WWL5.1
Improved Housing
Where we live
Housing
Improved Housing
Housing refers to the provision of shelter or accommodation for individuals or families. It encompasses a wide range of structures, from single-family homes to apartments, condominiums, and other forms of residential buildings.
Housing is crucial for meeting basic human needs, promoting health and well-being, fostering community stability, supporting educational and economic opportunities, and enhancing overall quality of life.
The types of benefit that can be realised if housing is improved include:
- Direct health benefits to the health sector, occupants and visitors
- Reduction in cost to the emergency services, following a home health incident
- Wellbeing and mental health benefits
- A reduction in direct care, aftercare and assistance
- Improved education and productivity
- Increased asset value of property
- Improved rental income of property
- Saved costs of future retrofitting
- Savings in energy and carbon emissions
- Reduction in cost of future interventions, including those of charities
- Increased social capital
- Local job opportunitiues and tax revenues
Key Value
£2,900
This is the value per hazard improved per home
£2,373 is the average benefit of mitigating Category 1 hazards (savings to NHS and savings to society).
Where does this headline value come from?
Building Research Establishment Limited (BRE) reported the cost of poor housing in England in 2021. The table in page 6 presents total savings to the NHS and total savings to society. BRE explains that savings to the NHS are calculated by applying the NHS first year treatment costs for each category 1 hazard through the BRE COPH algorithm (described in The Full Cost of Poor Housing). BRE explains that the savings to society are calculated using a tried-and-tested formula, such as the one developed by the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) which evaluates the costs of both fatal and non-fatal injuries (also in the The Full Cost of Poor Housing).
The table on page 6 of this report presents the number of category 1 hazards, and total savings to the NHS and total savings to society. Therefore total savings can be divided by the number of category 1 hazards to obtain the savings per hazard.
We have then taken the average of these savings to obtain the value £2,373, rounded to £2,400.
Inflation adjusted value is £2864 which is rounded to £2900 in 2023 prices.
If you’re just starting out, start with Bronze first. The result of a Bronze measurement is just an estimate, but requires the least effort; whereas Silver, Gold and Gold+ give more accurate results but require more effort.
Each level has an effort to accuracy indicator, choose the one that’s right for you.
Bronze
Effort
Accuracy
Monetised value:
Monetised social value: Multiply the proportion of the participating dwellings you expect to mitigate a hazard by £2,900
If you are unable to capture information about hazards mitigated, because you’re unable to contact residents , or this is a plan for a future project, then you can use this value as a proxy for mitigating hazards.
Here’s an example
You support 20 households to mitigate a category 1 hazard in their home. You anticipate 13 of the households will be able to mitigate a hazard. (It’s important to be realistic about how many of your target group will reach the desired outcome; it’s unlikely all of them will, e.g. 13/20 = 0.65.) Therefore you estimate 0.65*£2,900 = £1,820 value per household. Applied to 20 households who started means a total of £1,820*20 = £36,400 monetised social value.
At the bronze level (where you are assuming what the impact might be) your value may overestimate or underestimate the value of your intervention.
To get a more accurate representation of your project, think realistically about what hazards you might mitigate (see Silver).
To actually get an accurate representation of your project, you should survey your participants directly (see Gold).
Silver
Effort
Accuracy
Monetised value:
Monetised social value: Consider realistically what hazards you will be able to mitigate. Therefore, you can calculate a more accurate value of the savings to NHS and savings to society.
Consider which hazards are in place at the dwellings you are supporting. Then consider which hazards you might realistically be able to mitigate. You can calculate a more accurate estimate of the saving with more information.
| Savings to NHS per hazard (£) | Savings to society per hazard (£) | Total saving per hazard (£) in 2018 prices | Total saving per hazard (£) in 2023 prices | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Excess cold | 1,026 | 18,262 | 19,288 | £23,285 |
| Overcrowding | 135 | 2,160 | 2,294 | £2,769 |
| Falls on stairs | 209 | 1,666 | 1,874 | £2,262 |
| Fire | 144 | 2,298 | 2,443 | £2,949 |
| Falls on the level | 254 | 629 | 883 | £1,066 |
| Dampness | 512 | 1,277 | 1,789 | £2,160 |
| Falls between levels | 282 | 1,549 | 1,831 | £2,210 |
| Radon | 116 | 2,122 | 2,237 | £2,701 |
| Hot surface | 276 | 1,317 | 1,593 | £1,923 |
| Lead | 213 | 517 | 730 | £881 |
| Pests (domestic hygiene) | 204 | 399 | 602 | £727 |
| Food safety | 208 | 553 | 761 | £919 |
| Electrical problems | 209 | 965 | 1,174 | £1,417 |
| Noise | 489 | 1,186 | 1,675 | £2,022 |
| Entry by intruders | 488 | 1,218 | 1,707 | £2,061 |
| Collision and entrapment | 426 | 2,773 | 3,199 | £3,862 |
| Sanitation (personal hygiene) | 208 | 554 | 762 | £920 |
| Carbon monoxide | 187 | 441 | 628 | £758 |
| Ergonomics | 211 | 542 | 753 | £909 |
| Structural collapse | 155 | 1,672 | 1,827 | £2,206 |
| Falls - bath | 278 | 3,101 | 3,379 | £4,079 |
| Excess heat | 132 | 2,281 | 2,412 | £2,912 |
| Water supply | 213 | 517 | 730 | £881 |
| AVERAGE | 286 | 2,087 | 2,373 (rounded to £2,400) | £2,864 (rounded to £2,900) |
Here’s an example
You plan work with 8 dwellings. You estimate that all of them have issues with excess cold, and some have other issues. You can calculate a more accurate estimate based on what you know about the dwellings, and what work is planned.
Gold
Effort
Accuracy
Monetised value:
Monetised value: Measure actual amounts of difference that improved housing makes to people’s lives.
At Gold level you are looking to build on your silver estimations by engaging with the person or people affected.
Therefore, at the Gold level, you should survey users about their actual levels of wellbeing rather than using the proxy value.
There are many options for surveying people on their wellbeing.
A good starting point for questions to ask directly through primary research with your stakeholders is the Maximise Your Impact Guide. This guide covers 10 overall impact questions. For Gold level practice you would be looking to understand the question ‘what changes do people experience?’ and ‘how much of each change happened’. Questions you might want to include in your survey to uncover the outcomes they experience could include:
- What changed for you (or happened to you) as a result of our activity or programme?
- Were there any other changes?
- Did these changes lead on to anything else?
- Were the changes all positive?
- Were any of them unexpected?
- What did you want to happen?
- How did your situation/ circumstances affect your experience?
A starting point for questions related to wellbeing is to look at the What Works Centre for Wellbeing website: https://whatworkswellbeing.org/about-wellbeing/how-to-measure-wellbeing/ .
As you start to measure wellbeing directly from the people affected, one set of questions it is important to consider is the ONS4 – the national measures for subjective wellbeing in the UK which asks the following 4 questions on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is ‘not at all’ and 10 is ‘completely’:
- Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays?
- Overall, to what extent do you feel that the things that you do in your life are worthwhile?
- Overall, how happy did you feel yesterday?
- On a scale where 0 is ‘not at all anxious’ and 10 is ‘completely anxious’, how anxious did you feel yesterday overall?
You could also consider other data gathering activities, including direct observation, or focus groups.
Directly measuring hazards
You should use a survey to directly understand the issues in the dwellings you’re supporting, and to understand which hazards have been mitigated. In this case the comparison group could be ‘before’ the intervention and the treatment group be ‘after’ your intervention.
Support in developing your Gold survey approach is available through the Measure Up partners, so please do reach out to Impact, State of Life or PRD.
| Value Type: | Outcome |
What's this?
This is the type of value. Some values are outcomes, which means many different interventions might lead to them, others are specific interventions that have a set value due to a mix of outcomes of varying amounts they may create. |
|---|---|---|
| UN SDG Categories: |
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What's this?
The UN Sustainable Development Goals are global goals adopted in 2015 for all signed up nations to achieve for us to have a sustainable global future by 2030. There are 17 Goals that address the global challenges we face, including those related to poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace and justice. The Goals are all interconnected, and in order to leave no one behind, it is important that we achieve them all by 2030. |
| PN06/20 Categories: |
|
What's this?
PPN 06/20 Taking account of social value in the award of central government contracts introduced the Central Government Social Value Model in 2020 which all Central Government contracting authorities must use in their in scope procurements. It consists of 5 themes, 8 policy outcomes, and 24 Model Award Criteria which outline key priority areas to achieve more social value. |
Evidence
Measure Up focuses on empowering you to numerically measure the impact you’re having. We recommend that numeric reports are backed up with stories and other types of evidence to help illustrate, in human terms, the impact that’s being made on individuals.
We recommend seeking consent from participants in your intervention to collect and tell their story. This should include a little background on the participant, a summing up of life before the intervention, the human impact of the intervention, and the longer term (if known) impact on the person’s life outside of, and after, the intervention.
Providing photographs, audio recordings, video interviews or even artefacts from the intervention (for example, writing, paintings, music from creative interventions) can add more to the story, and convey the emotional impact of interventions more directly.
In some cases it’s appropriate to anonymise or abbreviate the personal information of case study participants. No story should be published or shared without the recorded consent of the individual(s) it concerns. Individuals continue to own the rights to their stories and if they request you stop sharing the story or making it available online you should do so promptly and without need for justification.
Feedback
Measure Up is an open, collaborative and transparent. If you have any suggestions or feedback on our pragmatic, recommended approach to measuring and valuing social value, including wellbeing, economic, and fiscal impact, and effects on our environment, please get in touch so we can share and discuss this at our next Advisory Group meeting.
More help
We want to empower anyone to perform and improve their impact measurement – without needing a degree in economics.
If you need any more help, or just someone to do the legwork for you we can help signpost you to software, training and consultancy to help you get to grips with the impact you’re having and value you are creating.
