Agenda item

RESOLVED: That

·         the Committee encouraged collaboration between the three main social housing providers in the borough namely Lewisham Homes, Phoenix Social Housing and Regenter B3 regarding working towards achieving the Council’s aim to be carbon neutral by 2030;

·         the Committee would refer its views to the Mayor & Cabinet as follows:

o   The Committee noted with concern that Regenter B3 are taking no steps to retrofit any of the housing stock they currently manage as it is not a part of their contract with Lewisham Council.

o   The Committee recommends that there are meetings between the relevant Cabinet lead, Lewisham Council officers and Regenter B3 as soon as possible to find ways of assisting Regenter B3 in commencing a retrofitting programme to include, if necessary, amending, varying or adding to the existing contract between Lewisham Council and Regenter B3.

Patrick Dubeck (Director of Inclusive Regeneration) and Martin O’Brien (Climate Resilience Manager) introduced the report. The following key points were noted:

5.1. Lewisham’s Climate Emergency Action Plan had 143 actions and 5 key themes. Sustainable housing was one of the 5 themes and had 43 actions assigned to it. 12 of these actions had already been completed, 29 were ongoing and work had not begun on 2 of the actions.

5.2. Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy had released data on the carbon emissions of local authorities in the UK. As of 2020, Lewisham had the 4^th lowest carbon emissions in England.

5.3. 47% of Lewisham’s carbon emissions were related to Housing.

Lesley Johnson (Director of Property & New Business) and Adam Pope (Sustainability Manager) from Phoenix Community Housing gave a presentation on their work on Homes Energy Improvement. In the discussion that followed, the following key points were noted:

5.4. Phoenix’s approach to retrofitting was to first understand how their homes perform now. They would be taking a fabric first approach to get their homes to the energy performance certificate C. Phoenix had around 1500 homes that were below SAP Band C. Their roadmap to be net-zero carbon by 2050 included- fabric first energy efficiency measures to lower energy demand, moving to decarbonised fuel sources and microgeneration.

5.5. Phoenix had applied for SHDF funding (Social Housing Decarbonization Fund). Their SHDF bid focused on getting the funding to retrofit 160 homes at an estimated cost of £2.8 million. All of these homes were street properties.

5.6. Currently, Phoenix had to buy-in the contractors for any retrofitting work as the contractors needed to be trust-mark certified.

5.7. For this first phase of works, Phoenix had not taken void properties into account but agreed that it would be useful to look at them going forward.

Margaret Dodwell (Chief Executive, Lewisham Homes) gave a presentation on Lewisham Homes’ retrofitting work. In the discussion that followed, the following key points were noted:

5.8. Lewisham Homes’ Asset Management strategy, developed with the Council, was approved by Lewisham Homes Board in September 2021 along with their Sustainability strategy. These strategies would be shared with members of the Committee.

5.9. Lewisham Homes had around 3000 properties that were in EPC band D, E, F and G. Only 407 properties out of these were in the lower bands of E, F and G. Only 2 properties were in the lowest G band.

5.10. The bid for SHDF by Lewisham Homes focused on utilising the funding to focus on the properties in these lower EPC bands. The grant funding would be used to add insulation, improve ventilation, provide thermal comfort and to do fabric improvement work. The funding received from SHDF would need to be spent by 2025.

5.11. Lewisham Homes’ application for SHDF was for £2.9 million. This funding would be used for carrying out improvement works on 159 properties. However, the total cost of the work would be £9 million so even after funding is secured, there would be a large gap in costs that would have to be bridged. The current plan was to meet this gap by programming the improvement work around other works planned for those buildings thereby making the most of planned activities.

John Pedretti (General Manager) gave a presentation on Regenter B3’s home improvement works. The following key points were noted:

5.12. The Council entered into a 20-year PFI contract with Regenter B3 in 2007. Since 2007, RB3 had carried out a lot of refurbishment and maintenance work that had a positive impact on the carbon emissions of the properties such as- installing double glazed windows, boiler replacement and upgrading communal lighting to LED.

5.13. Regenter B3 had not applied for SHDF but even if they had applied and received the funding it wouldn’t cover all the costs and there would still be a funding gap that couldn’t be bridged.

5.14. Furthermore, in the case of Lewisham Homes, delivery of the work funded by SHDF would be through their major works contractor but using these contractors for delivering RB3’s work would have given rise to a lot of legal and commercial complexities as they would be external contractors that were not managed by RB3.

5.15. Sustained and significant additional funding from government or elsewhere would be needed to achieve the Council’s ambition to be net-zero carbon by 2030.

RESOLVED: That

·         the Committee encouraged collaboration between the three main social housing providers in the borough namely Lewisham Homes, Phoenix Social Housing and Regenter B3 regarding working towards achieving the Council’s aim to be carbon neutral by 2030;

·         the Committee would refer its views to the Mayor & Cabinet as follows:

o   The Committee noted with concern that Regenter B3 are taking no steps to retrofit any of the housing stock they currently manage as it is not a part of their contract with Lewisham Council.

o   The Committee recommends that there are meetings between the relevant Cabinet lead, Lewisham Council officers and Regenter B3 as soon as possible to find ways of assisting Regenter B3 in commencing a retrofitting programme to include, if necessary, amending, varying or adding to the existing contract between Lewisham Council and Regenter B3.

The Committee voted to suspend standing orders.