Improving quality: What does Labour need to do to fulfil their manifesto commitments?

What does Labour want? 

Labour say that they will take steps to ensure we are building more high-quality, well-designed, and sustainable homes and creating places that increase climate resilience and promote nature recovery. 

What needs to happen to meet this ambition? 

The Housing Forum supports government policies driving improvements in housing quality. Quality homes and place-making need to work alongside Design Codes and the Future Homes Standard to deliver housing that is high quality in every sense – for occupants, local communities and the environment. The Government must use its commissioning and regulatory powers to support the housebuilding sector, including those the supply chain, local authorities and communities in the implementation of these changes. 

There is a lack of understanding of the user-experience of living in modern very low carbon homes with some of the most innovative technologies.  

• Research is needed to ensure that new technologies are delivering as intended in the real world.  

• Government should commit to post occupancy monitoring and ensuring that planned low carbon targets are understood by and are being delivered for residents. 

Decarbonisation  

Labour plan to invest £6.6bn over five years to upgrade five million homes via grants and low interest loans for insulation, solar panels, batteries and low carbon heating. This will be delivered via councils and devolved governments. 

We need significantly more investment in decarbonisation for both social housing and private housing. This will help reduce carbon emissions, tackle fuel poverty and improve energy and price security reduce reliance on gas supplies from international markets. The Construction Leadership Council has set out proposals for a National Retrofit Strategy and the Government needs to take this forward as policy. This includes a focus on the skills needed. 

Funding sources for retrofitting are too fragmented, short term and insufficient. Treasury support and long-term commitment is needed. Financial support for homeowners to invest in heat pumps and solid wall insulation are needed to make investment cost-effective and affordable for homeowners. A long-term secure programme of retrofit funding is needed for the social housing sector – building upon the ambitions of the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund but ensuring certainty of funding for the investment needed across the social housing stock.  

Poor energy efficiency is one of the main causes of poor quality housing, including damp and mould. Some housing stock may not be cost-effective to retrofit, so there are times when we should be considering demolition and rebuilding better quality zero carbon housing.  

Some low carbon technologies (such as heat networks) require community-based approaches. The government needs to resolve issues around franchising, provision of infrastructure and whether there can be a market for heat within one area.  

• The Government should also improve regulation, governance and technical standards for heat networks. 

• A cross-sector roadmap is needed with visibility of long-term investment to achieve low- carbon targets in both new and existing homes. This should include long-term funding for social landlords to invest in their stock – improving condition, building safety and energy efficiency in a cost-effective and co-ordinated way. 

• The Government should take forward the Strategic Spatial Energy Plan that sets out plans for how to heat UK homes, including heat networks, the future of the gas network and the big increases in electricity capacity needed to move to zero-carbon energy.  

• The Government should ensure that homeowners are not overlooked and are strongly encouraged to make improvements to their homes, with grants where needed. 

• VAT should be removed from all forms of retrofitting, regeneration and fire safety work, to create better incentives to upgrade our housing stock. 

• The social rent formula should be reformed and updated, with rents reflecting the energy efficiency of the property, to incentivise landlords to upgrade properties. 

Skills 

Labour have recognised the need to address the skill shortage in areas including construction. They want to link migration policy to skills policy to end reliance on overseas workers via workforce and training plans. There are also plans to establish Skills England – bringing employers and training providers together, to transform FE colleges to specialist Technical Excellence College and to allow employers to make more flexible use of the Apprenticeship Levy. 

The Housing Forum’s members are well aware of a variety of new skills that are needed across the whole housebuilding and renovating sector – from designers and planners to construction workers and experts teaching residents how to use new technology.  

• A workforce plan for the new skills needed for building low carbon housing is needed. 

New technologies exist but companies lack the confidence in the supply chain needed to scale their businesses.  This would support the supply chain needed to achieve low-carbon targets in new and existing homes.  

• The government should support the construction sector to bring forward long-term investment in low carbon technologies. 

There is a need to integrate decarbonisation plans and processes with those improving housing quality, fire and building safety within local authorities, housing providers and freeholders. 

There is as much need as ever to modernise the construction sector. Use of MMC has developed since the Farmer Report, but there remains much to do.  A holistic approach to MMC is needed, which supports the industry from manufacturing to operation, and includes the private housebuilding sector rather than requiring a proportion of MMC to be a condition of funding for social housing. 

New technologies need to be integrated within the supply chain to support the Government’s climate change commitments. Local authorities should be incentivised to aggregate demand and bring forward a larger pipeline of work actively focused on housing supply, considering the requirements of MMC at early stages in procurement. They should work visibly with mayoral and combined authorities over the long term to enable investment in appropriate systems and technology to deliver Modern Methods at scale and as a tool to achieve net zero carbon commitments. We support the development of innovative new technologies within homes including those that help older people to live independently. 

• Government should work with the sector to create a more reliable market for low-carbon housing, including the use of Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) to futureproof the housebuilding industry.  

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