Ahead of the Government’s Energy Security Strategy published this month, there were hopes within the housing sector and beyond that BEIS and Treasury would use this opportunity to strengthen their approach to reduce the amount of energy we use by improving the energy efficiency of homes. Unfortunately, these expectations were not met and no new support has been announced.

The NHC’s Chief Executive Tracy Harrison commented:

“The Government have missed the opportunity to use the Energy Security Strategy to double down on efforts to make homes more energy efficient and reduce household bills. The Strategy’s focus on long-term energy supply has overlooked the required additional support to reduce energy demand now by improving the energy performance of homes. We hope to see further plans to accelerate home upgrades and transition to affordable, clean heat as part of the package to address rising energy bills and reduce the UK’s reliance on gas.”

The Government has had a tricky task for some time to respond to continuing rising prices in global gas markets which have been pushing household bills through the roof. This of course has been made even more complex by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the pressure to rebalance global energy markets away from reliance on gas from Russia. While the UK only relies on Russian gas for a small percentage of its energy (4% of total gas supply and 8% of oil demand), prices are still set in these markets so UK households are exposed to the volatility of overall gas prices.

Boris Johnson and his government have been reportedly conflicted on the most appropriate way to address these issues, with the Energy Security Strategy subsequently delayed many times in recent months. There have been varied demands from within the Conservative Party including calls to exploit fossil fuels further such as through fracking and increased drilling in the North Sea, and even to abandon net zero targets altogether. But there were also voices from within the governing party advocating for increased energy efficiency measures to be a key part of the energy strategy. Reports also emerged prior to the Strategy’s publication of Chancellor Rishi Sunak and his Treasury team outlining their reluctance to provide further support to upgrade the energy efficiency of homes.

The outcome of this debate was revealed this month when the Energy Security Strategy was finally published.

What was announced?

The Strategy focussed mainly on energy supply to help the UK reach its target of net zero by 2050 and includes ambitious new targets on offshore wind and nuclear energy. It was reported that plans to expand new onshore wind turbines were dropped from the Strategy due to existing conflict about wind farms within Johnson’s Cabinet. Reaction to this from the energy sector has been widely criticised as onshore wind is an effective short-term supply option and generally cheaper and more quickly deployed than other options, especially compared to nuclear power which is costly and slow to implement.

The overall ambition to align the energy system with net zero in the long-term is welcome. The North is already leading the way on renewable energy, with half of England’s renewable energy being generated in the region.

On low carbon heating, the Strategy announced a Heat Pump Investment Accelerator Competition in 2022 worth up to £30m. This is in addition to the Government’s Boiler Upgrade Scheme, opened this month, which will provide grants of up to £5,000 to help with the upfront cost of installing low carbon technologies, such as heat pumps. Further commitment to heat pump technology is welcome but the Accelerator is a modest sum in relation to the Government’s target for 600,000 heat pump installations per year by 2028.

The Strategy also references expanding investment to support the creation of green finance products to “introduce a scheme under which lenders will work to improve the energy performance of the properties against which they lend”.

The Heat and Buildings Strategy committed Government to incentivising electrification through the rebalancing of levies on household bills that currently favour the use of gas. The Energy Security Strategy commits to publishing proposals on how to make this happen by the end of 2022. This is a hugely important step in the decarbonisation process to ensure that technologies such as heat pumps, which are powered by electricity, are cheaper to run in the long-term.

The Fairness and Affordability Review promised in the Heat and Buildings Strategy aims to address this affordability point. We urge Government to bring this review forward as soon as possible to ensure the transition to clean heat does not raise costs for low-income households.

What was missing?

In the introductory section, the Strategy outlines that the “first step [to reducing household bills] is to improve energy efficiency, reducing the amount of energy that households and businesses need”. The document later states that the “majority of our homes are energy inefficient” and “improving the efficiency of our homes could reduce our heating bills by around 20% and reduce our dependency on foreign gas.” The NHC strongly agrees with this assessment that we need to reduce the amount of energy we use in the first place, but the Strategy fails to back up these premises with further support to deliver on them.

The Strategy goes on to outline previous announcements by Government on energy efficiency, including the support announced in the Heat and Buildings Strategy, the work carried out so far through the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund, the expansion of the Energy Company Obligation (ECO) to £1bn per year, and other existing measures.

We know that levels of fuel poverty have been rising and are expected to continue to rise this year with a further price cap increase to come in October. Communities in the North are particularly vulnerable to these continually rising costs as the North started with higher-than-average levels of fuel poverty. The Energy Security Strategy was the next opportunity after the Chancellor’s Spring Statement for Government to minimise the impact of rising bills and prevent households having to make difficult financial choices between heating their homes and other essentials.

The Northern Housing Monitor showed that 270,000 homes per year in the North will need to be retrofitted until 2035 just to reach the Government’s own EPC C target (the energy efficiency benchmark). There is still a lot of work to do across tenures to achieve this.

The Climate Change Committee (CCC) is Government’s independent advisor on tackling climate change. The CCC’s response to the Energy Security Strategy is also one of disappointment in relation to the lack of ambition to reduce energy demand. The CCC have praised the ambition to accelerate plans to secure clean, green, homegrown energy, especially on offshore wind. But they commented the Government will need to do more in the coming months on energy efficiency to cut energy bills for households.

In a response to an urgent question from Baroness Hayman on the Strategy not going far enough on insulation schemes, BEIS Minister Lord Callanan told the House of Lords: “It would have been good to have gone further, but the Treasury would not support it.” It is disappointing that the efforts of BEIS on this agenda have been largely disregarded by Treasury at this stage.

The North is already leading the way on renewable energy, the region now has the potential to lead the way on energy efficiency improvements and heat pump installations. An inclusive approach to housing decarbonisation would reduce household bills, cut carbon emissions, create new green jobs in the region, and lead to better health outcomes.

We will continue to work on behalf of our members to accelerate the harnessing of these benefits in the North, especially ahead of this winter, to support the creation of sustainable homes and communities across the region.

Read the full Energy Security Strategy here.

Please do not hesitate to follow up on this with the NHC by contacting Anna Seddon (Policy and Public Affairs Manager) at anna.seddon@northern-consortium.org.uk.

As part of its commitment to promote the work of the Social Housing Tenants’ Climate Jury, and begin a dialogue as to how the social housing sector can implement the Jury’s recommendations, the Northern Housing Consortium recently arranged the Social Housing Tenants’ Climate Jury Webinar Series. Recordings of the series are available for all NHC members to watch now via the below link.

Across the different sessions expert speakers, including commentators who originally gave ‘evidence’ to the Jury, discussed examples of what the Jury felt represented good practice in decarbonising homes as well as the wider implications of retrofit and climate change highlighted as core concerns.

The webinars looked at:

• The resident centred retrofit journey – highlighting good practice from all tenures, the small details needed to ensure all possible disruption is mitigated against and tenants assured, and the new roles housing providers are investing in.
• Expanding climate and decarbonisation education in social housing – including a focus on the rise of carbon literacy training in the sector, the innovative approaches to engaging and informing our communities, and the role of industry in ensuring the user journey in renewable heating technology is as smooth as possible.
• Tackling climate change and building communities – considering ways in which housing retrofit can be made one part of making neighbourhoods more environmentally friendly but also happier, healthier places. Speakers discussed improving collaboration between all community stakeholders, projects complementing retrofit work with wider neighbourhood transformation, and how housing providers can lead the way in opening up and maximising community green spaces.
• Creating good green jobs at the local level and ensuring opportunity for all – building on the Jury’s desire to see housing providers working with business, education, and Government to drive job creation in green industries and the roles that will decarbonise the built environment. Speakers discussed the central role housing providers can play as anchor institutions, large employers in their areas, and organisations with a vested interest in investing in people as well as place.

The Social Housing Tenants’ Climate Jury Webinar Series can be viewed HERE.

We’re excited to be launching our ambitious new corporate plan in the coming weeks – it sets out what we’ll do over the next three years to help you create better homes and places. This new plan focusses on your unrivalled member experience, it outlines our influencing priorities for the next few years, and it highlights our plans to provide the best services to support you now and into the future.

Created by our whole staff team alongside our member-led Board, the corporate plan has been shaped by insight built through our many member engagement opportunities, by looking ahead to future challenges and from our member perceptions research last year, which showed significant progress since our last survey in 2018.

In our 2018 survey, you asked us to develop a stronger, clearer voice on behalf of housing in the North and we hope that you have seen evidence of this – whether it’s members of the team giving evidence to Parliamentary select committees, our work to influence the Spending Review, or the evidence base we’ve built around net zero and levelling-up. We have worked hard to build the evidence base, craft compelling messages and ensure those messages reach and connect with decision-makers and policy shapers. Our commercial solutions continue to deliver value for members and contribute to the strong financial footing that enables us to perform our influencing and engagement functions for our membership.

From the 2021 survey we know that 95% of members are satisfied or very satisfied with the NHC’s work, and more than 90% of you agree that NHC membership is good value for money. Importantly the survey also told us what your challenges and priorities were in the future, and it was this insight which helped enable us to shape our priorities for the next three years.

Within the next few days we’ll be sending out your annual Member Benefits Statement detailing the ways your organisation has engaged with us over the last 12 months and how you’ve been using our procurement solutions. Overall, we held 149 online conferences, seminars, roundtables and network meetings throughout the year. 90% of our full members attended at least one conference or seminar, and 87% attended at least one roundtable or network – this is a significant increase on previous years where our engagement programme was face-to-face.

The Member Benefits Statement will allow you to look back over your engagement with us, and our new Corporate Plan will look forward and highlight how we will help you to create better homes and places.

Watch out for the new Corporate Plan hitting your inbox very soon!

Ian Byrne, MP for Liverpool West Derby, led a Westminster Hall debate on 15^th March about poor quality standards in the private rented sector (PRS). The debate heard from a range of MPs citing evidence of poor housing conditions experienced by their constituents who live in private rented sector homes.

Analysis in the Northern Housing Monitor shows 1 in 7 homes in the private rented sector have a Category 1 hazard and more than two thirds of homes in the sector are below EPC C. During lockdown, the NHC supported research by the University of Huddersfield which highlighted the particular struggle for thermal comfort in the private rented sector and poor conditions impacting negatively on people’s physical and mental health.

During the debate, Matthew Pennycook MP, Shadow Minister for Housing and Planning, said there is an “acute problem” of the most vulnerable being concentrated at the lower end of the private rented market, which is often concentrated geographically. The Shadow Minister stated that substandard PRS homes are the source of “daily anxiety, torment and misery” for many and noted that it hinders children, in particular, from flourishing.

Eddie Hughes MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Rough Sleeping and Housing at DLUHC, responded to the debate to reaffirm the Government’s commitment to driving up standards of rented properties as outlined in the Levelling Up White Paper. One of the document’s core missions includes an ambition “for the number of non-decent rented homes to have fallen by 50%, with the biggest improvements in the lowest performing areas.” The NHC’s Executive Director of Policy and Public Affairs, Brian Robson, has written about this shift in government thinking from boosting supply to improving quality which you can read here.

PRS reform is long-overdue. The Renters’ Reform Bill (proposals of which were first revealed under Theresa May) was announced in the Queen’s Speech in December 2019 but it was not brought forward in the parliamentary session due to the impact of the pandemic. But renters’ reform is firmly back on the agenda, with the Levelling Up White Paper outlining:

“We will publish a landmark White Paper in the spring to consult on introducing a legally binding Decent Homes Standard in the Private Rented Sector for the first time ever, explore a National Landlord Register and bring forward other measures to reset the relationship between landlords and tenants, including through ending section 21 “no fault evictions””.

These proposals are welcome. The NHC acts as Secretariat to the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Housing in the North. Last year, the APPG’s inquiry into housing standards in the North’s PRS published its final report. The APPG’s recommendations included:

• a full review by the Law Commission of private rented legislation
• a national landlord identification database of landlords’ details, their properties, and their energy performance
• a DWP trial of linking payment of housing benefit to minimum quality standards
• repealing Section 21 without delay
• support to maintain well-resourced enforcement teams within local authorities
• greater local freedom for Selective Licensing schemes
• a Housing Quality Investment Fund to support local long-term collaboration across tenures to improve housing quality.

The NHC is a core participant in DLUHC’s review of the Decent Homes Standard. Following the Levelling-Up White Paper’s announcement that the Standard will be applied in the PRS for the first time, we expect the pace of the review to significantly accelerate in coming months, with a formal consultation on a new standard coming forward as soon as this Summer.

We are also awaiting the response from BEIS on the consultation to raise the Minimum Energy Efficiency Standard (MEES) to EPC C for new PRS lettings from 2025 and to EPC C for all PRS properties from 2028. While we welcome the commitment to improve the energy performance of homes in the PRS, this makes the APPG’s recommendation on ensuring enforcement teams in local authorities are properly resourced even more pertinent.

Enforcement is a particular challenge for local authorities in the North where a reduction in capacity has led to a 58% drop in housing services spend and a 73% drop in planning and building control spend between 2010/11-2020/21.

During the Westminster Hall debate, Eddie Hughes MP confirmed that the renters’ reform white paper (as opposed to a Bill previously promised) setting out how the Government plan to drive up standards in the PRS will be brought forward “very soon”. The NHC will be closely following developments on the proposed package of reforms for our members.

Please do not hesitate to follow up on any of this with the NHC by contacting Anna Seddon (Policy and Public Affairs Manager) at anna.seddon@northern-consortium.org.uk.

In November 2020, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) confirmed plans to introduce new rules to ensure social rented homes are fitted with smoke and carbon monoxide alarms. The proposed changes, subject to parliamentary approval, will mean all social landlords must:

• Install at least one smoke alarm on every storey of their homes; and
• Install carbon monoxide alarms in every room which contains a fixed combustion appliance (excluding gas cookers)

It is expected that the cost of these new requirements to install and maintain alarms will fall to social landlords.

This announcement followed commitments for wide-ranging regulatory changes outlined in the Social Housing White Paper, including the launch of a consultation to extend requirements for smoke and carbon monoxide alarms in social housing. DLUHC’s consultation response can be found here, for more information. The changes will bring these new requirements for social landlords in line with requirements in the private rented sector, where they have been mandated since 2015.

The proposed changes do not require legislative changes – they can be introduced through regulations, which can receive parliamentary approval much faster than legislation.

Eddie Hughes MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Rough Sleeping and Housing at DLUHC, has recently notified us his intention is to lay these regulations in coming months, and that the resulting changes could come into force as soon as Autumn 2022. He strongly encourages social landlords begin the installation of alarms without delay. We know many of our members already conform with these requirements, or were acting on this following the Government’s announcements in November, but the message from Government is clear that they will be bringing forward these changes as soon as practicable.

DLUHC have provided a specific email address in case you have any questions directly for the DLUHC team working on this: smokeandcarbonmonoxide@levellingup.gov.uk