Out of the 700,000 extremely cold homes, about 500,000 are privately owned homes, 200,000 are privately rented apartments, and 20,000 are social housing units. Credit: Bruno Martins / Unsplash.

The Building Research Establishment (BRE), a UK-based centre of building science, estimates that a house retrofit programme in England could annually save £540m for the National Health Service (NHS).

In the report titled ‘The Cost of Poor Housing by tenure in England’, BRE’s analysis of English housing reveals that over 700,000 homes are considered extremely cold out of the 2.4 million homes under a category one hazard.

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Category 1 hazard means posing a serious and immediate risk to a person’s health and safety.

The NHS spends about £540m annually to treat people affected by severe cold.

BRE estimates that installing efficient insulation and heating systems in cold homes will cost approximately ten times more, about £5.3bn.

BRE’s report follows a 2021 analysis of the total cost of substandard housing to the NHS.

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For the first time, its study breaks down the effects of poor housing on the NHS in terms of owner-occupied, privately leased, and socially rented categories.

Out of the 700,000 homes, about 500,000 are privately owned, 200,000 are privately rented apartments, and 20,000 are social housing units.

As per the BRE calculations, it will cost around £6,690 per home on average to resolve the issue of excessively cold, owner-occupied homes and £6,835 per home in the rental segment.

The Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards, a governmental policy, mandates landlords to improve extremely cold privately rented homes.

Landowners only require a maximum of £3,500 to enhance their property to meet the minimum EPC ‘E’ standard. 

According to the new BRE study, $3,500 is enough to upgrade 30 to 40% of privately rented homes too cold to an ‘E’ standard.

BRE CEO Gillian Charlesworth said: “Today’s analysis reminds us just how much of an impact poorly insulated and inadequately heated homes are having on residents and our public services, particularly in the poorest quality properties.

“Poorly insulated homes have an immediate impact on the health of the people who live in them, as well as being expensive to heat and a barrier to meeting our net zero ambitions. When local and national governments know where the most problematic homes are from data such as these, they can design targeted programmes to improve them.”

Later this year, BRE intends to publish a 30-year cost-benefit analysis on the cost of all poor housing to the NHS and society.