The NHC Northern Housing Summit returns as an in-person event
On the 17th January, the NHC held its flagship event, The Northern Housing Summit – returning as an in-person event to the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester. The Summit displayed the NHC’s ability to convene the sector and wider stakeholders in order the advance the voice of housing in the North on topical issues. With the BBC’s Mark Easton chairing the Summit, delegates heard speeches on levelling-up, the Northern Housing Monitor, the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund and the regulation of social housing along with a range of panel sessions.
The day began with a welcome from the NHC to delegates from Chief Executive Tracy Harrison. Tracy thanked speakers, those in attendance and to all of the Summit’s sponsors for helping to make the event happen. The BBC’s Home Editor, Mark Easton, then provided a welcome as Summit Chair and an introduction to the day, before inviting Lord Jim O’Neill – Crossbench Peer and architect of the Northern Powerhouse initiative – to the lectern to provide his keynote speech on ‘Where next for levelling-up?’. Lord O’Neill discussed devolution and the increase in elected mayors across the North, pointing out the devolution is not just about money but also devolved accountability and responsibility, noting that Great Manchester have demonstrated the benefits of this. He went on to emphasise that growth and productivity are the country’s key challenges, and that housing and social mobility are both central to this. Lord O’Neill detailed his time on Shelter’s Social Housing Commission, saying that a recommendation from the commission was the delivery of 3.1 million social homes over 20 years. He shared that the estimated cost of the delivery of this recommendation would have been similar to that of building HS2, and remarked that there would have been more positive multipliers from a social homes project than building HS2.
Following the keynote speech, the first panel session of the Summit began. This panel was titled ‘Making Rebalancing a Reality’, and featured Antony Lockley, Director of Strategy & Assistant Chief Executive and Blackpool Council; Charlotte Carpenter, Executive Director of Growth and Business Development at Karbon Homes; Pooja Agrawal, Chief Executive of Public Practice; and Mike Palin, Executive Director at Homes England. Antony Lockley highlighted Blackpool’s low life expectancy and poor socio-economic outcomes compared with much of the country. He went on to detail the council’s plans to intervene on housing quality in the town, with a focus on piloting a decent homes standard in the private rented sector and putting housing at the heart of regeneration.
Charlotte Carpenter began her panel speech by illustrating the difference in life opportunities between the Newcastle areas Gosforth and Byker, with life expectancy for those born in Byker twelve years less than those in Gosforth. Charlotte cited Karbon’s new report, ‘Fair Foundations’, which emphasises the responsibility of anchor institutions such as housing providers in addressing specific challenges in left behind places – in order to boost residual incomes and increase opportunity in their local areas. Pooja Agrawal focused on the place based agenda when regenerating and rebalancing areas, saying that whether it’s house building or redeveloping town centres, the place based approach is important as every community is different and blanket approaches don’t work. Pooja pointed to local authorities’ skills capacity being a major issue, noting that attracting the right people with the right skills to local government is vital, also saying that shared learning between public sector offices is very important. Mike Palin provided a Homes England perspective on rebalancing, noting that the 80/20 rule on Homes England spending has now been scrapped. Mike Palin also said that there has to be a capability strategy if we are to achieve housing development, echoing remarks from fellow panellists that place making skills are essential when house building.
The next Summit speaker was Derek Long, Director of arc4, who produced the Northern Housing Monitor report. Derek raised some of the key topics and statistics from the Monitor and provided context around them. Derek highlighted that there is a long way to go on net zero in the North, citing the key statistics from the Monitor which states that 3.8 million homes in the North are below the key EPC C energy efficiency rating. Derek also said that the state of the private rented sector is generating additional demand for the social housing sector. With a rise in section 21 notices and homelessness – particularly in the North – Derek affirmed that social housing providers are going to feel the pressure of this increase in demand and the sector will have to deal with these challenges.
Selvin Brown, Director of Net Zero Buildings, Domestic, at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), provided the next keynote speech – titled ‘The Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund: Wave 2 and Beyond’. Selvin pointed out the government’s promise to reduce energy demand in buildings by 50% and the announcement of a task force to achieve this. Selvin noted that a million homes a year would need to be upgraded to meet the 50% government target. He went on to discuss Wave 2 of the Social Housing Decarbonisation fund, saying that applications exceeded the £800 million funding available – a positive as there were hints that further funding would not have been made available from Treasury if this funding pot was not taken advantage of.
The next panel session of the day was titled ‘Social Housing Tenants’ Climate Jury – A call to Action’ with a panel consisting of Chloe Challinor, Marketing Manager and Greener Futures Project Lead at Aspire Housing and PlaceShapers; along with Dawn Keogh, involved tenant at Thirteen Group and juror on The Social Housing Tenants’ Climate Jury. Chloe discussed the work PlaceShapers have done on strong and consistent messaging to residents on decarbonising homes through retrofit. Chloe highlighted the initial concern from residents on allowing people into their home to complete extensive retrofit works and the inconvenience this may cause – however, they are now seeing residents proactively request retrofit work as they understand more about it and see the benefits that can be achieved. Dawn Keogh said that collaboration from stakeholders is key, pointing out that events such as the Summit are great to allow relevant people to share knowledge and learnings. Dawn pointed out that not all homes are viable when it comes to retrofit measures such as air source heat pumps, saying that people need to understand the importance of insulation before installing heat pumps as bills can rise if homes aren’t fully insulated.
Delegates at the Summit were then able to choose which one of four breakout sessions they wanted to attend. Session one was ‘The Internet of Things and the drive towards net zero’ and was chaired by Maggie Rafalowicz, Director at Campbell Tickell. The session also featured speakers Tom Robins, Chief Executive at Switchee; and Phil Pemberton, Director of Asset Strategy & Delivery at Riverside. Session two was a closer look at the Northern Housing Monitor, again with Derek Long, and featured Robin van Wonderen, Data Analyst & GIS Technician at arc4; with Mark Shephard, Head of Data, Performance & Information Security at Yorkshire Housing, chairing this session.
Breakout session three was chaired by Head of Housing at West Yorkshire Combined Authority, Judith Furlonger; with Eirian Molly, Head of Housing at Preston City Council; and Helene Bartos, Policy Lead on Private Rented Sector Standards at BEIS. This session was titled ‘Driving up Energy Effiency Standards across the PRS’. The final breakout session focused on ‘Retrofit Credits: Unlocking additional funding for retrofit programmes’ and was chaired by Paul Fiddaman, Chief Executive at Karbon Homes and Chair of the NHC Board. At this session attendees heard from Andrew van Doorn OBE, Chief Executive at HACT; and Simon Turek from Arctica Partners.
The penultimate session of the Summit was a panel on ‘The Decent Homes Standard – the past, present and future’. This panel featured Simon Denison, Head of Access and Decency, Social Housing Division at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities; Simon Thirtle, Partner for the Built Environment at Ward Hadaway; Michael Marshall, Urban Studies and Planning Department at the University of Sheffield; and Charlie Norman, Chief Executive at MSV Housing.
Simon Denison explained the difficulty of applying commonality between the private rented sector and the social rented sector, saying that the nature of the stock and landlords in each sector means a common standard cannot be applied. With the Social Housing White Paper, Levelling Up White Paper and Private Rented Sector White Paper, this emphasises the difficulty in creating a common standard between sectors. Simon Thirtle discussed disrepair and detailed the key legislation on housing disrepair. Simon also highlighted the steady increase in disrepair claims since 2013, with an acceleration since 2020 which coincided with both the Homes Act 2018 and Covid-19, which stopped disrepair checks from being able to happen during lockdown. Simon also said that increased communication, engagement and education is very important to approach damp and mould issues, emphasising that it is not simply about the lifestyle of the tenant.
Michael Marshall discussed the ‘Lessons from last time’ report on the first Decent Homes Standard, noting that a key message from the report was that there needs to be a realistic approach to put landlords in a position where they can improve and apply a Decent Homes Standard. Finally, Charlie Norman raised the point that the North has the oldest, coldest homes with a disproportionate amount of pre-WW1 terraces. Charlie also said that it is up to us as a sector to accept the recommendations from the Better Social Housing Review and respond to them. She highlighted the success of Wave 1 of the SHDF and remarked that she hoped for further investment from government.
To bring the day to a close, Summit delegates heard an in-conversation session with Kate Dodsworth, Director of Consumer Regulation at the Regulator for Social Housing; and Richard Blakeway, Housing Ombudsman. The pair discussed the need for senior leaders in the sector to take responsibility and the importance of the landlord-tenant relationship. Kate Dodsworth raised issues with language barriers and declared the importance of Boards and staff knowing their tenants and being aware of barriers to the complaints process. The move towards proactive consumer regulation will be about a culture shift for landlords, and landlords must use this time to change now as changes will not be made overnight. The Ombudsman noted the rise in complaints but said this is not necessarily a bad thing, saying that roughly 50% of complaints result in finding that the landlord has not done anything wrong.
Keep an eye out for further resources from the Summit on our website, including short videos from some of the key speakers and panellists.
The NHC would like to thank all of the sponsors for Summit: Adelard, Campbell Tickell, Consortium Procurement, Consortium Procurement Construction, Hive, JLL, Karbon Homes, Locata, Mediaworks, Retinue, Sava, SMS, Switchee, the GEM Programme and Ward Hadaway.
If you would like to find out more about the Northern Housing Summit, or be involved in the next one, please contact Kate Maughan, Director of Member Engagement Kate.Maughan@northern-consortium.org.uk
