15 minutes with… Rob Lane

Clarion is the biggest housing association in the country. Is that an advantage for supporting residents?

I think size is an advantage. It gives us the kind of economies of scale to rise to some of the significant challenges that we have.

One example I’d give is regeneration. There is a housing crisis that has been growing for 50 years – we’re not building enough social housing in this country.

At the same time, a lot of the social housing that we have in the UK was built post-war, using non-traditional construction methods, and that is becoming really challenging to manage.

There is also significant overcrowding in homes. As well as building many more social homes in the UK, which is what Clarion is striving to do through its size and economies of scale, we also have to take on the challenge of regenerating some of these homes.

A lot of the regeneration that you see housing associations undertake is not something that a commercial developer would take on; it’s something that is not done for profit – it’s done because it’s the right thing to do. It’s done because these are homes that have reached the end of their useful lives.

There’s no government funding for this. There’s no grant funding for regeneration. And in London, replacing a home will cost a housing association around £200,000.

An example of where we’re doing this outside of London is in Barne Barton in Plymouth, where we’re transforming a 1960s housing estate and former naval resettlement into a modern community of 200-plus affordable homes.

It’s not a scheme that a commercial developer would take on. It’s assets that we have in our portfolio and the best option for those assets for that community is to regenerate those homes. It’s a significant challenge, but an example of where our size can help.

How is Clarion getting on with building safety remediation?

It’s challenging at the moment because of the changing regulations and legislation, which we’re having to keep abreast of and keep on the front foot around our programme to keep it moving.

We are progressing well – we have risk-assessed all of our high-risk buildings and we’re getting on with the remediation of those. We’re now starting to look at our mid-rise, 11 to 18-metre buildings, risk-assessing those and moving forwards. Clarion was in a fortunate place – we didn’t have a huge number of high-risk buildings over 18 metres and didn’t have a huge number that were clad.

How big will the cost of living crisis be for your tenants?

It’s going to be a huge issue for the country in terms of the rising price of fuel, and the cost of living and energy, particularly for our residents because they have lower incomes. At Clarion, we’re trying to proactively deal with it in terms of looking at the energy efficiency of homes, but that’s a medium-term sort of gain.

The main thing we have which really helps us is Clarion Futures, which is our charitable foundation.

We invest around £10m a year in Clarion Futures and that is also then topped up by grants and funding from other agencies.

Part of the offer is support around managing money, managing energy costs, grants to food banks and trying to help people in terms of concerns around ‘heating or eating’, which is where we are at the moment. It’s going to be challenging even with all that to try and manage through the next 12 months.

Tell us something about yourself that people might not know.

I’ve got a son and a daughter. My son is really keen on football and I coach his under-15s team – I get a lot of pleasure out of that.

My daughter is into acting, singing and dancing. So when I’m not at work, that’s what brings me joy – watching my children do the things they love and being involved in that.