Making Housing Better

Healthy Homes Hub

Welcome to Making Housing Better, the podcast from the Healthy Homes Hub which each week dives into a topic on the question of healthy homes so we can all improve our knowledge and learn how we can each contribute to making housing better. We're a membership body driving collaboration for healthier living environments, a knowledge resource helping housing providers deliver healthy homes as well as being a voice to articulate the benefit and value of good health in the home. Join us and let’s make housing better, together!

  1. Deadly Overheating Isn't Coming: It's Already Here

    4 days ago

    Deadly Overheating Isn't Coming: It's Already Here

    The UK’s national research hub on net zero, health and extreme heat, HEARTH is a five-year, £7.4 million programme funded by UK Research and Innovation and the National Institute for Health Research. Led by Oxford Brookes University, it brings together six universities and four non-academic public sector partners, including the Greater London Authority, Oxfordshire County Council and Sussex NHS Foundation Trust. Its core argument is that rising temperatures are not a future risk: 80% of homes in London already overheat, and the 2022 heatwave, during which UK temperatures exceeded 40 degrees for the first time, resulted in more than 3,200 excess summer deaths. The programme is developing heat health indicators and decision support tools to ensure policy is evidence-based. Its central message for housing providers is that net zero retrofit and climate resilience cannot continue to be treated as separate conversations: insulation without ventilation, or external wall insulation without external shading, risks solving one problem while creating another.

    33 min
  2. Strategic Procurement: Long-term Solutions for Long-term Assets

    14 Jun

    Strategic Procurement: Long-term Solutions for Long-term Assets

    Why housing providers that treat procurement as a transactional function are leaving value, safety and long-term asset performance on the table. At a glance - Strategic procurement only delivers value when it is structurally aligned to an organisation’s asset management strategy, not treated as a stand-alone tendering function. - Short-term funding cycles, cost pressures and shifting regulatory standards make long-term procurement planning practically impossible for many housing providers. - Data collection embedded within contract delivery, including building information modelling protocols, is emerging as a critical tool for predictive asset management and whole-life costing. Strategic procurement in housing is widely discussed at a sector level but frequently reduced to transactional contract-letting under delivery pressure. The gap between principle and practice is significant: the upstream work of market engagement, risk identification, procedural design and supply chain relationship-building is regularly deferred or omitted when timescales tighten. Effective strategic procurement requires direct alignment with an organisation’s asset management strategy. Where work streams sit across different buildings, different budgets and different departments without a unifying strategic direction, procurement cannot coordinate spend toward shared outcomes. The relationship between asset management and procurement must be active and continuous rather than sequential. Host: Andy Cameron-Smith, Healthy Homes Hub Guest: Oliver Mooney, Head of Category, Fusion21

    50 min
  3. Strategic Procurement: Long-term Solutions for Long-term Assets

    14 Jun

    Strategic Procurement: Long-term Solutions for Long-term Assets

    Why housing providers that treat procurement as a transactional function are leaving value, safety and long-term asset performance on the table. At a glance - Strategic procurement only delivers value when it is structurally aligned to an organisation’s asset management strategy, not treated as a stand-alone tendering function. - Short-term funding cycles, cost pressures and shifting regulatory standards make long-term procurement planning practically impossible for many housing providers. - Data collection embedded within contract delivery, including building information modelling protocols, is emerging as a critical tool for predictive asset management and whole-life costing. Strategic procurement in housing is widely discussed at a sector level but frequently reduced to transactional contract-letting under delivery pressure. The gap between principle and practice is significant: the upstream work of market engagement, risk identification, procedural design and supply chain relationship-building is regularly deferred or omitted when timescales tighten. Effective strategic procurement requires direct alignment with an organisation’s asset management strategy. Where work streams sit across different buildings, different budgets and different departments without a unifying strategic direction, procurement cannot coordinate spend toward shared outcomes. The relationship between asset management and procurement must be active and continuous rather than sequential. Host: Andy Cameron-Smith, Healthy Homes Hub Guest: Oliver Mooney, Head of Category, Fusion21

    50 min
  4. Home Should Not Make You Sick

    7 Jun

    Home Should Not Make You Sick

    Investigative journalist Pete Apps examines the human cost of structural failure in social housing, from broken complaints systems to homes that make people ill. In this episode, Peter Apps, award-winning investigative journalist and contributing editor at Inside Housing, draws on more than a decade of reporting on the UK housing crisis to examine what it means, in human terms, when a home becomes a source of harm. From failing heat networks and chronic damp to the broken complaints systems that trap tenants in cycles of unresolved harm, Apps sets out the human cost of structural failure in social housing. Hosted by Jenny Danson, Founder and CEO, Healthy Homes Hub

    46 min
  5. Procurement’s Untapped Power in Social Housing

    1 Jun

    Procurement’s Untapped Power in Social Housing

    The launch of the Procurement Intelligence Hub signals a shift in how the housing sector approaches procurement from compliance exercise to strategic tool for delivering healthier homes. At a glance • Procurement engaged late in the process routinely produces solutions that fail to match the operational realities of housing delivery. • The Procurement Act 2023 introduces mandatory KPI transparency on contracts above specified thresholds, creating sector-wide accountability for outcomes rather than process compliance. • The Procurement Intelligence Hub launches as a resource sharing specifications, case studies and hard-won lessons, with the explicit aim of stopping housing providers repeating avoidable mistakes. Strategic procurement in social housing is underused. Where procurement teams are brought in at the final stages of planning, the result is frequently a mismatch between what the market delivers and what an organisation actually needs. Early involvement, by contrast, allows procurement to shape the solutioning from the outset, ensuring that detailed operational requirements, resident communication plans and delivery logistics are built into the specification before the market is approached.

    39 min
  6. Damp and Mould: Leave Your Ego at the Door

    24 May

    Damp and Mould: Leave Your Ego at the Door

    Awaab’s law is widely misread as a compliance threat; Danny Bird argues the sector needs to understand it properly, set aside internal barriers, and own the response collectively. -That misreading is driving fear and defensive behaviour rather than effective cross-organisational response -Damp and mould cannot be solved by repairs teams alone; siloed working across departments, from IT and procurement to HR and finance, is why organisational responses keep falling short -A proactive, sensor-led future is achievable, but requires the will, investment and cross-departmental infrastructure to move beyond reactive case management Damp and mould reports have risen by around 25 to 30 per cent year on year across multiple housing associations, driven by energy costs, under-investment in stock and rising awareness. The sector’s response has been hampered as much by internal culture and misreading of the law as by any operational gap. Awaab’s law is more nuanced than the sector’s fearful response suggests. Not every report triggers obligations. The HHSRS framework, weighing hazard against household vulnerability, is the intended basis for triage and resource decisions. The sector took the headline without reading the article, and fear-driven blanket responses serve neither the law nor residents.

    41 min
  7. Floored: Why Social Housing Tenants Are Still Waiting for a Basic Essential

    17 May

    Floored: Why Social Housing Tenants Are Still Waiting for a Basic Essential

    - Providing flooring at the point of let is a saving to the business overall once reduced void costs, rent arrears, complaints and improved tenancy sustainment are accounted for. - An estimated 760,000 adults in social housing have no carpet or flooring in their bedrooms and living areas, yet only around 10% of social landlords provide floor coverings at the point of let. - Flooring was removed from the Decent Homes Standard, raising concerns that landlords who had begun changing their policies will revert to previous practice. Research by the Longleigh Foundation and Altair, conducted through MRI Software’s Resident Voice Index, surveyed nearly 8,000 social housing tenants. Four in five had moved into a home that was either partially floored or had no flooring at all, and almost half moved into a home with no floor coverings whatsoever. Longleigh commissioned the research after seeing repeated cases of families arriving in homes with bare concrete floors. The absence of flooring leaves residents feeling poor and stigmatised, and reluctant to invite people into their homes. Crisis support across the UK is inconsistent. Scotland operates a statutory scheme that includes flooring. In England, 48 of just over 150 upper-tier local authorities have closed their local welfare schemes, and the new Crisis and Resilience Fund permits flooring provision only where local authorities choose to fund it. Flooring cannot be included in a service charge.

    37 min
  8. Asthma Friendly Homes

    10 May

    Asthma Friendly Homes

    How a new health and housing collaboration in Tower Hamlets is testing a structured approach to preventing childhood asthma, reaching families through their front door rather than the hospital ward. Dr Abigail Whitehouse returns to the Healthy Homes Hub podcast to reflect on a year of progress in health and housing, and to discuss a new initiative she is leading as NHS clinical partner alongside the Healthy Homes Hub. At a glance • Awaab’s Law is producing early signs of faster remediation and greater cross-sector accountability, but the structural challenges of overcrowding and ageing housing stock in areas such as Tower Hamlets remain largely unsolved. • The Healthy Homes Hub is piloting an Asthma Friendly Homes model in Tower Hamlets with four housing providers and the local NHS Integrated Care Board, building on Walsall Housing Group’s established ACING Asthma programme. • The project aims to generate an evidence base for community-level, prevention-focused intervention that can inform national policy and a replicable blueprint for other areas.

    33 min
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

Welcome to Making Housing Better, the podcast from the Healthy Homes Hub which each week dives into a topic on the question of healthy homes so we can all improve our knowledge and learn how we can each contribute to making housing better. We're a membership body driving collaboration for healthier living environments, a knowledge resource helping housing providers deliver healthy homes as well as being a voice to articulate the benefit and value of good health in the home. Join us and let’s make housing better, together!

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