 housing associations and stock-owning councils across the UK to reveal what the cost of decarbonisation looks like for the social housing sector.

Amongst the key findings from this report are:

• The mean cost of decarbonisation per social home is £20,742, roughly equating to £104bn for total decarbonisation. 4% of this amount will be covered by the Decarbonisation Fund
• 8% of landlords surveyed are aiming to achieve net zero at an earlier date than the 2050 target set by government
• More than a fifth of the social landlords that responded to the survey could provide an estimate of how much it would cost on average to reach net zero with their housing stock, with answers ranging from less than £3,000 per home to £50,000 per home.
• The current average SAP rating of survey respondents was at 70.1
• CHIC estimates that this level of investment equates to 45,000 jobs with 30 years of work for each. We need to train and invest in our workforce now,

 “These findings are significant in showing the extent of change required by the social housing sector to achieve zero carbon. Adopting a fabric first approach, using more efficient heat sources and redeveloping when the cost of retrofitting exceeds its value are amongst things landlords will need to implement very soon. So, investment plans and programmes for existing homes need to change now for zero carbon to be achieved and for new homes the sector needs to embrace offsite manufacture at scale. In short, we need to become much more proactive if we are to meet our 2050 goals”

John Fisher, Managing Director, CHIC