Learn how to develop a tenant engagement strategy for retrofit projects with new toolkit
The Midlands Net Zero Hub have launched a Tenant Engagement Toolkit for social housing retrofit programmes today.
Improving the energy efficiency of the UK’s housing stock is vital to achieve net zero by 2050. Carbon emissions from buildings in the UK remain the second highest-emitting sector, accounting for 17% of total emissions. The Midlands Regional Retrofit Skills plan highlights that four million homes across the Midlands currently have an EPC D or below, which shows the opportunity that retrofit will play in local net zero delivery.
Through schemes like the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund (SHDF), delivered by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, grant funding is available to local authorities and housing providers to install a range of retrofit measures, including insulation, heating system upgrades, and renewable energy installations on social homes in England.
Retrofitting these properties bring many benefits to tenants, including more comfortable homes, lower energy bills, and reduced carbon emissions. However, effective engagement, communication, and streamlined processes for tenants are crucial to ensure that projects are successful with minimal disruption for residents.
Due to standards like PAS 2035 and legislation in the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, engagement with housing tenants is mandatory in retrofit projects. But in addition to being compulsory, effective resident communication and increased understanding can transform a project by minimising disruption, promoting cooperation, and enhancing satisfactions.
To support local authorities, housing providers and trusted delivery partners to enable effective engagement throughout their retrofit schemes, the Midlands Net Zero Hub has created the Tenant Engagement Toolkit.
The aims of the toolkit are to:
- Enable housing providers to follow a step-by-step process to create a basic and effective tenant engagement strategy for a retrofit project.
- Provide guidance on which parameters to consider when developing a more detailed engagement plan and tailor the strategy to their own tenants.
- Outline examples of working communication templates to generate ideas on how to create bespoke engagement materials.
- Encourage continued development of the strategy as users go through the retrofit journey.
In addition to setting out the steps needed to create a tenant engagement strategy, the toolkit includes 14 templates that local authorities and housing providers can use for their communications with residents.
While the toolkit is primarily intended for retrofit projects in social homes, the examples and resources provided can also be applied to the delivery of retrofit programmes for owner-occupied properties.
Charlotte Tutton, Domestic Retrofit Scheme Manager at Midlands Net Zero Hub, said: “We have set up the Tenant Engagement Toolkit to be a helpful resource for local authorities and housing providers delivering domestic retrofit programmes. The aim of the toolkit is to avoid the duplication of resources and enable shared learning. Bringing tenants on the journey with you is critical for successful retrofit schemes, so this toolkit will help demystify the process creating an engagement strategy and includes 14 templates which can be used in your projects. We would like to thank Act On Energy, Marches Energy Agency, and Nottingham Energy Partnership for their support in creating this toolkit. This is only one aspect of support that the Midlands Net Zero Hub can offer to accelerate domestic retrofit projects, so get in touch with the team if you have ideas that we could assist with.”