What’s happening?
South Yorkshire Housing Association (SYHA) would like to work together with our customers to tackle the climate emergency.
Do I need to do anything?
To find out about the opportunities on offer, please carry on reading and get in touch if you’d like to be involved.
Improving our homes and more
Global warming and climate change are issues which affect the whole world. We are now seeing the impacts here in the UK with changing weather patterns resulting in more extreme hot and cold spells, intense rainfall and flash flooding.
However, by far the biggest part of SYHA’s climate change impact comes from the homes we provide. How we provide heat and hot water in these homes has a huge impact on our climate change emissions, which largely come from natural gas boilers. Therefore, it is improvements to homes which offer the biggest opportunity for us to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. In the coming years we will need to ‘retrofit’ most of our 6,000+ homes to improve their insulation, swap natural gas boilers for a low carbon alternative, and possibly other changes too. This will lead to homes which are more comfortable and easier to heat, as well as being more sustainable.
This huge and vital task (likely to take 20-30 years to complete) is something that many housing associations across the country are prioritising, and will naturally affect our customers. As we continue and accelerate this work at SYHA, we want our customers to be part of the journey to ensure the transition to a sustainable low carbon future is as smooth as possible, and one which offers real benefits for all.
Here’s three ways we’d like you to be involved:
- How do we engage our customers in the climate emergency and the need for change?
Issues like global warming and climate change can seem big, daunting and complicated. Naturally, how much people know about climate change varies a lot from person to person. But we think it is really important that all our customers understand the issues and the need to take action. Can you help us develop our customer engagement plan, by thinking about what people really need to know, how we best reach our customers, and the words and language we should be using to explain the issues and our plans?
To say ‘yes’, complete the short contact form below, and we’ll be in touch.
2. Help us shape our housing retrofit plan
We already know that we will need to retrofit most of the homes we provide, and we are working hard on the plans to make this happen. This includes assessing the changes we need to make to homes, securing the money to pay for this, and, most importantly, ensuring that our customers’ experiences are as positive as possible throughout the journey.
We want to know what matters most to you, and how we can best work with and support you as we develop and deliver our retrofit programme – including how we communicate our plans before we start any works, how we support you both during works and once the work is complete. Can you help us with your thoughts and ideas?
To say ‘yes’, complete the short contact form below, and we’ll be in touch.
3. It is not all about the house. What else can we all do?
Retrofitting our homes will have the most significant impact on our carbon emissions, but there are many other things that everyone can do right now to make a positive impact (some of which you may already be doing). This includes thinking about how we use energy and water in the home, the way we travel, what we eat, what and how we buy, how we recycle, how we support wildlife, and more. We know that these are personal, and sometimes privileged, choices to make – so, we want to support our customers to move to and benefit from a low carbon sustainable lifestyle where possible.
Do you think you can help SYHA look at how we approach this work, and help us shape the advice and support we can provide?
To say ‘yes’, complete the short contact form below, and we’ll be in touch.
If you want to help us with any of these areas, or simply want to find out more, we would love to hear from you. Just complete our contact form, and we will get back to you.
We hope to hear from you.
Many thanks,
Gordon Watts
Sustainability Manager
