CEC joined with housing activists to discuss the crisis in housing in Camden. CEC’s contribution focussed on the need for maintenance and retrofit:
We urgently need homes that are safe, warm and dry, and fit for the future. This is a human right. We also urgently need action to ensure our planet is safe for future generations. These two crises are linked. To address them, we need to insulate our homes and move away from gas for heating.
Lack of proper maintenance is causing unhealthy and unsafe homes. Nearly a million people in the UK live with serious damp, 2 million with black mould, and 6.5 million people suffer from fuel poverty.
Cold homes are due to a lack of maintenance, lack of insulation and inefficient heating systems. Heat escapes through uninsulated walls, windows, roofs and floors, homes in the UK being amongst the most worst performing in Europe.
Damp homes have a number of causes. The most obvious being leaking roofs, lack of maintenance of gutters and pipework, and aging waste, water and heating services. Heat loss is made worse when walls are damp.
Dampness is also caused by condensation, resulting from high levels of humidity which condenses on cold internal surfaces. This happens where there is no proper ventilation in place and homes are overcrowded. In many homes ventilation systems have not been repaired or replaced, so water vapour is not removed and condensation occurs, creating conditions where mould can grow. This is made worse by lack of affordable heating.
The crisis in the condition of existing homes is the result of politicians not funding social housing properly and allowing private landlords to let out unsafe properties. Decay and degradation have been allowed to happen over decades as cyclical maintenance programmes have fallen behind. Tenants’ rent and leaseholders’ service charges are meant to pay for this work, but in many cases it is not being done, for example roofs that have reached the end of their life are not replaced but patch repaired instead. This increases demands on routine maintenance, a demand which is not being met here in Camden.
Climate Emergency Camden have called on the Council to address the inefficiencies and over-complexity in the housing repairs service, which results in simple safety measures like fire doors and smoke detectors going addressed for years, and unwieldy procurement contracts which are unable to respond to people’s needs. There needs to be a more co-ordinated and integrated approach. For example, damp and mould are primarily caused by the need for maintenance and measures such as insulation and ventilation. Cleaning with ‘mould washes’ is not a permanent solution.
Camden Council’s recent stock condition survey identified that works needed over the next 5 years will cost around £500 million, but the Council do not have enough money in the Housing Revenue Account to cover this. There is currently a shortfall of around £200 million, meaning that vital work will not be done unless additional funding is made available.
We have a unique opportunity here in Camden, as the constituency MP of the majority of Camden residents is likely to be the UK’s next Prime Minister. We should ask our Council to publicly call on Keir Starmer to commit to increase funding to local authorities, or else current housing conditions will not be improved.
In addition, we need a national strategy to upgrade all homes. Retrofit of buildings, including insulation, better performing windows and replacing gas boilers with energy efficient heating and renewable energy can improve the performance to near-new standards. Case studies demonstrate that even older, high-rise or poorly insulated buildings, known as ‘hard to treat’, can be refurbished to achieve high energy efficiency standards. This will reduce the cost of heating for residents substantially.
Funding for these works is also vital for reducing carbon emissions resulting from gas heating and addressing the Climate Emergency. Our government is failing to take to take the actions necessary to ensure a safe planet for future generations and is undermining global efforts. Human-caused climate change has been known about for decades, but very little action has been taken and we are now in a dangerous situation with global temperatures rising at alarming rates, causing worsening extreme weather, flood, fire, drought and famine.
We demand that Camden Council calls publicly on Keir Starmer to commit to fully fund a national programme of retrofitting of our existing homes. Current funding levels are completely inadequate. Four years after having declared a Climate Emergency Camden Council has only implemented plans to retrofit a couple of hundred of its 33,000 homes and continues to install gas fired heating as part of refurbishment works. Camden Council should draw up plans to retrofit all its housing, ready for when funding is available.
But retrofit will only be successful if there is effective maintenance, which is also vital for the health and wellbeing of residents. Climate Emergency Camden joins with residents to demand reform of housing maintenance services and increased funding by national government.
climateemergencycamden.org 