Social housing in U.K. more energy efficient, less polluting, says study

Social housing in U.K. more energy efficient, less polluting, says study
LONDON: Social housing is more energy efficient and less polluting than homes built by private sector builders, a government report said Wednesday. It said these houses are more likely to have adequate insulation and at least twice as energy efficient as other construction.

The annual English Housing Condition Survey found that 77 per cent of the social sector housing had cavity walls compared to 67 per cent of private homes. It also said only 27 per cent of private homes have adequate loft insulation, compared with 44 per cent of social housing.

Social housing sector also scored on an average 57 points out of possible 100 on an energy efficiency index, computed on the basis of availability of space and cost of water heating. Private homes had 46 points.

The study said social housing has improved twice as fast as private housing on that measure over the last decade, by 10 points rather than five. The study covered some 16,000 homes in the country.

However, the study showed that the government, after 10 years, has only met just about 50 per cent of its pledge to make more than nine out of 10 council and housing association homes decent by 2010. The number of social homes that do not meet basic decency standard, like being warm and weatherproof, has dropped from just over two million to one million over the last decade.

But ministers are confident that they will make faster progress because the fund allocation has been increased from 20 billion pounds so far to 40 billion pounds over the next three years. They pointed out that the number of non-decent homes overall has fallen from 9.1 million to six million since 1996.

The report said houses are growing in size but rooms are shrinking, as builders increase the number of bedrooms in an average home. Though more number of people will own three-bedroom houses, the average three-bedroom house is smaller than it was 10 years ago.

Housing minister Yvette Cooper said the report clearly showed that the huge investment the government has made in council housing has started giving results and it is helping the environment as well as fuel bills of families.