First of its kind Social Housing Tenants’ Climate Jury meets today

The north of England’s first tenants’ climate jury will host its inaugural session today (Tuesday).

The Social Housing Tenants’ Climate Jury is made up of 30 tenants from project partners including Salix Homes, First Choice Homes Oldham, Karbon Homes,Thirteen Group, and Yorkshire Housing.

The project is being led by the Northern Housing Consortium (NHC), which represents the views of housing organisations in the North of England, and overseen by an independent panel.

The jury will consider how residents, social landlords and others can work together to tackle climate change in homes and neighbourhoods. It will make recommendations to the social housing sector on how tenants would like to see landlords approach the net zero challenge.

Shared Future, one of the UK’s leading experts in organising citizens’ juries, will be facilitating and running the sessions.

The jurors, selected to reflect the diversity of the social housing sector and holding varying opinions on climate change, will meet for 30 hours over ten jury sessions ending in the Autumn.

Jury sessions will be used to explore both climate science and impacts and the way climate change can be addressed at a local level. Jurors will hear from a series of invited experts, take part in group discussion, and work together with facilitators to develop recommendations.

NHC Chief Executive Tracy Harrison said: ‘With over 1 million social rented sector homes across the North requiring green upgrades, the scale of the challenge to transition to net zero is clear.

“Councils and housing associations are ready to rise to this challenge, but these are people’s homes first and foremost, and so we cannot succeed in doing this without talking with our tenants, understanding their concerns and motivations, and listening and acting upon their recommendations.”

The final report and recommendations of the Social Housing Tenants’ Climate Jury will be launched at the NHC’s Northern Housing Summit in November.

Each session will be recorded and members of the public will be able to watch these videos on the Northern Housing Consortium’s webpage on the Tenants’ Jury.