It feels like a time of new opportunities in social housing. The calls for more sustainable funding that housing providers have long been lobbying for have finally received an answer with £39bn allocated for the next decade in the government’s June spending review. This brings the possibility of larger, longer-term projects that can bring real change as opposed to operating in short funding cycles.
Elsewhere, the devolution programme announced at the end of last year specifies that housing and strategic planning will be one of the cornerstones of new regionalised powers. This means greater freedom in determining exactly how funding can be allocated at a local level. While this will begin in earnest with the current mayoral authorities, over time the government plans to deliver full devolution of the funding and delivery of affordable housing.
The third piece of the puzzle is improvements in housing technology that promise transformational change in areas such as buildings’ maintenance, tenant communications, compliance, data-led decision-making and financial management. Legacy systems have hamstrung the sector for too long but as data maturity improves, it opens the door to far more digitised services that can bring new financial resilience, deliver better citizen welfare and make good on community commitments that had previously been deprioritised.
Challenges remain
While nobody is underestimating the size of the hill still needing to be climbed, this ‘triple power’ of funding, authority and technology, when fully realised, should put housing providers in a better position than ever before to begin making positive changes in a sector that has struggled for some time.
Working towards the government’s target of 1.5 million new homes during this parliament and reversing the trend that saw a net loss of over 180,000 social homes over the last decade is a key part of this change, but it will take time. In the shorter term, there’s a lot of work already underway to bring current homes up to standard and improve housing providers’ operational processes.
Net zero and compliance targets
According to CBRE, there are 1.4 million homes that don’t meet an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating of Band C or above (a requirement in England within five years).
The impact of this goes beyond compliance. Research from the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) suggests that retrofitting social housing to bring homes up to Band C could save the NHS £85m per year. That’s based on reducing the health risks associated with fuel poverty as homes are left cold in the winter and vulnerable tenants become ill, demonstrating just how much these upgrades can contribute to a better society. But the work needed for ongoing sustainability compliance, after upgrades have been made, will really be dependent on the third lever of power mentioned above – technology.
This means introducing better systems for tracking energy performance on a continuous basis. It needs to live in the cloud and be plugged into the latest regulations and security standards so that remaining compliant becomes automated and easy to manage. Housing providers now need to be able to report on the energy use of all their properties, to analyse and compare outputs, and to use that data to make better, faster and more cost-effective decisions.
Any new-build homes will already benefit from adhering to modern standards and it will be straightforward to integrate their associated data into asset management software. However, incorporating older housing stock as part of the new systems will first require dedicated transformation projects to realign reporting processes for the digital world.
This might sound daunting but what it really means is going through a process of cleansing and standardising data and introducing appropriate data governance to ensure that there are defined ways to capture, store, share and use data consistently across all properties and service areas.
Effective maintenance programmes
Another important measure that highlights how too many instances of substandard living conditions are proving costly to both citizen welfare and the financial resilience of housing providers is the growing number of repair-related complaints.
The Housing Ombudsman reported that these have risen by almost 500 per cent over the past six years. In 2024, this carried a cost of £3.4m in compensation alone. Of course, at the root of this problem we can see the pressures that housing providers are under to keep up with current demands using limited resources.
The fact is that housing maintenance and improvements aren’t currently being delivered efficiently. This affects several key strategic areas, from decarbonisation and citizen engagement to building safety and operational management.
While funding increases are essential, there will still be a need to do more with less, which is why the role of technology to improve workflows and reduce costs is critical in reversing this trend.
Automation and analytics
Software that combines automation with insights and analytics enables housing providers to collect important stock data, look at trends and then create long-term maintenance plans that will reduce the number of complaints by moving from a reactive to a proactive approach to asset management.
From building safety, servicing and inspections to energy and risk management, automated workflow-based management means that teams can track performance against regulatory standards and KPIs, while also projecting maintenance costs through ‘what-if’ modelling. It leaves housing staff infinitely better prepared for managing whatever comes their way.
While it’s certainly time to push forward with investments to revive the social housing sector, the future really must be built on greater data maturity.
Housing providers can only begin to unlock the benefits of automation in key service areas such as maintenance and compliance by having better visibility of social housing stock performance through well-governed data practices. This will prove to be the best way of reducing the heavy administrative burden and associated costs that might otherwise stand in the way of providing the best possible services to residents.
Mark Holdsworth is the sales director at Civica.
