Evaluation of existing home improvement services
Find out how home improvement services in England are improving local residents’ health and wellbeing in a cost-effective way.
The need for home improvement services
Nearly eight million people live in unsafe homes, with approximately 2.6 million being aged 55 and over. This is unacceptable and puts a huge financial strain on our health and social care services.
While some local areas provide services to help people improve their homes, the services on offer and their eligibility criteria vary significantly from one local authority to another.
We believe the key to improving homes and keeping people safe, warm and dry is through local, easy-to-use one-stop-shops providing information and support. We call these Good Home Hubs.
An evaluation of comprehensive home improvement services
To build the evidence on what a Good Home Hub could look like practically and to demonstrate their potential impact, we commissioned an evaluation of eight existing services that closely mirror the Good Home Hub model.
The research was conducted by a consortium on behalf of the Centre for Ageing Better, led by the Centre for Regional and Social Research (CRESR) at Sheffield Hallam University and working with Foundations, Building Research Establishment (BRE), the University of Stirling and the Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence.
The evaluation aimed to gather evidence from existing services on the potential impact of a rollout of the Good Home Hub model across England. The research was conducted in two phases:
Phase 1
Describe home improvement services.
- Describe the current landscape of home improvement services across England and the variance in availability of support.
- Describe the nature and scale of the services provided, who uses the service and the number of beneficiaries, numbers of staff and their specific roles, how the service is funded and how the service works with external partners.
Phase 2
Outline the quality, impact and costs of home improvement services, and therefore of the Good Home Hub model.
- The impact of home improvement services, on whom, how and why.
- Whether the services are cost-effective and value for money.
- The potential impact of services if these models were scaled up across the country.
Before the evaluation took place there was no single source of information about the availability of home improvement services across England. As such, this research began with a survey of home improvement services to understand the variation in support available to residents across England. To understand more about the diversity in home improvement support across England, read our report ‘Keeping homes safe: a survey of home improvement services across England’.
The impact of the evaluated home improvement services
Across the eight services evaluated, figures for the years 22/23 or 23/24 show support that was delivered to 17,950 households across 12 months. These interventions included handyperson jobs, energy efficiency upgrades and hospital discharge support. The estimated savings from the evaluated home improvement services showed:
- For every £1 spent on fall prevention adaptations, there is an estimated cost saving of £1.10 for the NHS.
- For every £1 spent on fall prevention adaptations £4.56 is saved for society.
- The average cost saving to the NHS as a result of early discharge from hospital due to support from home improvement services is £2,690, with the average number of bed days being reduced from 15 to 9.
In addition to savings to public services, home improvement service users reported significant benefits including enhanced independence, improved safety and better mental wellbeing. The ‘one-stop-shop’ model of many of the evaluated services was also praised due to how easy it was for service users to access and use the range of services available. However, the evaluation found that despite the successes and impact of home improvement services, limited funding, rising material costs and workforce shortages continue to hinder the ability of services to meet growing demand.
To understand more about the impact of existing comprehensive home improvement services and the potential savings that could be accrued from developing Good Home Hubs across England, see our reports below.
