Earlier this year, Curia’s Levelling Up Commission conducted an inquiry on housing and homelessness. The inquiry was split into three panel sessions – part one focused on the UK’s planned transition to green energy, part two looked at improving well-being in deprived neighbourhoods, and part three looked at homelessness and rough sleeping.
The inquiry was hosted by Paula Sheriff, a former Labour MP and Shadow Minister and the current Chair of the Levelling Up Commission. Sheriff was joined by industry experts in each panel session, as well as other members of the Commission, which made for fascinating conversations and insight.
Decarbonising Housing
The first panel, which looked at the planned transition to green energy, featured Richard Miller – an Associate Director at Connected Places Catapult – and James Dyson – a Senior Researcher at E3G. Both speakers provided insight into the challenges that surround the interplay between housing and net zero while also offering some potential solutions.
Richard Miller tackled the issue of net zero and how the UK’s 2050 target is impacting our ability to raise housing standards after the Committee on Climate Change found in 2019 that housing in the UK wasn’t fit for the future. Miller said “The first thing to understand is that there is no route to net zero without decarbonising the built environment. The reason for that is the built environment accounts for 40 per cent of the UK’s CO2 emissions. On the operational energy side, about 3/4 of the carbon emissions from the built environment come directly from the use of fossil fuels in buildings for space and water heating.
“The challenge, therefore, becomes one of dealing with heating. We know how to fix this problem and we know we can create very energy-efficient homes. We need to dramatically cut operational emissions from existing buildings by using external wall insulation, replacing the roofs, doors, and windows, and using low-carbon heating.”
Meanwhile, James Dyson focused on the barriers to heat decarbonisation and high-quality homes in the UK. Based on his extensive research at E3G, he states that the five key barriers are inconsistent public funding, unequal capacity between local governments, failures in local and spatial planning, disconnect in energy planning, and the skills and supply chain.
Although the challenges at hand may seem like huge hurdles to overcome, Dyson is quietly optimistic about the future, saying that “We should be looking to reform public schemes so they can return to a higher volume of installation while protecting consumers.” He added, “Another quick fix would be to remove arbitrary heat pump planning restrictions. But longer term, we should be looking at allowing local governments to introduce stricter building requirements where feasible and work towards better coordination between themselves and district network operators.”
How Can Well-being be Improved in Neighbourhoods Experiencing Greater Deprivation?
Panel two looked at place-based deprivation and Paul Sheriff was joined by Lucy Dixon – Head of External Affairs at Karbon Homes – Daniel Patterson – Director of External Affairs at Make UK Modular – and Nicholas Boys-Smith – Director of Create Streets Foundation.
Lucy Dixon has been a key player in Karbon Homes’ research into how they can improve outcomes for people in two of the North East’s most deprived areas. Talking about what that research has entailed, she said, “The research looks at tackling two specific areas in our patch that are classed as ‘left behind’. We’ve done this to get to grips with the challenges of the people who live there but also to understand what interventions would have the most impact.”
“Our research has focused on the foundation economy. We’ve called it fair foundations and it looks at strengthening the essential goods and services that people need for everyday life, for example, food, health, housing, utilities, etc. but also on increasing residual household income rather than gross income.”
Daniel Patterson used the session to explain what modular housing is and how it can help with affordable housing. He said, “Modular is a house or building like any other but built in a factory and then assembled at site. Modular builders are able to complete projects at pace without loss of quality, increase productivity and use the available labour in a smarter way. Our economic model is to ensure that factories do not experience downtime, which means more housing.”
Finally, Nicholas Boys-Smith was keen to stress some “quick wins” for left-behind areas, which would help them to become more desirable. “There is incredibly strong and consistent data on the positive correlation between more street trees and good wellbeing outcomes for residents. They promote more walking, resulting in fewer accidents due to cars driving slower, and bring about clean air and better health. There are staggeringly fewer trees in poorer areas.”
Homelessness and Rough Sleeping
The final session was about homelessness in the UK and Sheriff was joined by Hugo Sugg – CEO of the Carden Banfield Foundation – and Joe Garrod – Corporate Director of Housing at the London Borough of Waltham Forest in East London.
Hugo Sugg, who found himself homeless for three months when he was 18, said that it will be “impossible” to completely prevent homelessness but that it needed to be looked at “through the lens of public health”. Talking about how his foundation works with these principles in mind, he said, “The foundation exists to help improve communication between organisations and services in local areas across the UK that work with individuals and families to try and prevent homelessness. If it can’t be prevented, then to make sure it does not reach the crisis stage.”
“We work mainly with councils and local government, so we aren’t targeting the front line or national government. The front line is fantastic, but the problem is that yes, you can help solve the issue for the people you come across day to day, however, you can’t solve wider structural issues around homelessness.”
Joe Garrod, whose borough has 900 households living in temporary accommodation, believes that the homelessness crisis has got to the point where it is more than just a “societal tragedy”. Elaborating on that point, he said, “Homelessness now represents a systemic risk to the financial sustainability of local government. Hastings have gone public about their temporary accommodation costs – they also have 900 households in temporary accommodation and that presents a risk to their solvency as a local authority.”
Curia’s Levelling Up Commission
The Levelling Up Commission intends to consider ways to implement the Government’s Levelling Up White Paper and subsequent Bill from the perspective of local and regional government. Too often the Levelling Up agenda is something being done ‘to and for’ local and regional government, the Commission intends to make sure it is done ‘with and by’ them.
Through roundtable meetings with MPs and senior leaders of local and regional government from across the UK, quantitative data analysis and regional sprints, the Commission intends to set out a series of recommendations to consider how regional inequalities can be reduced from the perspective of public services in four key areas:
- Health and Social Care
- Housing and Homelessness
- Education, Skills and Training
- Crime, Justice and Rehabilitation
