Beyond the Buzzwords: A Candid Look at Why the UK Housing Model is Failing (And How We Can Fix It)

In the built environment sector, we often find ourselves at the intersection of several profound challenges: a housing delivery crisis, a deepening public health crisis and an urgent drive for decarbonisation. How we navigate this nexus will define the health and well-being of communities for decades to come.

But have we lost our way? Has the language of sustainability been "hijacked and weaponised," as my latest podcast guest suggests, preventing us from focusing on the tangible, human-centred benefits of better buildings?

In this weeks episode of Air Quality Matters, I sat down with Sarah Daly 💚 , Head of Strategic Partnerships at Agile Homes and a long-standing, no-nonsense voice in the sustainability sector. Our conversation was a candid exploration of the systemic issues plaguing UK housing and the urgent need to reframe the narrative—moving from abstract environmentalism to the practicalities of delivering high-quality, healthy homes that people want and need.

The Language is Not Fit for Purpose

A central theme of our discussion was the failure of our current lexicon. Words like ‘sustainability’ and ‘eco’ have become so overused and politically charged that they often obscure, rather than clarify, the core issue.

As Sarah points out, nobody would actively choose not to live in a healthy home. Yet, the public discourse, often fueled by misinformation, has positioned concepts like Net Zero as a burden rather than a benefit. The result is a population largely unaware of how their own homes might be silently impacting their health—from the VOCs off-gassing from modern materials to the persistent issues exacerbating conditions like asthma. The conversation delves into why this communication breakdown has allowed a race to the bottom in housing quality, leaving occupants disconnected from the direct benefits of better building standards.

A Crisis of Quality and Accountability

One of the most sobering parts of our conversation tackled the stark performance gap in new housing. It’s a reality those of us in the industry know all too well, but it’s rarely discussed with such honesty. We touched on the statistic that independent assessments often find non-compliance with minimum standards in as many as 75-80% of new builds.

Sarah shares some frankly shocking insights from the front lines, revealing how the system allows for a profound lack of accountability. We discuss how homeowners have more consumer rights when buying a cheese sandwich than when making the biggest investment of their lives in a new property. Sarah offers a particularly telling anecdote from a national house builder’s sales director that exposes a cynical strategy for avoiding liability for defects. It’s a moment in the podcast that crystallises just how broken the system is, where the liability for poor construction is passed on, leaving homeowners or social landlords to pick up the pieces and the cost.

Designing for People, Not Just 'Units'

For too long, the housing sector has been driven by the delivery of ‘units’—standardised boxes that fail to meet the complex realities of modern life. Sarah is a passionate advocate for needs-led design, and we explored how a one-size-fits-all approach is failing our communities.

From multi-generational households being forced into unsuitable accommodation to the specific needs of those with physical or mental health challenges, the standard housing model is simply not fit for purpose. This lack of foresight leads to costly retrofits, as Sarah illustrates with a powerful example of a social landlord spending £80,000 to knock two brand-new homes together to accommodate one family. Hearing her articulate the human-centric alternative to this asset-driven mindset provides a compelling vision for how we could and should be building.

From Theory to Practice: Proving a Better Way is Possible

This isn't just a theoretical critique. Sarah's career has recently moved from high-level consultancy to the pointy end of the spear at Agile Homes, an organisation delivering high-performance, factory-built housing. She discusses why this move was so important to her—a desire to be part of the solution and demonstrate that building better is not only possible but commercially viable.

A cornerstone of their approach is that high performance is the non-negotiable baseline. Building to Passive House standard isn't an optional extra; it's the starting point. This practical perspective, grounded in the realities of delivering projects, cuts through the industry excuses for inaction. The full conversation reveals a clear-eyed understanding of both the challenges and the proven solutions, making it an invaluable listen for anyone tired of the talk and ready for action.

One Take: Taming Chaos with Science in ASHRAE 241

On a recent One Take episode, I delved into the science behind one of the most significant standards to emerge from the pandemic: ASHRAE Standard 241, Control of Infectious Aerosols. The podcast unpacks the risk modelling that underpins the standard, revealing a story about making rational decisions in a storm of profound uncertainty.

The central challenge? The sheer, unpredictable variability of the human source. The amount of virus an infected person emits can vary across seven orders of magnitude—the difference in scale between a garden pea and planet Earth. How do you build an engineering standard on such a chaotic foundation?

The episode explains how the ASHRAE committee abandoned simple, deterministic models, which are useless in this context. Instead, they embraced the uncertainty head-on with a probabilistic Monte Carlo simulation. This method simulates thousands of different realities inside a room, rolling the dice on every variable—from breathing rates to the massive spectrum of viral emission. This doesn't give a single, neat answer; it paints an honest picture of risk, including the rare but frankly terrifying "long tail" of super-spreader events.

The model’s power is in its nuance, confirming that a one-size-fits-all approach is destined to fail. The standard demands an eight-fold increase in clean air for a lecture hall compared to previous standards, yet a lower rate for a vast industrial warehouse where volume provides a natural safety buffer. This is risk-based philosophy in action. It’s a framework that gives us a template for how to deal with the unavoidable chaos of biology, providing conservative guardrails designed to protect us not from the average day, but from the rare, dangerous one.

The Air Quality Matters Podcast in Partnership with

Zehnder Group - Farmwood - Eurovent- Aico - Aereco - Ultra Protect -

The One Take Podcast in Partnership with

SafeTraces and Inbiot

Do check them out in the links and on the Air Quality Matters Website.

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