Building greener homes and stronger communities: why social housing residents must benefit from ‘green collar’ jobs
by Lynsey Sweeney, Managing Director of Communities that Work
The Government has made economic growth, net zero, and tackling economic inactivity central to its Plan for Change. But if Labour is serious about delivering on all three, it must ensure that its plan to create thousands of new green jobs open up real employment opportunities for the communities at the heart of the transition.
With more than 4.5 million social homes in England and large, geographically concentrated portfolios, social landlords are uniquely positioned to drive high volume retrofit programmes.
That is why the publication of the Housing, Growth and Green Jobs Alliance’s new report matters.
Delivering for our Communities: Green Jobs and Skills in Social Housing sets out a clear case for why social housing residents must be at the heart of the UK’s transition to greener homes. The report argues that the shift to net zero cannot simply be about upgrading homes; it must also create long-term jobs, build skills pathways and unlock economic opportunity for local communities.
The debate around retrofit and household energy efficiency is often framed purely as an infrastructure challenge. But the reality is that Britain’s net zero ambitions will only succeed if we build the workforce capable of delivering them.
Evidence from our report demonstrates a growing demand for retrofit coordinators, insulation specialists, heat pump installers and multi-trade operatives needed to improve the energy efficiency of social homes. Yet industry organisations are already reporting major skills shortages in exactly these areas.
At the same time, many social housing residents remain economically inactive or unemployed, despite living in communities where varying scales of retrofit and green investment is increasingly taking place.
The opportunity in this area is obvious. The challenge is making sure that local people can benefit.
Our research shows that social housing providers alone plan to retrofit more than 70,000 homes and build over 67,000 new homes over the next five years. This represents one of the most significant local employment opportunities in the country.
Many housing associations are already delivering employability support, apprenticeships, work placements and construction-related training directly to residents. Survey respondents representing 800,000 homes reported supporting around 14,000 residents into employment and training in the last year alone, achieving nearly 12,000 positive outcomes[1].
But without a more coordinated national approach, there is a real risk that social housing residents will become excluded from the green jobs market developing around them.
Too often employment support, skills policy and housing development operate separately from one another. Funding for each remains fragmented, short-term and limited in scale. Without addressing these glaring issues, the Government will fall short in delivering its core manifesto promises.
To address this, the report calls for a much stronger focus on green skills and workforce development within social housing communities explicitly. That includes stable multi-year funding for retrofit and employment programmes, a coordinated national workforce strategy for green housing skills, and dedicated support for residents furthest from work.
There is also a clear need to build stronger local partnerships between housing associations, employers, training providers, Mayoral Strategic Authorities and key government departments so that employment pathways are embedded directly into the delivery of housing decarbonisation measures.
Programmes such as JobsPlus have already demonstrated the value of delivering place-based employment support directly within social housing communities. Trusted, locally embedded support works because it can provide tailored help to each resident, helping to overcome certain barriers that more centralised schemes often struggle to address. This was unsurprisingly a constant theme throughout Alan Milburn’s recently published interim report on young people and work, which specifically noted that tailored employment support could “make the biggest difference” for young people out of work.
The same principle must now shape the nation’s household energy transition.
If the UK is to deliver warmer, more energy-efficient homes at scale, we need a workforce strategy that provides opportunities within the communities where a significant amount of this work is taking place.
Our message to Government is clear: providing social housing residents with pathways into ‘green collar’ jobs will be critical to turning ambition into genuine progress.
