Creating a decarbonisation culture with Jon Daley
In this episode of Building sustainably: the road to net zero, Chris Lavery is joined by Jon Daley, Asset Sustainability & Data Manager for housing association Magenta Living, and National Lead for the Housing Quality Network (HQN) on Climate Change. They discuss how to create a decarbonisation culture across an organisation.
14 December 2022 | 1 min read
In this episode: sustainability must place people at the forefront
Have you ever wondered how to create a decarbonisation culture across your organisation? Or even what this actually means? What about how to approach a retrofit programme, or knowing where to start? And how do you balance material sustainability concerns with resident or occupant satisfaction? These are just a few questions we put to Jon Daley, Asset Sustainability & Data Manager for housing association Magenta Living, and National Lead for the Housing Quality Network (HQN) on Climate Change.
"The resident, first and foremost, has to be the service head. They're the most important asset we serve. We're commercially minded, but socially hearted, so it's the right thing to do."
Jon Daley, Magenta Living.
Meet Jon Daley
With 12 years of experience across housing management, supported living and asset management, Jon has a huge passion for the green agenda, and measures decarbonisation in its entirety across a business (retrofit, new developments, offices and operations and Greenspace).
As a previous support worker and housing officer, Jon prides himself on maintaining absolute resident focus and works with local and combined authorities, as well as academic partners, to explore housing issues holistically - keeping the resident-benefit front and centre.
Key highlights
- 1:30 - 4:17 - What Is the Housing Quality Network? - HQN provides best practices, high-quality advice, tailored support, and training on everything to do with housing to help the sector perform better. HQN has nine specialised networks which focus on various housing issues
- 4:21 - 7:19 - What Is Magenta Living? - Magenta Living is a non-profit housing provider that owns and manages about 13,000 properties. In terms of net zero, the company has a three-stage thirty-year climate strategy. The first ten years are about fuel regulation, the next ten years are around zero carbon ready, and the last ten years focus on renewables and mass renewables
- 7:27 - 15:42 - Retrofit Strategies and Challenges - Regarding pilot retrofit projects, Jon and Magenta Living focus on the impact on the residents. For them, it's not just about homes and neighbourhoods but the people within them. So, when looking at the eligibility of houses, they take a holistic approach based on various factors like demographic, incomes, and property sustainability in the future. In terms of challenges, cost and investment resources are massive concerns. Another challenge is having qualified people. David Pierpoint from The Retrofit Academy suggests we need 200,000 people working in retrofit by 2030, while there are only 20,000
- 21:51 - 25:49 - Decarbonisation Culture - For Jon, the decarbonisation culture comes down to being ambitious, accountable, adaptable, and passionate about finding solutions to reduce carbon emissions and tackle climate change. It's about the effort that goes into educating people about personal carbon footprint and how it can be reduced, and the climate strategies on local, government, and even UN sustainability goals. Decarbonisation culture also includes looking at the data and KPIs and having measurement transparency regarding proposed climate goals.
