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. 3 days ago

    The Heat We're Not Ready For

    Orbit's dynamic thermal modelling shows which homes and residents face the greatest overheating risk, and why climate adaptation now needs to sit inside every retrofit and asset strategy. At a Glance - Awaab's Law brings excess heat under the same statutory response timeframes as damp and mould from 30 November 2026, giving landlords a fixed compliance deadline rather than a seasonal concern. - Bungalows, and bedrooms facing south or on upper floors, emerge as the highest overheating risk archetypes in research modelling 26 property types across seven locations. - Climate adaptation works best folded into existing retrofit, decarbonisation and asset management strategies, rather than run as a separate investment stream competing for its own budget. Overheating in social housing is moving from a seasonal complaint to a regulated hazard. From 30 November 2026, the second phase of Awaab's Law places excess heat inside the same statutory timeframes that already cover damp and mould, meaning landlords will need to investigate and act on heat risk to a fixed schedule, not only when residents raise it. Research from Orbit's Head of Asset Optimisation, Gemma Brookes, sets out why that shift matters, and what a proactive response looks like across a large, geographically varied housing stock spanning the Midlands, the South, and into Kent. The research uses dynamic thermal simulation, run through IES software, to model 26 property archetypes across seven locations rather than relying on resident surveys alone. Climate projections from Exeter University's Prometheus weather files extend the modelling out to 2050 and 2080, testing how today's homes will perform as the climate continues to warm. A new hybrid overheating metric combines the CIBSE TM59 and TM52 standards with British Standard adaptation categories, and extends beyond daytime conditions to cover night time overheating and its effect on sleep, an area existing definitions had left out.

    The Heat We're Not Ready For

  2. 2 Aug ·  Bonus

    Audiobook - Deploying Innovative Retrofit Funding Models in the Social Housing Sector

    Description A practical playbook for Chief Executives, Finance Directors, Property Directors and the boards they answer to, setting out how social landlords can fund retrofit at a scale the traditional grant and borrowing model cannot reach. Developed through the Retrofit Society, led by Healthy Homes Hub with Energiesprong UK, and commissioned by L&Q, Places for People, Platform Housing, Riverside, Sovereign Network Group, Vivid and Yorkshire Housing. It sets out eleven work streams covering strategy, financing, data, legal structuring, procurement and delivery, drawing on real programmes including work with the London Borough of Enfield under the Mayor of London's Zero Carbon Accelerator. AI voice disclosure This audiobook is narrated using AI-generated voice technology. Chapters (00:00) Introduction (Title, Foreword and How to Use the Playbook) (06:28) The Playbook in Short (27:24) The Playbook in Full (33:23) The Case for Change (42:09) The Eleven Workstreams (44:23) Workstream One: Strategy Development (56:20) Workstream Two: Customer Engagement and Customer Offer (01:05:08) Workstream Three: Financing (01:33:14) Workstream Four: Data (01:44:02) Workstream Five: Legal and Regulatory (01:55:14) Workstream Six: Understanding Risk and Risk Management (02:03:29) Workstream Seven: Master Planning and Distribution Network Operator Engagement (02:10:36) Workstream Eight: Procurement and Supply Chain (02:21:54) Workstream Nine: Pre-Construction, Delivery and Management Structure (02:28:57) Workstream Ten: Social Value and Job Creation (02:39:48) Workstream Eleven: Reporting, Measurement and Governance (02:45:54) What Next? (02:48:53) Appendices

    Audiobook - Deploying Innovative Retrofit Funding Models in the Social Housing Sector

  3. 26 Jul

    Collaborating to Deliver Warmer Homes for Wiltshire

    Wiltshire Council’s year one Warm Homes Local Grant programme shows how a compliant procurement framework can remove the delay between funding award and on-the-ground retrofit delivery. The mobilisation gap, the time lost between securing grant funding and getting work started in homes, is one of the most persistent constraints in retrofit delivery. Wiltshire Council’s year one Warm Homes Local Grant programme addressed it directly. A direct award route through the CHIC Healthy Homes Framework allowed EDF to be appointed as principal contractor compliantly and at pace, without the delay of a full procurement process. An existing working relationship between EDF and Wiltshire Council, established through the earlier HUG2 scheme, meant delivery could begin promptly once the grant was awarded.

    Collaborating to Deliver Warmer Homes for Wiltshire

  4. 22 Jul

    A Plan for Every Home: Why Asset Strategy Is a Health Intervention

    How a bottom-up planning model, and the headspace to think in decades, turns asset strategy into a health intervention. - “A plan for every home” replaces annual, top down budgeting with a model built from stock condition and customer data, home by home, giving residents the same visibility into their home's future that they would expect from any other service they use. - Energising Assets, a service for housing providers, delivered by Healthy Homes Hub, acts as a continuing voice on the shoulder across an organisation, helping asset teams, finance, execs and boards move past short-term compliance cycles and shape a genuinely long-term strategy that survives changes in leadership. - HousingAI absorbs the routine, policy-driven share of asset strategy work, standardising compliance across the sector so it stops consuming the capacity organisations need for that longer-term work.

    A Plan for Every Home: Why Asset Strategy Is a Health Intervention

  5. 19 Jul

    Straw, Carbon and Healthy Homes: What the UK Is Missing

    The UK wastes five million tonnes of straw annually while France builds with it at scale, and the barriers holding Britain back are institutional, not technical. - The UK produces five million tonnes of straw waste each year, enough to build 640,000 homes with three bedrooms, yet has only around 40 straw construction projects, against approximately 500 in France; the gap is explained by institutional barriers rather than any limitation of the material. - Unlike conventional insulation materials, which can release formaldehyde and other VOCs for months or years, straw construction uses clay and lime plasters that emit no VOCs and actively adsorb pollutants from indoor air, with the same plaster layers giving plastered straw walls up to 120 minutes fire resistance in formal tests; straw also sequesters carbon, making it one of the few structural materials that addresses fabric safety, indoor air quality and embodied carbon simultaneously. - The principal barriers to UK uptake are lender and insurer unfamiliarity, the absence of straw from university curricula and a shortage of developer case studies; breaking the lender and insurer barrier is identified as the most likely catalyst for wider adoption. Host: Jenny Danson, Founder and CEO, Healthy Homes Hub Guest: Eileen Sutherland, co founder, School of Natural Building

    Straw, Carbon and Healthy Homes: What the UK Is Missing

  6. 12 Jul

    Mould Is Not a Stain: It’s a Survivor

    Why eliminating residual spore load, not just cleaning visible mould, is the missing link in housing providers’ damp and mould strategies. At a glance - Surface cleaning removes visible mould but leaves microscopic spores embedded in air, furnishings and building fabric. Without reducing that residual spore load at a molecular level, mould will recolonise regardless of other interventions. - Awaab’s Law is creating pressure on providers to act before a full diagnosis is possible. Portable air treatment units are being written into some providers’ damp and mould response strategies to stabilise indoor environments and provide critical time for accurate assessment. - Fuel poverty must now be a factor in intervention procurement. Solutions that impose significant ongoing energy costs are not viable responses to mould in households that cannot afford adequate heating. Host Andy Cameron-Smith, Communications and Partnerships Director, Healthy Homes Hub Guest Christopher Thomas, Co-Founder, ArcAirTech

    Mould Is Not a Stain: It’s a Survivor

  7. 5 Jul

    From the Gate Outwards: Places Not Units

    How BFL’s shift to place-based organisation is restructuring investment decisions, team accountability and resident relationships across a 127,000-home portfolio. At a Glance -Reorganising colleagues around place rather than function removes the performance tensions that cause siloed teams to work against each other and against residents, aligning incentives, accountability and relationships at neighbourhood level. -BFL’s place standard evolved from a fixed benchmark into an 11-theme diagnostic tool after pilots showed that data alone gave a fundamentally misleading picture of how communities function. -Floor covering retention in void properties, stripped as standard practice for years on efficiency grounds, illustrates how blanket operational policies can undermine resident wellbeing in ways that place-based accountability makes visible. BFL, formed from the merger of Bromford, Flagship and LiveWest, operates a portfolio of 127,000 homes across England. The structural shift at its centre is the reorganisation of colleagues from functional teams, repairs, lettings and neighbourhood management, into unified teams accountable to a specific place. The origin lies in Bromford’s earlier neighbourhood coach role, where patch-based working exposed a fundamental problem: no other part of the business was organised the same way. Services came in from outside the place and left again without accumulating shared knowledge, sustained relationships or collective accountability. When colleagues from different functions operate as a single place team, performance indicators become shared. There is no benefit in resolving a task quickly at the expense of quality, because the same team handles the consequences. Colleagues cover for each other more readily, build longer-term relationships with residents and develop closer connections with ward councillors, community groups and local partners. Inter-team friction that had characterised the previous model largely disappears, and residents experience a qualitatively different relationship with the people responsible for their homes. Hosted by Jenny Danson, CEO and Co-Founder, Healthy Homes Hub Guests John Wade, Strategy Director, BFL; Simon Taylor, Head of Place Planning, BFL

    From the Gate Outwards: Places Not Units

  8. 28 Jun

    Flexibility In Heating Homes Of All Sizes

    How infrared heating, thermal storage, smart hot water and emerging finance models are opening up new decarbonisation routes for flats and smaller social housing properties. Host: Andy Cameron-Smith, Communications and Partnerships Director, Healthy Homes Hub Guests: Oliver Baker, Chief Executive, Ambion Heating; Pete McBride, UK Sales Director, Mixergy At a glance - Flats account for nearly half of social housing stock, yet a policy framework focused on heat pumps has left this property type without a settled decarbonisation solution, a gap compounded by the withdrawal of communal heating schemes following the regulated heat network regime that came into force in January 2025. -Thermal storage, including smart hot water cylinders, is increasingly central to the decarbonisation case: it enables load shifting, demand-side response, and grid balancing, and revised EPC proposals would allow direct electric heating combined with thermal storage to achieve EPC C in social housing. -Inclusive rent models, in which landlords guarantee a minimum thermal comfort standard in exchange for a fixed service charge, are emerging as a mechanism to combine private finance, low carbon technology, and energy market income to address fuel poverty, damp and mould, and carbon reduction in a single approach.

    Flexibility In Heating Homes Of All Sizes
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Ratings & Reviews

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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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