‘Building new homes at hyper-speed comes with risk’

By Hannah Fearn, freelance journalist specialising in social affairs

In 2008, just before the realities of the financial crisis unfolded and politics moved in a very different direction, the government signed off a bold television advertising campaign.

Directed by This is England auteur Shane Meadows, it focused on a father struggling with an enormous energy bill. In the short film he urges his family to switch off lights and appliances, cutting both carbon emissions and the household’s bills.

The ad, which cost £6m to make, was part of the then government’s ‘Act on CO2’ campaign and was designed to promote a £1bn household energy-efficiency scheme to help people look after themselves and the earth better. It seemed to work: the Energy Savings Trust said calls to its helpline quadrupled in the week after its launch. More than 15 years on, it also looks incredibly foresighted.

The campaign came back to mind recently when thinking about the success of Awaab’s Law, and its costs for social landlords and their tenants.

The last government launched a campaign to remind social tenants to report their landlords if they were bad at dealing with damp and disrepair – and so they did. Then legislation followed and soon it will be in force. It comes with a lot of short-term expenses, but also a sense of long-term clarity as housing providers ask themselves: what are we for, and who are we really here to serve?

“Government wants to rely heavily on social landlords to meet its housing target, but it might have made a serious (if well-meaning) miscalculation”

Like the father in that advert, social landlords – particularly those who are also developing at speed – have a dual responsibility to cut carbon and to cut costs, all while building more homes than ever before, in the most perilous economic times.

By its huge investment in new development and its agreement to a 10-year rent settlement, the government has shown it wants to rely heavily on social landlords to meet its housing target, but it might have made a serious (if well-meaning) miscalculation. Of course landlords want to see as many families securely housed as possible, but they have already – rightly – said they won’t do that at the expense of their own tenants. They shouldn’t do it at the expense of their own future stability, either.

Building new homes at hyper-speed comes with risk. If you want to maximise output, you’ll build to current building standards and regulations. But if you do that, you’re also likely to be building yourself a problem for 10 years down the line. You’re creating homes that fail to meet near future expectations around energy efficiency and sustainability and potentially cost your tenants more to live in. The wise developing landlord today would be spending its money building fewer homes at higher cost, but with extremely good credentials on efficiency.

There’s a snag, though. At the moment, the social housing sector is still much maligned in the public imagination. Would a risk-averse or future-focused housing association be seen as failing morally for not building as many homes at whatever cost today? Could the sector, while protecting itself for the difficult years ahead, be considered too uncompromising with the government in the face of a housing crisis that every single voter is now feeling in some way?

There’s obviously no single ‘correct’ response to these tensions. What you can do is show a public awareness of these difficulties and explain why you make the choices that you do as social landlords. The temptation now is to hunker down on delivery, but if you don’t also share what you’re doing then nobody will ever know what you achieved in the toughest circumstances.