Andy Burnham faces a considerable challenge to convince the country that he can and will provide hope, opportunity and confidence for a better future. One of his toughest challenges is housing and the importance this has on so many people’s lives.
His pledge of £39 billion over the next 10 years for council and social housing is welcome, and long overdue. But if this ambition is to deliver lasting value, it must be built on the principle of fabric first. Get the insulation right, and everything else will follow more easily. If the fabric is overlooked then no amount of renewable technology added afterwards will fully make up the difference.
Regrettably we have sold off, run down and simply failed to build enough of these homes for four decades. But that is the challenge we now face, and people should be able to expect a decent home as standard. So the scale of this pledge is encouraging. The question, as always, is whether delivery can match the ambition. Housing pledges of this size have a habit of being chipped away over time by cost objections and competing pressures, and it would be a negation of duty to future generations if fabric standards were among the first casualties.
Quantity should not come at the expense of quality. There is an understandable temptation to see solar panels and heat pumps as a quick route to progress, without always doing the essential groundwork first. But fitting renewables to a home that is not properly insulated can mean disappointing performance and higher running costs. Insulation matters just as much in summer as in winter, as it stops the heat flow through the fabric of the building. With extreme heat now becoming more frequent, this is not a detail we can afford to overlook as it can reduce or even eliminate the need for mechanical cooling.
INVESTING IN SKILLS
The construction sector must have the confidence to invest in skills and training. We have seen years of short-lived initiatives that arrive with good intentions and then fade when funding tightens, which sends a discouraging signal to anyone considering a career in this industry. If Burnham wants a programme that still holds up against our 2050 targets, he will need sustained commitment, not just a strong start.
We need to insist on getting the fabric right. Maintain that commitment over time, give proper thought to the quality of the places people live in, and this could genuinely be the step change in housing this country has needed for a generation.
YOU CANNOT BUILD TO A STANDARD THAT DOESN’T EXIST
The Conservative Party’s conference pledge to scrap the Future Homes Standard before it has even come into force has been presented as a way of cutting red tape and bringing down the cost of new homes. It is hard to see what it would actually achieve.
For those of us who build, specify and live in homes, a sensible standard gives us something to build to, and something to be held to. Nowhere is that clearer than in the fabric of a building, where good performance depends on getting the basics right from the start, and a warm, comfortable home that is affordable to run cannot be left to chance.
It has taken us a very long time to get here. Years of consultation, preparation and investment have gone into the Future Homes Standard, and designers,
manufacturers and contractors have planned around it. Take it away and the first question anyone will ask is simple: what is this home actually being built to? Without a clear benchmark, responsible builders will carry on doing the right thing, but will be undercut all the way by those who do not, and buyers will have no easy way of telling the difference. That does not open up competition. It lowers the bar and invites the cowboys in.
We should also remember where building below the required standard has led us before. The lesson of Grenfell was not that standards are the problem. It was what happens when buildings fall short of the standards that exist and nobody checks. The answer to too few inspectors is better enforcement, not fewer standards, which would be rather like responding to concerns about road safety by scrapping the MOT. Everything the industry has worked towards since, from the Building Safety Act to competency and the golden thread of responsibility, depends on there being a standard to be competent against.
There is a quieter cost too. Companies will not invest in training and skills if they do not know where regulation is heading, and quality takes years to build into a workforce. Confusion is one of the quickest ways to undermine it.
Nor does the cost of an inefficient home simply go away. A home that needs less energy to heat is cheaper to run and more comfortable in winter and in summer. Even if energy were cheap and plentiful, wasting it would make no sense, any more than we would argue for cars that do five miles to the gallon because fuel was affordable. Lower standards do not remove the bill. They pass it on, first to the people who live in these homes and later to the rest of us when it has to be put right.
Whatever the politics of the moment, standards are not the obstacle to building more homes. They are what make sure the homes we build are worth having. So keep the standard, enforce it properly, and get the fabric right first. insulationmanufacturers.org.uk