Members of the West Midlands’ Housing Association Partnership (WMHAP), a group of the region’s social housing providers, have been shown to have spent over £818 million in carrying out repairs, maintenance and improvements to their homes in the last year. An average of £2,920 per home.

Figures published this week by Inside Housing, show that the group has spent over £15m a week on improving their existing homes, representing an increase of some 27% over the previous year.

This money will have been used to provide social housing tenants with new bathrooms and kitchens but also to help retrofit some of the region’s oldest homes with technology to make them cheaper and easier to heat. Members of WMHAP have been busy fitting external wall insulation, solar panels, air source heat pumps and new, more efficient boilers to older homes that are harder and more expensive to keep warm compared with newer build homes.

Kevin Rodgers, WMHAP Chair and Chief Executive of Citizen said:

“The core job of a landlord is to make sure that tenants can keep a safe, warm and comfortable home. Over the course of the last year our members have increased the amount they spend on their existing homes by over a quarter and have not just installed new bathrooms and kitchens but improved the energy efficiency of their tenants’ homes.”