Spotlight on Sustainable Homes

Bevan Jones became Managing Director of Sustainable Homes in late 2016, taking over the reins from Andrew Eagles, who featured on this blog last year. Sustainable Homes is a thriving not-for-profit consultancy and research body, supporting the housing sector. Bevan joined Sustainable Homes from Catalyst Housing Association, where he led the group’s sustainability strategy.

Liz Warren caught up with Bevan to find out what’s coming from Sustainable Homes.

Hi Bevan, what’s new at Sustainable Homes?

It’s a time of transition for us, just as it is for the housing sector. We’re refreshing our SHIFT accreditation – which sets and monitors housing providers’ performance against environmental targets - to make it leaner and we’re moving towards an online platform. We’ll be adding in more emphasis on climate change adaptation and resilience. In the longer term, we’ll be looking more at how to support housing providers with supply chain management and divestment from fossil fuels.

You mentioned transition in the housing sector. What are the main trends that you’re seeing?

Social housing providers are becoming more commercial, largely in response to policy changes and funding cuts. There’s a big challenge now: how do you balance having a social mission with achieving these corporate goals? A lot of what we see now is housing associations in particular trying to grapple with this.

Those commercial drivers mean that it’s going to be harder for social housing to be the testing ground for sustainability products or services. Industry needs to learn this: the business case is much more important in these more commercial times and providers will be looking for return on investment, not just to always be the wacky test bed.

That “test bed” mentality will be hard to change – it’s quite ingrained for energy efficiency policymakers and industry to think of social housing as a place to innovate and experiment.

There is still room for this – but projects need to be robust and relatively easy to manage in times of shrinking resources. Some housing associations are still working through the outcomes of previous projects: trying to make sure they are getting the Feed-In Tariff for all their eligible installations, for instance. You start to unpack a lot of anomalies: new boilers are treated as an asset, but PV installations aren’t. The way we think about energy investments has to change, and to spread more widely through housing organisations.

Are you keen to move into new areas of the housing sector?

We want to get a lot more involved with the private rented sector. Based on what we have learned in social housing, we have some great insights for private landlords who want to operate responsibly in anticipation of minimum energy efficiency standards.  We’re also keen to make stronger links between housing and other sectors – there could some great gains from bringing together housing organisations and tech companies, for example, managing and unlocking the potential of data.

I was interested to read your research report Touching the Voids, looking at the benefits of energy efficiency for social landlords’ income. It’s a great report highlighting an under-researched issue. What are your plans for research work this year?

We’re looking at one of those topics that no-one wants to touch: damp and mould. We know that it’s a problem in many homes – social and private – and that there’s always an effort to blame someone else. Do you blame the way that the building was built, the way that it’s been retrofitted, or the way that it is occupied?

We’re researching damp and mould to try and use real data to establish which factors contribute most to condensation and mould problems. Different homes and households will have different contributing factors. Our aim is to create a predictive model which will help housing providers assess which homes and households are most at risk, so that they can prioritise interventions.

That sounds like an incredibly valuable piece of work to deal with a common, everyday problem. Exactly the sort of thing you’re looking for in the SHIFT Awards this year?

The theme of the SHIFT Awards this year is replicability. We want people not only to say “what a great idea” but also “I can do that”. So we’re looking for entries to the Awards that address common challenges that many housing providers are going to face. We’re still looking for innovative and inspiring entries, but the magic this year will be things that others can replicate.

What are the categories this year, and when is your deadline?

We have nine categories this year and a couple of special sessions to tell you about. The categories are:

-          Best small retrofit project

-          Best large retrofit project

-          Best new build project

-          Best resident engagement on sustainable living

-          Best corporate sustainability project

-          Best sustainability team

-          Sustainability leader of the year

-          Best climate resilience project

-          Sustainable housing provider of the year

-          Most improved SHIFT landlord

And we have two awards “on the day” – we’re looking for 2-minute pitches for scalable practical ideas to improve the sustainability of the housing stock and the wellbeing of residents. Our judges will be looking for the Best Sustainability Proposal and the Best Policy Proposal – with winners decided on the day through a Dragon’s Den style process!

All of the details of the SHIFT Awards are on the Sustainable Homes website at http://www.sustainablehomes.co.uk/shift-awards-2017-categories/. The closing date is 14 June 2017.