Government minister suggests ‘flexibility’ for grant funding

“There is a lot of alignment. There’s a lot of understanding of the dual challenges we face. I don’t see it as two separate agendas. I see it as one agenda.

“I think if you start with the household, if you start with the individual in that home, what they care about is raising the standards, raising the quality of the home, delivering upgrades that will reduce bills.

“And if we start there, I think our job and the thing that we’re trying to do is, how do we align the two?” the minister said.

Ms Fahnbulleh added that one of the things she was particularly exercised about was “you should only have to put the scaffolding up once”.

“You shouldn’t have to put it up once in order to do work for MHCLG that’s funded by that budget, and then do it again in order to deliver retrofit,” she said.

“And if we can get it right – and this is where I think place is really important and our ability to think about how we do the planning, the integration with local authorities, with social housing providers on the ground – there is the opportunity for us to align those agendas so they aren’t in conflict.

“So, what we can do is funding flexibility so that you can align it to deliver for those households.

“[It] is a shift, because we’re requiring all parts of government to start with the household, to start with the consumer, to help start with the renter, the owner-occupier, and then build out the solutions from there.

“But I think, unless you take that approach, you can’t deliver the scale of challenge that we have to deliver.”

Elsewhere in her comments to delegates, Ms Fahnbulleh noted that her department’s consultation on improving the energy efficiency of privately rented homes will be “followed shortly” by another on the social rented sector.

In a foreword to the consultation, published in February, the MP wrote: “Similar proposals for the social rented sector will be set out through the Decent Homes Standard review by my colleagues in MHCLG in due course.”

Within this, DESNZ said it was seeking to publish this consultation on the Decent Homes Standard for both the social and private rented sectors in spring this year.