Making our homes more energy efficient

Stonewater has supported new research to make our homes warmer and greener.

It’s a fundamental role of all housing associations is to provide affordable, safe and warm homes to our customers. Recent months have seen the sector face increased scrutiny on standards, including on issues like damp and mould, as well as how we support our customers through these tough times.

We know that our customers are worried about energy bills and many have had to face difficult choices. The government has provided support for energy bills and the cost of living, and you may be aware of some of the support available to you via the Longleigh Foundation and other organisations – you can read more about this on the money matters page of our website.

One of the biggest ways we can help to reduce energy bills, tackle fuel poverty, and improve the quality of our homes is by ‘retrofitting’ them and improving their energy efficiency. Only by making homes more efficient can we make it cheaper to heat and power them. Different homes need different work done to them – new insulation, new windows, cleaner heating such as a ground source heat pump.

With a concerted effort and the right ambition, we can end fuel poverty once and for all through retrofit. But it’s a huge challenge, and one that Stonewater cannot do alone. How we are going to make all of our homes more energy efficient, and how we fund a retrofit programme in a way that’s fair to our customers, is something we spend a lot of time thinking about.

A few years ago we sponsored a report by the leading research organisation IPPR. They have a really strong track-record of developing new ideas for how to reduce carbon emissions and restoring nature in a way that is fair and does not become a burden on anyone. The report set out how the UK can retrofit all of our social housing stock as quickly as possible.

The report has had real influence, and meant that the Government and political parties began to understand the need to make our homes more efficient. With everything going on right now, we felt it was right that this work should be updated to look at how it can not only reduce energy bills but also improve health and wellbeing and create jobs across the whole country.

You can read the report here, and we hope that you find it interesting and useful.

Stonewater has been leading the way in the housing association sector on this issue for a number of years. To date we have retrofitted 3,000 homes and plan will complete 500 more in 2023 – and we aim to have all of our homes up to an EPC C rating (which means that it is energy efficient) by 2030.

We have also trained our frontline team to allow them to give you better support, as well as our online Energy Hub which has energy advice videos and the latest information on Government support with energy bills. We have also been hosting Facebook Live events, covering different topics such and energy bills and the cost of living crisis.

Alongside this, through our new partnership with Greenoak Housing Association, we will launch a new national Centre of Excellence for zero carbon development and retrofit, which will pioneer exemplar projects, standards and processes to achieve genuine sustainability.

We can and will do more, but we’re going to need support from government to do so. We’re proud to support this work by IPPR because it means we can get closer to ensuring that all of our homes are efficient, warm and secure.