Moving 'Beyond Decent Homes' - Standard 2009

• Moving 'Beyond Decent Homes' - Standard 2009
• Moving 'Beyond Decent Homes' - Standard 2009

Moving 'Beyond Decent Homes' - Standard 2009

Date of the report

October 2009

Author of the report

The Beyond Decent Homes Standard was written and designed by Nick Dodd, Charlie Baker and John Sampson from URBED with support from Ellie Horwitch-Smith, Lee Wild and the QS team at Faithful+Gould, and John Sharpe from Bates Wood.

Purpose of the report

Following on from the previous report of 2008, which recommended SHAP should focus on the refurbishment and retrofit of the existing housing stock. This recommendation was adopted by SHAP partners (including Sustainability West Midlands) who then established the 2009 programme of best practice in retrofit.

The SHAP partners recognised the Decent Homes Standard could be enhanced to establish a new environmental standard for existing housing and this led to the decision to prepare and publish the Beyond Decent Homes Standard report. This is designed to be a practical tool for use by social landlords and the SHAP Partners have committed to the inclusion of the Standard in their Development Briefs and Asset Management Strategies, subject to appropriate funding.

Relevance to the region

Following the Low Carbon Transition Plan for the UK, the Beyond Decent Homes Standard is designed to set social housing on a course to support this delivery within the West Midlands. This plan sets out how the domestic sector can help deliver a greater share of emissions reductions and the proposals that all homes undergo a 'whole house package' of improvements by 2030. For this reason, this plan is very key for the West Midlands as a guide of how to reach this standard.

This new Standard seeks to provide genuine equality of living standards for all social housing tenants. It aims to bridge the gap between modern social housing - some of the most energy efficient in the country - and the wider stock - still containing some of the poorest performing in the country.

The standard also seeks to capture the wider benefits of investment, not just for tenants and their landlords, but also the construction industry as it prepares itself to delivery of a low carbon transition in the wider housing stock. Social housing is in the best position to deliver greater carbon reductions, earlier and at lower cost.

What SWM liked

We really like this report and particularly that it has three components which have been designed and tested with the other project partners, in order to take them 'beyond decent homes.' We think this makes this programme manageable and with the key flow diagrams, it is clear how to work through these stages.

 The 3 standards are on page 5 of the report and are listed below as;

• Standard for improvement - The performance standards and requirements for a 'Beyond Decent Homes' property under four categories.
• Framework of benefits - The framework for capturing the wider benefits of investment to the benefit of tenants, landlords and the local economy;The performance standards and requirements for a 'Beyond Decent Homes' property under four categories
• Implementation plan: The plan for programming investment in order to meet the 2016, 2020 and 2025 milestones.

Links and contact information

For more information, please visit the SHAP project pages on our website,