By Henry Smith, Sustainability Lead, Phoenix Community Housing
Resident engagement is the backbone of Phoenix’s model as a resident-led housing association but persuading our residents of the benefits of our sustainability goals hasn’t been easy.
In Phase One, we initiated engagement early on but found that, despite having the right resources, residents weren’t engaging with us to allow us access to upgrade their homes. We learned that many residents weren’t convinced of the benefits of retrofit, and without resident trust and understanding, even the best-designed programme cannot progress successfully.
Our experiences also told us that that although we were providing information, it wasn’t enough. We had to focus on what mattered most to residents: comfort, health and affordability.
Now, in Phase Two, we’re delivering solar PV panels, loft and cavity wall insulation, ventilation upgrades, and 40 additional air source heat pump installations.
We’re just over a quarter of the way through an ambitious retrofit programme, and the early results suggest we’ve started to crack something that trips up many landlords that attempt large-scale green investment: getting residents genuinely on board.
As a resident-led organisation, we’ve undertaken an extensive programme of resident engagement, learning as we’ve been going along.
“From these initiatives, our data shows that resident cancellation rates have come in lower than expected, and the project team attributes this directly to the quality of its engagement”
From our learning in Phase One and in preparation for the Warm Homes Programme bid, we launched our Renew campaign – an integrated communications campaign aimed at empowering, educating and informing residents of our plans, milestones and the health and wellbeing benefits of improving the energy efficiency of their homes.
To build on our engagement in Phase One, we created a quarterly newsletter for residents in the programme to meet the team and stay up to date with the project. We set up the Sustainability Advisory Group, made up of residents and staff who completed carbon literacy training, to advise on our approach to engagement and ensure maximum take-up – including making sure that we communicate with those who don’t have English as their first language.
This insight helped us appoint a resident liaison advisor internally, who’s supported residents individually throughout the process.
We then held a ‘Meet the Contractor’ event funded entirely through delivery partners’ social value commitments. Eighty-one adults and children from 30 households attended. From these initiatives, our data shows that resident cancellation rates have come in lower than expected, and the project team attributes this directly to the quality of its engagement.
We also engaged with residents at our ‘Chat & Chips’ events and a Phoenix health and wellbeing event and included pop-up stalls as part of a ‘resident roadshow’, which was targeted within geographical areas in the programme.
To build on this momentum, we’ve invited residents to become Retrofit Champions, a structured community role developed and built into the programme to ensure residents have a formal voice in how delivery unfolds and to encourage other residents to have the works done. This has resulted in two residents coming forward so far and we are confident that others will follow.
As we look to future phases, we plan to set up a resident retrofit panel to provide ongoing lived-experience oversight, as well as decarbonisation works in void properties so that residents can visit these and understand new technology. The approach reflects a deliberate philosophy: retrofit delivered with residents, not simply to them.
With 120 homes completed, a strong pipeline in place, and further funding conversations underway with the GLA, we’re well positioned for the long haul. For a sector still working out how to make retrofit stick at scale, the lesson from Phoenix is straightforward: engagement isn’t a compliance tick box – it’s what keeps the programme moving.
