Jess Shanahan spoke to Yorkshire Housing‘s CEO Nick Atkin to find out about its ambitious retrofit plans.
Yorkshire Housing estimates its customers’ 16,500 homes output around 50,000 tons of CO2 emissions each year, but it’s aiming to get that number to zero with an ambitious retrofitting plan. With an investment of more than £100 million over the next five years, the housing association will work with residents to make sure each home is fit for the future.
Not only will this approach prepare the buildings for a net-zero future, but it will also help residents with the rising costs of energy. And Yorkshire Housing’s Nick Atkin says involving residents in the process is key to success.
“Normally, when you’re fitting new bathrooms, kitchens, or other sorts of enhancements to a customer’s home, you know that they’re genuinely keen to see you,” says Nick. “For a retrofit, you’re disturbing everything in every room. This has influenced our approach and our starting point is to get full customer buy-in. If we get that right, our projects run more smoothly.”
Well-informed customers
As well as getting buy-in from individual residents, Yorkshire Housing has a customer climate change steering group that helps guide the company in its efforts to reach net zero. “We’ve got some really well-informed customers who, in a no-nonsense way, tell us where things aren’t working as well as where we need to adapt our approach,” Nick says.
It’s also important for Yorkshire Housing to gather feedback from successful projects. It recently completed a retrofit of 30 houses and flats in the Craven area. As part of the project, the company fitted solar panels to all homes and installed air source heat pumps (ASHPs), reducing energy costs for residents while cutting carbon emissions by around 30 tonnes.
“These recent projects have been invaluable for us in terms of learning lessons. In particular, we’ve been listening to feedback from customers so that we can fine-tune our approach going forward.”
Educating customers on the possibilities
While it’s possible for Yorkshire Housing to make a huge impact through its retrofit projects, residents still have a part to play. This is especially true when it comes to the new hardware being installed to help residents reduce their bills.
“There isn’t enough education on these topics,” Nick says. “You’re going from a commonly held belief of how you heat your home that has been around for four generations of families, at least. Going from a gas-powered wet central heating system in a building made of semi-permeable materials to a completely different way of heating and ventilating your home is going to take time to get used to.”
The technical elements of these new systems are important and proper education will help people get the most out of them. However, it’s much more than that, as Nick explains: “The majority of people generally aren’t interested in the tech side. They just want to know how to use the systems that they’ve got. They don’t necessarily want to count the kilowatt hours that their solar panels have saved them.
“What we’ve found is most customers respond better when we explain to them what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and how it is going to benefit them. But the biggest challenge, without a shadow of a doubt, is around behavioural change.”
This behavioural change is where Yorkshire Housing understands most customers will need support. “The mindset change is the thing all of us will find the most difficult as we all move to living in low-carbon homes,” says Nick.
The road to net zero
Yorkshire Housing knows it has a significant part to play in the government’s ambitions to get to net-zero emissions by 2050. This means it needs to set its priorities, as Nick explains: “It’s about tackling the most energy inefficient home first and making sure customers aren’t paying for heat, only for it to escape.”
The incentive for the customer is that the retrofit will help them tackle the cost of living crisis, but the measure also helps reduce emissions as a whole. “We take a fabric-first approach and add additional insulation to make the homes warmer. Then we look to technological solutions such as solar cells, low carbon sources of energy, and remote sensors.”
With numerous projects taking place and scheduled for the future, Yorkshire Housing is making a difference in the country’s emissions while also making life a little easier for its residents.
