15 minutes with… Tessa Barraclough, head of sustainability at Riverside

Tell us a bit more about your current role.

It is a newly created role at Riverside. I’m currently building the team. The way we’ve structured it, I think we’ve done something fairly unique in the sector. The planning and investment teams are coming over to the sustainability team. So all that forward planning for zero carbon and our major investment works are going to come under sustainability. 

One thing that came through in the first year of our strategy was the idea that it’s going to be difficult for people to carry on with business as usual. So there was an understanding that this issue needs real focus. 

Alongside the planning and investment restructuring, we’re essentially partnering across the business to make it as easy as possible to incorporate sustainability into other areas, such as finance, procurement and housing management.

What are some of the big challenges ahead?

Obviously, we have to talk about the cost of living crisis and the impact that is having on our residents. Sustainability and the need to retrofit is about making homes more efficient and cheaper to run and looking at how those running costs can be more affordable.

Ultimately, we’re here to service our residents. Increasingly, residents are asking us about when we’re going to upgrade their homes, as opposed to selecting properties to upgrade.

It feels like we’re taking a more holistic approach, like it’s a different world at times.

How does this fit with the sector’s wider approach to climate change?

Obviously, it relates back to the bigger picture of climate change. I see that in some of the really interesting meetings I’ve been having about innovative finance and how to fund net-zero targets that go beyond just how much a scheme might cost. 

Sometimes it can feel like the sector is out on its own in terms of being asked to solve some of these problems. But I think we’re good at collaborating and it feels like our external partners, consultants, contractors and lenders are now coming together in a way that I haven’t seen before.

What’s your proudest work moment or biggest achievement so far?

I’ve worked in sustainability for more than 17 years. Due to the scale of the funding involved and the time and effort put in from a large and diverse team, I think my proudest moment so far is Riverside’s successful £12.7m bid for funding from the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.

We brought people together from various parts of the business and put in a comprehensive and well-considered bid, which had huge support from the board, procurement colleagues, finance colleagues and asset colleagues.

It was just one of those moments where you felt the genuine enthusiasm of senior management and the whole team really wanting to do this.

What has been your hardest moment?

The retrofit sector was starting to ramp up and deliver at scale, and it was achieving more than two million insulation installations a year. Then we had a change of government direction and funding. 

Contractors that, in good faith, had put a lot of time and effort into training people up and building capacity just saw the bottom fall out of the sector.

We are still suffering the consequences of that. People who were burned through that process are still lost to the sector. Those skills and knowledge have dissipated.

Contractors are now rightly wary of engaging. It means we’ve got to make some really big commitments, because they want a guaranteed workstream. 

Who has been the most important person in your career so far – and why?

Nic Wedlake was a colleague I ended up job-sharing with at Peabody. Job-sharing was kind of a new world to me and I realise there must be occasions when it does not work, but our jobshare was really successful. Nic has a fantastic mind and likes to think through challenges.

He is always generous with his time and knowledge and that made it even more of a success. To have someone at the same level as you who you can bounce ideas off was hugely valuable.

What’s the best piece of work advice you’ve ever been given?

Nic always asked a question that I now always ask: “Why wouldn’t we?”
When you’re doing blue-sky thinking, sometimes you’re already putting yourself down and thinking: “We couldn’t possibly do that.”

But Nic would always ask: “Why wouldn’t we?”

When you’re doing this as an exercise, it forces you to make a list of all the reasons you think you cannot do something. Then you think about how you can overcome all those barriers. 

What this taught me is that if you can think through all the challenges and overcome them, then you can put together a really strong case for something.

If your logic and reasoning stack up, then there is no reason why you shouldn’t do it.

Tessa Barraclough, head of sustainability, Riverside