“Could you please advise me of the progress being made towards decarbonising our housing stock in light of the climate emergency declaration of 2019 and this council’s commitment to a better future for our children. Specifically what are your major obstacles to achieving ‘net zero’ in relation to the council housing stock which will ultimately help reduce bills for residents given the ongoing cost of living crisis?”
Minutes:
Question by Cllr. Sparkes:
“Could you please advise me of the progress being made towards decarbonising our housing stock in light of the climate emergency declaration of 2019 and this Council’s commitment to a better future for our children. Specifically, what are your major obstacles to achieving ‘net zero’ in relation to the council housing stock which will ultimately help reduce bills for residents given the ongoing cost of living crisis?”
Response by Cllr. Evans:
“I will just explain where we stand at the moment. As you are aware and as is stated in our business plan for 2023/24, our aim as a department is to make our homes as efficient as possible in relation to energy and achieving at least energy performance certificate of Band C as soon as possible. Decarbonising our stock of homes and reducing our carbon emissions will be a strategic focus for us for the years to come. 3,000 of our homes are in EPC Band C or higher already with almost 5,800 homes in Band D with a SAP level of 66 which is slightly higher than the standard set in the Welsh Housing Quality Standard and I think that is 65 at the moment. In order to reach the aim, to begin with improving the fabric of our homes is essential, also we need to have low carbon heating and renewable technology.
The challenge is huge but we have to do everything we can to decarbonise our stock of homes which will be beneficial for the environment and for our tenants. As you know, our new build programme has pushed the boundaries for social housing by providing homes which are low in carbon and effective in relation to energy and as we continue to build we will be continuing to push those boundaries. We are using the same method when we provide new homes for people by redeveloping current commercial buildings in effective and modern homes, using the fabric first approach and using renewable technologies to provide an affordable and comfortable living environment for our tenants. Of course, we have to make sure that we use the same method when doing a retrofit on our current housing stock. We have already made a full retrofit on some of our homes which pushes the standard of the home to the same as our new homes. We place monitoring equipment in the homes in order to enable us to measure the impact of performance. This is essential in order to make sure that the work we are doing to our homes meets the expectations of our data model and more importantly, that our tenants benefit.
This year we are continuing with the work. We are at the moment taking the opportunity to do a retrofit on a percentage of our voids and for the first time we are working on homes where tenants are living in them at the moment which of course presents additional challenges. This is important as we plan for the future and in order to understand better what we can achieve for our housing stock and learn important lessons about this intervention that this work has on tenants, on costs, on skills and labour that are required and of course, the effectiveness of the measures that have been taken. We have to do this as we go forward so that we can learn because we have to get it right. We have by now a good understanding of our energy performance rates.
At the moment, we are analysing our data on stock condition in order to develop our investment work programme for the next five years. This will all be reflected in the HRA business plan for 2024/25. We have to make sure that we do what is going to succeed for our homes and of course we have to remember that our stock of homes have been built over a period of decades and not one technology will be relevant to every home. If I move on to the second part of the question – are there any barriers? Yes, there are barriers that we have to overcome. I am extremely pleased that the Welsh Government this year have published a draft of the new Welsh Housing Quality Standard for consultation. This is the handbook for Local Authorities for standards and consistency for homes in Wales for the years to come. I have to admit that it has taken quite some time to get to us but I do hope that the final paper will be in place soon.
As expected, decarbonising our homes will be a big part of the new Standards and as I mentioned earlier, we have already started on this journey but we have to have clear guidelines from the Welsh Government on funding for the future in order to reach the Standards in full. There are challenges in relation to high cost to improve the fabric of all our homes - setting PV solar etc and of course the usual work of providing new rooves, new windows etc will have to continue as it is at the moment and so additional cost. So far, we have applied and have been successful with providing applications for a variety of grants but clear guidelines in relation to funding from the Welsh Government will give definite assurance for us as we move forward. As the years go on limited capacity of the national grid could be a problem as we depend more and more on electrical systems in our homes in order to fight against the carbon emissions. Using materials that are produced locally, this is important for us as a county. There is a lack of local producers in relation to materials and I hope this will change as time goes on. And of course, as the need for materials and technology increase so too will the skills and specialist tradesman demand increase as well.
So that is where we stand at the moment. There are challenges, a lot of them and I am sure that more will come across us from time to time but I am very confident that we will overcome these and I will be very pleased when the process will be able to move forward faster than it is at the moment, as we get the new Standards there is a possibility that will happen, but what we have done on a couple of hundred homes is working and it is working well.