UK’s largest landlord explores training residents to install heat pumps

“How can we utilise people who’ve got existing skills that are very transferable, from heat pump installation to supply chain contracts?” he asked. “That can be a really virtuous circle from a social perspective.”

The housing association is currently completing a retrofit of around 500 homes with funding from the first round of the government’s Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund (SHDF).

In March 2023, a consortium of housing providers led by Clarion received £49m from the second round of the SHDF. The consortium will match this with another £49m to retrofit a further 6,000 homes, 5,000 of which are part of Clarion’s stock. 

Mr Lewis said that Clarion is still calculating longer-term targets to ensure all its 125,000 homes are retrofitted over the next few decades.

The landlord is working with the UK Green Building Council on the creation of a retrofit calculator, to be launched this autumn, “to help government to understand what is the scale of investment that is needed for the domestic retrofit sector”.

Clarion has said all its directly built new build homes will be fossil fuel-free by 2025, but Mr Lewis said it is still developing some new Section 106 properties with gas boilers because “we often don’t get as much design say” on those homes.

“The legislation on the new build side of things is moving,” he said. “You’re going to see more and more on embodied carbon and more operational focus.”