Kieran Findlay

Welcome everyone to the Scottish Housing News Podcast with me, Kieran Findlay and Jimmy Black, fresh from the Housing and Social Care Accessibility Summit with one final episode in our series on accessible housing. So far we’ve heard about the vital need for more properties for wheelchair users and people with complex needs, but what does it actually take to deliver one? 

Jimmy Black

Now we were all buzzing at the Summit after we had been visiting the Blackwood development in Charleston, the first phase of a £17.5 million development which was recently handed over and that’s going to bring 66 highly adapted, technologically advanced homes to Dundee. 

It was fantastic. We really enjoyed looking around it. Those of us that were lucky enough to be able to do that. Simon Fitzpatrick, who’s the chief executive of Blackwood, is here to tell us all about it.

So Simon, thanks for coming on the podcast. Let’s start at the beginning. Take us through the early days of concept design planning for that very attractive, very practical and very wheelchair-friendly and disabled-friendly development in Charleston. Charleston being in Dundee, of course.

Simon Fitzpatrick

Thanks, yeah. Charleston being in Dundee, the centre of the universe as it is. Yeah, thanks Jimmy and I think it’s probably important to say that the kind of origins of the Blackwood House itself, not to go too far back, was about 10 years ago now. I had joined Blackwood and Fanchea Kelly, who I know you’ve had in the podcast in the past, had just joined it as the chief executive then and she’d said, because Blackwood hadn’t built for years, and she said to us well, if you were going to build, what would you build? Given we know that Blackwood had kind of had a new strategy that was aimed at people, helping people live their lives to the full. 

And that was great because it gives you a license to be a bit creative there. So we set out with an architectural competition to say, OK, who can build us or who can build the concept, at least, of the most accessible house that anybody could imagine? And then, like any development, the idea is you take that and then you maybe engineer it backwards to something that is actually affordable. 

Starting off we came up with the watchwords that were accessible, affordable, connected and beautiful. We wanted to make sure that each was as important as the other because we felt that those combinations, that combination meant that people would be able to live their lives to the full. Not just how they live in an accessible house, but maybe some of the why around it as well. So we kind of went through that. Lewis and Hickey Architects won the competition and that started the journey towards the concept of the Blackwood House.

The Blackwood House development journey

We trialled it a few places first, so without building it we mocked up concepts of it. So we did that first of all for an AGM I think nine years ago, eight years ago that we had in Dynamic Earth and effectively overnight built a mock-up of the house inside it was easily the worst 24 hours of my life and so stressful. We finished about five minutes before delegates or members arrived. But what that did was showcase some of the technology involved. So you guys have seen the rise and fall units that come off the wall as well. But the concept and the principle that how do you make a really accessible house all so beautiful? Because what we know, what we heard at the conference that you guys kind of facilitated was that so many homes built for accessibility are actually pretty clinical in design. We wanted to get away from that.

So that was very well received. We did that with our customers as well. So our customers were invited along to comment, to start to co-design that. And then through a series of stages involving all sorts of platforms and co-design with customers and the architects, we eventually managed to build six homes. And that was six years ago in Glamis Road, which was the first site of the first ever Blackwood block of flats. so it was a really nice legacy piece. And they, would change the flow plan and design to make it as accessible as possible, loaded it up with technology. And they were right at the limits of affordability. And I don’t mean for tenants. I mean for actually building them. 

But we thought it was really important to try and get a concept in place so that then you can start to showcase it in the market but also start to say, can we get value in this? Can we value engineer it? Can we do more? Could we drive supply chains or interest from other providers or whatever else on that? So that was the journey to actually having some on the ground.

After that, the product was really successful and it was successful in both, and I think probably most important, probably definitely most important, the changing lives that we saw for people who were wheelchair users or had some level of accessibility need. So we monitored that, we engaged with them, we got their feedback, started to iterate and change designs. So that was excellent, but it was also successful in terms of actually that piece, almost that branding piece.

And that allowed us to go and get investment. So the investment then came from, it was Allia, it was a bond they received, and our board committed then, which I think was a risk for them, absolutely, because Blackwood, like I said, hadn’t really done any development for a long time, but our board committed to a programme of Blackwood Houses as part of our new development plan, with the ambition eventually to get to 400 of these over a period of time.

That then freed us up to go and get our names and our product into SHIPs, Social Housing Investment Plans, I know that you guys know that. And we started off, Dundee had such a great legacy for Blackwood, for Margaret Blackwood, first ever place we’d built, that we’d been really, really close to link to local authority and they’d identified some sites in Charleston.

Community integration and challeneges

Now, in the meantime of that, we’d been able to build 24 of the homes in Glasgow through a really good relationship with the Health and Social Care Partnership there. As you know, the grant funded order is slightly different in the West of Scotland than it does for the rest of the world, probably. That’s not criticism in case anybody from Glasgow City Council is listening. And we built then 22 in Inverclyde, which was a conversion of a care home that we’d had that wasn’t being commissioned to. So it was great, but an existing asset do and then like I said Dundee City Council came to us with the opportunity to do it across multiple sites.

Kieran Findlay

Well I was going to say that. I’m an East End of Dundee guy, but what I do know of Charleston is very tight streets, a lot of cars, not necessarily the first place you’d pick to build an accessible housing development but I think what you’re trying to do is kind of seamlessly integrate these houses into the current landscape really.

Simon Fitzpatrick

Yeah and I think there’s a degree of, how much of this is housing isn’t it, there’s a degree of necessity, there’s a degree of by design and then there’s a degree of just opportunity right, so the local authority and I think you have to you know really do have to credit the housing supply team at Dundee City Council here and particularly guys like Derek Farrell not sure still with the council but you know kind of real I think pioneers in trying to bring volume of accessible homes to Dundee but yeah they came up with seven sites, actually technically nine sites, but two of them are Sustainable Urban Drainage System sites, so we don’t really count them. But yeah, and when we looked at it, we thought, this is real problem. Construction costs are gonna go up. The sheer almost mechanics of running those sites is gonna be a problem. It’s gonna have a big impact probably on the neighbourhood. We saw that in our planning applications where we had one site that was rejected that we had to go to Scottish ministers to then get approval for. So a real labour of love.

Jimmy Black

Can we just pick that up? It was rejected by the council which had commissioned it?

Simon Fitzpatrick

Well, planning, as we know, planning and housing are not the same departments in the local authority. yes, only one of the blocks of six was then pushed back. And in fairness, that was from some feedback from the community originally, so we actually had to then go back and do quite a lot of work and consultation engagement with the community. Scottish Ministers overturned that, and I’m glad that they did because actually that helped with the sustainability, financial sustainability of the development as much as anything else.

So yeah, we had these sites, and like I say, initially we thought, well, this is a real problem. But when we started thinking about it, how do you genuinely integrate accessibility in a, like you said, in really, really tight areas and tight streets? And how do you, given the nature of the customer group that we’re likely to have, how do you start to say, well, aside from a formal support relationship with health and social care partnerships, how do you get peer-to-peer support, community support? And we thought this is a real opportunity. And if you look at it, I don’t know, I’m waving my hands about it as a podcast, so that’s not a help. But if you look at it, it actually forms a bit of a ring around Charleston so that it’s a kind of kilometre squared. So we thought that’s a brilliant opportunity to integrate within the community. Like I say, partly by design, but partly by opportunity.

Jimmy Black

Was there any attention paid to the streets and the kerbs and the ability of wheeled vehicles to get around the area?

Simon Fitzpatrick

Yeah, so some of the infrastructure, particularly around the flats you’ll see, you’ll different surfaces, longer extended drop kerbs and things like that. We had worked quite a lot with Roads to try and get some investment into that infrastructure as well. That was mixed results really, as you know Charleston is, if you were to pick an inaccessible area in Dundee, it would be up there. Although it’s not up a massive hill, so you know, I think that’s probably fair. Maybe the Hilltown would be more. So we did do a lot of work with roads, but I think that if you look at the way the individual sites join, is, you know, we’ve designed into the buildings themselves, or at least the cartilage of the buildings enough points of accessibility almost between those sites. I couldn’t swear to have been the most accessible in terms of the environment though, because you kind of have to deal with what you kind of have to deal with.

Certainly, on things like maybe a larger scale regeneration site, we could do more on that. But there’s always a trade off.

Kieran Findlay

I take it that’s the hope of integrating the kind of current community, you maybe just make them aware of things that they could do, just small changes they could make to help their neighbours. Be that where you place your car at night.

Simon Fitzpatrick

Yeah, think that’s a really good point. You know, genuinely, and I think I’d mentioned this to you guys at the development, there’s so much that you still don’t think of now. You can either see that as a negative, as mistakes, or you can see it a positive and then say, right, let’s take that on board. So our housing management team would definitely do that if there was an issue with our customers. But actually, maybe that’s something that we can engage a little bit more in the community too. You know, parking is incredibly tight. The development itself’s got good parking. So access for vehicles is better. And while there’s not an awful lot of firm data around this, our customers would tend to have less use of vehicles potentially than a standard four-bed house kind of development.

CleverCogs technology explained

Kieran Findlay

So inside each of the homes, there’s CleverCogs technology, Blackwood’s own technology. Describe that, where it comes from and how it’s designed to enhance the quality of life for residents.

Simon Fitzpatrick

Sure. So the CleverCogs platform itself is, if you like, it’s the hub that controls an awful lot of the innovative tech. Some of that, the physical tech. So again, the rise and fall things that you’ve seen, the heating in the home, all the auto doors can be controlled via tablet. But some of it, as you work with health and social care partnerships, actually some more of the lifestyle tech, and by that I mean, so if I give an example, we run the Feather project, which is a UTI detection project. So CleverCogs can record, what is that? This is not a great podcast material, actually, but it’s a flow meter in the toilet. And what that does is then it’s early indication of potential UTIs. So we share that data, and actually, what we know is early indication of UTIs can make a massive difference to that life. So CleverCogs, if you like, is the hub, the platform that manages that. 

It also links in, we’re a housing and care provider. It also links into your care provision. So as well as the tech side of things, it’s the place that people access things like their care rotas. So they know who’s coming in, they know when they’re coming in. They can track it to a degree. We don’t put trackers on our carers and watch them walk through developments or anything like that. But that just gives people a little bit more choice and control. And I think that’s dead important.

The other thing that the platform does is it’s the basis of what we call our 24-7 responder service. And that is, if you think about almost the telecare side of things, but we like to think of it as that next stage. Someone can receive elements of digital care. So if I take, for an example, the classic medication prompt, the usual way that a care provider might do that is they send somebody out who sits and watches someone take their own medication because quite often you can’t give the medication, for insurance or whatever. So sits and watches someone take the medication and then they go at great cost to the care provider because it’s only half our visit which is very hard to make any money on, at great cost to the local authority. In fact, CleverCogs will have a timer that can release a capsule for your meds and we can have a video link so that actually somebody in our centre in either in Edinburgh or actually sometimes care on their own phone, can then watch as someone takes their meds. So you get that assurance that it’s happening. It’s then automatically recorded onto their care and support plan. So that’s been done, that’s recorded. And that then gives assurance to health and social care partnerships and providers.

I should say we haven’t launched that in Dundee yet. Because the commission environment in Dundee, not to, not almost to replicate what my previous colleague Angela Currie might have said, but the commissioning environment in Dundee and then many other local authorities isn’t quite lined up to do that yet. It’s part of the moment we do in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Jimmy Black

That’s fascinating. Did you get some funding from industry and research academic partners to develop CleverCogs? Was that part of it? What else are you working on? How are you developing CleverCogs into the future? 

Simon Fitzpatrick

Yeah, so we did not necessarily just CleverCogs, but we were part of, or we received funding from UKRI, Innovate UK, it’s a UK body, I think it’s the largest grant funder in the UK. And we were part of a trailblazer project that we called the Peoplehood Project, which was, Charleston was one of the neighbourhoods that we focused on for that. That was the development of a whole load of things that we kind of, the purpose of it was, can you help people live healthier for longer, five extra years was the idea, but not somebody lives longer for five years, that they are healthier for five years. Part of that was the development of the CleverCogs platform and the innovative technology that you’ve seen in the house. was overall, we received six and a half million pounds grant subsidy.

So we were the largest in Scotland, so that was really, really good. In fact, I think we were the largest in the UK on the trailblazers. And we matched that with six and a half million pounds or six million pounds of our own investment. I say our own investment, that’s not fair. So industry partners also invested within that and their funding was matched as well. So we had industry partners, large ones like Enterprise, Cisco, so multi-national companies, Lewis and Hickey, the architects that I talked about before, the designers of the CleverCogs platform that we’d worked with, an organisation called Soft Orange and then Care Builder, and a few others and some smaller, I don’t know if more local, but Scottish organisations as well. 

Academics with both the University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow for the Census Technology, some of the stuff that I talked about for the Feather project already. So a real kind of partnership. I’m reluctant to use that word sometimes because it can mean so many things and it can be so vague. This was people putting in money and getting some funding, match funding too, to test products and services in place in houses.

Now that project’s run on. The houses are just built so actually we’ve got work to do to then monitor that and see how that goes and we will report back on that as well. But I think the point about almost on the innovation side is each of these products themselves are not necessarily overly innovative but combining them in place is what is innovative and that’s what UKRI overall and Innovate UK saw there. I have no idea Jimmy though if I’ve answered the actual question there. Think it was about partners. Think it was about partners. And yes is the broad answer. As well as the Scottish Government of course, Dundee City Council in those cases.

Jimmy Black

One of the things which strikes me about CleverCogs is it’s wonderful and it’s the answer. But it’s just you that has it. You’re not selling it beyond Blackwood. And there must be a reason for not selling it.

Simon Fitzpatrick

I don’t know if it’s the answer. So I’d be careful on that one in my own answer. I think it’s part of the answer. I would never say that face-to-face, touch-based personal care should be replaced. I genuinely don’t think that. At the moment, CleverCogs is, yeah, it belongs to Blackwood or there’s that kind of IP relationship there. And we use that to grow our business, particularly our care business, but also we want to be able to access whether that’s grant subsidy or funding or whatever else.

We would like to sell it, but like any other tech, and you probably know this very well Jimmy, some of the basics around it are the hardest things. So connectivity, everybody will talk to you about making sure, trying to make sure that people have good, fast connectivity. In fact, I think it’s probably going to become almost a basic human right at some point certainly soon. And I think that in order to launch a product more into the private market rather than your own commission, you really need to be assured and certain of that. Otherwise, it’s risky for customers, if you’re not in control of the end-to-end process. So we’re there on that journey. Again, another management phrase that no one likes to actually hear, that journey. It will be our eventual intention, whether that’s to sell its product or our services backed as that.

I think the Blackwood House is itself is different, though. We’re going to be launching the design guide, and I would urge anybody to just take our design guide and try and build this. I’m sure my board would be saying, hold on, Simon, what about a whole load of different things there? But certainly at least using those principles to build that because we don’t want to hold on to something that might make a real change in the wider kind of impact on housing, even particularly accessible housing.

Feedback and continuous improvement

Kieran Findlay

At the launch event, you urged people to go around the houses, test the technology, push the buttons. Jimmy here needed no encouragement to do that. I’ll ask Jimmy a question. What did you discover?

Jimmy Black

Well, I discovered a few things. First of all, I discovered that the house was a lot easier to get around than a typical house that we would still build, even some of really excellent social housing that we build now. There was enough space, there was plenty of room. You could press a button, the door would open. The window handles were, in some cases the window handles were very accessible and easy to use and generally it was such a big improvement.

But there were one or two things. The lift for example, the door you had to physically open, you didn’t press a button and open it. So the lift door is quite heavy. So that would have been a bit of a trial for some people I guess. The buttons I thought on the… the buttons on the door opening machinery, I thought the buttons were quite small and slightly fiddly to get at. And there was another thing which isn’t so much technology related and we’re being really picky here Simon, know, it sounds as though I’m being critical.

Kieran Findlay

This is always a danger when you invite Jimmy Black to your house.

Simon Fitzpatrick

I know, that’s it, that’s it. We should’ve banned him from the opening.

Jimmy Black

You probably should. I’m the annoying little boy that noticed a picture was upside down in the art gallery when I was 10 and got into trouble for it.

But the thing is, up the stairs in the bathroom, we had bit of a discussion about this at the time, there was a cabinet under the sink which would have prevented a wheelchair user getting in with their knees. And the explanation for that was that the person who was in the wheelchair would probably use the accessible bathroom on the ground floor. And I was thinking, well, what if you wanted to wash your hands after changing your baby’s nappy, for example, you wouldn’t want to be going and pressing the buttons in the lift, which you have to hold on to to keep the lift moving, which was another thing that puzzled me. So there, I’ve thrown a whole lot of things at you.

Simon Fitzpatrick 

That’s okay. As you’d expect, the second that you said that on Wednesday last week, I went and then went and researched it because I thought, you know, if I’m speaking about all the answers to that, and I don’t actually have all the answers to those things. I think that rather than, I suppose, deal with them one by one, some of those things are down to value engineering and cost. And the reality is that I think I said to you, the Blackwood House, say two-bed flats, about £25,000 more expensive than a standard, whatever that means now, two-bed flat. I just saw, think, the article on the cost of some houses, was it East Kilbride? I’m not quite sure where it was, but half a million each. North Lan?

Kieran Findlay

North Lanarkshire, yeah.

Simon Fitzpatrick 

Well, you know, we’re not doing that badly then after all. But it does have cost. And so some of these things you do have to try and value engineer down and try and not do it the expense of accessibility as far as possible. so things like the holding down the button on the left, which annoys me too, it really does. Although you’ll see it in like almost like I went to Perth Museum the other day with my daughter, my young daughter, Ivy has Down’s syndrome. So she so there’s that kind of own experience of what Ivy would consider her. She used to press the button and the lift goes. But actually this was a hold down button, which I should be fair, she thought was hilarious and great and pressed up and down an awful lot.

But yeah, you know, it is cost that drives that, it’s cost that drives that. And I don’t think necessarily that’s a good thing or a positive thing. The auto door, the door opening on the lift, it drove me demented when I saw that in the development. You’d think I would know more about it than I did because it was actually feedback that we got from the very first development was this lift is not easy, this door is not easy to open. If you have more complex needs, it’s fine if you’re a wheelchair user with a fair amount of upper body strength and things like that, but actually that was, that was feedback.

And the bathroom, you’re absolutely right. I went home and I was kicking myself. And the reason for that is, was me that gave the reason. well, somebody would just use the bathroom downstairs. The point of having a lift in the house is that they can spend time upstairs with their families. You know, it’s not acceptable. And to be fair again to my board, I’m so grateful that they see this. It’s not really acceptable in 2024 that we’d ask a wheelchair user not to be able to access every room in their house. 

It’s not acceptable that we’d say to a kid who’s in a wheelchair, you can only play with your brother and sister downstairs in your living room, but not in their room. Although, again, two kids, it doesn’t sound like a terrible thing, necessarily. And actually, you’re right. So even if it’s not the full accessibility in those ones, that’s the kind of thing that we should be doing.

I would say this, though. We’re not precious about that. We don’t claim we’re going to get everything right all of the time. And I would hope that the next person that comes and looks at the Blackboard House would go, well, we could do that, but we should be doing that more. Maybe we should do less of another thing. Maybe not everybody would have those high level wall units come down because actually that might not suit their own organisation’s strategy or customer group or whatever else. If we can get 90% right, and I think I used that number, if we can get 90% of it right, I’d be delighted if somebody else came up with the other 10% and built on that. That’s the history of social housing, right? Standing on the shoulders of giants and keeping getting better and better and better. We’re just part of that chain. I hope and think we are a big enough part of that chain in terms of accessible design, and that’s Margaret Blackwood’s legacy. But the idea that we’ll get all of it right is not right.

Our customers are the best at telling us that, but actually, you know, part of having housing professionals around as well to spot things that we might not consider. But yeah, I mean, that was an attitude, almost a mindset shift for me. And again, come back and probably my board will go, well yeah, obviously we didn’t know there was going to be a cabinet under that sink, neither did I. But that I think is, there’s real value in not saying you’ve got it all right. 

Collaborative partnerships in housing development

Kieran Findlay

There is other RSL partners involved in this development. Bield has acquired 24 homes, Hillcrest 25. How early did the partners come on board on the project and is their contribution purely financial just them buying the properties? Is there an element of allocations in it? Do they have people in more need necessarily? Could Blackwood have filled the properties with their own tenants? I suppose that’s what I’m asking there. And did you lean on their expertise in other areas?

Simon Fitzpatrick 

So, a few points there. The first one is they came later on in the project. So probably about 12 months into the project. And that was funding. It was driven by funding. Blackwood, like so many other RSLs, has seen funding pressures. We’re also a housing and care provider. So double that pressure up if you like and what we, what our board felt and what we felt and was absolutely the case that it would relieve some of our pressure overall on the business plan if we could have partners come in and help with that.

Could we have filled 66 accessible homes? Yes, no question. Not necessarily off our own waiting lists because we’re part of the common housing register at Dundee as well but with help from referrals from health and social care partnerships. Yeah. 

Bield and Hillcrest, that’s both the customer groups that they’re going to as well. So they are doing their own allocations. Again, Hillcrest will do theirs through the Common Housing Register and from referrals with the Health and Social Care Partnership, I believe. Beald, I’m not quite as certain, but as you know, Beald is a specialist provider anyway, that would be their both their mission, their vision, their strategy or whatever else. So these homes will go to the people who need them most, I think is probably the point on that. 

In terms of design, not huge amounts of input from those partners. But what I would say is really interesting, so when you start to discuss those allocations with Bield or Hillcrest, and again, there’s more of my teams that probably do that now, but you can see, Hillcrest, we don’t really need that, so we might not have used that bit of tech because it would be more affordable for some of our customers not to, and things like service charges or all the things that we know. People apply their own, if you like, mechanisms to that. And I think that’s right. I think that’s good. What the houses, flats and the houses can do, I think, is that they are capable then as people’s need change. So Hillcrest’s tenants’ needs will change in the same way that Blackwood’s. You start off maybe as more specialists, but most of us will start to need specialists at some point. 

So that should then mean that Hillcrest don’t need to do stage three adaptations. Can say, okay, there may be costs associated with this, but actually we’ve got something that when we switch on, it really meets the need. And I’m very grateful to both Angela Linton at Hillcrest for her support through that and also Drew Moore at Bield as well. I think that’s a model, not to preempt any other questions you might have…

Kieran Findlay

It’s coming!

Simon Fitzpatrick 

All right, okay, well, I’m not saying, but I do think that’s a model that could work in the future. 

Kieran Findlay

We should also mention principal contractor Campion Homes in this fairly, not just because they sponsored the Summit, but they are they are making a name for themselves in this field. You know, they’re building great homes are building Passivhaus homes, but they’re building accessible homes as well. How valuable was their expertise, particularly with being, I was struck when you were saying about the different, the seven sites and then you know the tough landscape, you need a contractor that’s kind of big enough to handle that really.

Simon Fitzpatrick 

Yeah, I think they were the right size of contractor because they’re big enough but not too big. Not too big, that’s not fair, but they’re big enough to deliver on a scale, which is what we want to do. Accessible houses, I don’t know about you guys, it does frustrate me when you see a development of 200 homes and five are, they’re not even accessible, let’s be honest. They are suitable to be adapted to be accessible quite often. I either have different drainage or something. 

So that is a special, but they’re big enough to deliver that, but small enough to actually really care about the product and about what it is that you’re trying to achieve. And I think that, we talk about partnership again, I worry about how vague that word is, but what I think Campion have done and been able to do is to look at the, if you like the most bespoke or the most specced up product in Blackwood and say, well, actually there’s a market for this. We’re gonna start to move more fully in the market, I think we might, I hope we would have been a bit of a catalyst for, and I’ll say it in what Campion would say, think, for a change in their business planning process. I said there’s need here. There aren’t contractors that can fill necessarily that gap in the market. And we want to do that and potentially move in, I think you heard that at conference, to maybe the private kind of sector building there as well.

Look, so many of these things come down to people as well, don’t they? And the folks at Campion, particularly Dougie and Susan, who are in that really senior leadership, their absolute commitment to accessibility, it’s fantastic. And to learning and say, we’ve not got that right either, let’s change that. They’re very, very agile in the contract, too, I think. So they’re a really wonderful partner.

We’ve done it with other partners. We’ve done it in Glasgow with Cruden, so we’ve done it with those bigger ones. But as the process goes, and again, I’m not as close as maybe some people would be to it now, but as the process goes, they have been a phenomenal partner and an agile partner and in building, that’s not easy when you’re midway through a site. So, no, incredibly grateful and I think they see the potential for the market there and I think you heard that at the conference.

Navigating energy efficiency and heating solutions

Jimmy Black

Just a question about the zero carbon agenda and the way things are developing. These houses have gas boilers and I think these were designed obviously before the change in the legislation and the regulations. And gas, of course, is much more controllable. And some of the people who might want to live in an accessible house might want a higher level of higher temperature than maybe an air source heat pump could provide. That would be a questionable statement. How are you going to ensure that people who get the Blackwood homes that you haven’t built yet are going to have heating that they can afford and that they can control? 

Simon Fitzpatrick 

Yeah, I mean, first of all, I think you’re right. It may not be the temperature, but I think it’s probably, again, the agility, the ability to put up and down when you feel different. Do you know what I mean? So, you know, if you have a particular condition, actually, there’s times you will feel cold or there’s times you will feel hot or you want that, you know, more of that kind of instant, if you like, change, which gas, of course, does give you’re right, this was designed before the changes came in 2014. I think it’ll probably be one of last in Scotland that’s actually built with or handed over with gas boilers.

 I don’t have the answer to all of that. We’re redoing business plans like most registered social landlords are and development is one of those things that we are having to think differently about now. So how do we fund that? What does that future look like? Are we going to be building or are we going to take a different role in partnerships like the one we’ve had with Hillcrest and Bield on, maybe taking some properties ourselves, but more the design element, more of the managing the construction elements, teaming those kinds of things or working with places to do that.

We made, I think Blackwood made the choice about six or seven years ago as we were coming through the kind of design process that we would not be the leaders in energy efficiency in homes. We would make energy efficient homes and affordable homes and all the rest of that, but we wouldn’t be the leaders, we would be the leaders inaccessible. And that was a compromise, if you like, or a decision that was deliberate. And so therefore, we don’t have loads of experience on that, the kind of carbon neutral, the Passivhaus, the energy efficiency. So we would look probably to partners to help guide us on that. The technology is changing. Of course, you will now get systems that are a bit more agile. But we’re facing the same things that every other RSL is facing. And on new build, there’s one thing, but the challenge on that retrofit piece is really the big one like everybody else.

When the supply chains pick up, having been saying that for about 10 years, but when the supply chains pick up, the technology should adapt. We should be able to have systems that are more affordable and more responsive. I think that’s the important thing for with potential, people potentially with disabilities is that responsiveness. Although again, probably the issue with people with kids or if you’re elderly, know, that responsiveness is still bigger across the piece.

Kieran Findlay

I think I would just echo what somebody, a point somebody made at the summit was that if you build the right house and the family’s needs change and they don’t need the adaptations, they don’t need the further works, the extension works, that in itself is carbon saving.

Simon Fitzpatrick 

That’s absolutely right. That’s absolutely right. You’re not going back in, you’re not doing any bit of work that we do has a carbon footprint, right? Every stage the adaptation you do has a carbon footprint. Can we find a way to have an end, a product that doesn’t need to change nearly as much? I think the beautiful element of the Blackwood House is the key one there, right? People go in and think, you know, this is a house regardless of that level of ability that I have, mobility that I have, I wanna live here. It looks great, it looks amazing, it’s well designed, it’s, you know, it’s sleek, although taste is absolutely subjective and beautiful. I have to be careful that it’s just not my idea of beautiful that we go in, is very, very subjective. But I think that that is a key point, I really do.

Measuring success

Jimmy Black

Let’s talk about the human benefits that the residents will feel after living in one of these wonderful houses. What sort of stuff are you measuring? What sort of data or outcomes are you looking for to judge your success? 

Simon Fitzpatrick 

Yeah, so some of the, I think this is where you combine the technology, right? So one of the success criteria is that reduced admissions to hospital or that earlier intervention using some of the technology. Again, I talked about the Feather project with UTI, but there’s, we’ve got other projects where using that kind of AI machine learning and we all have to be very careful around that. But it’s how many times am I openign the fridge? If we see changes in patterns in that, does that mean there’s a level of intervention?

So measuring the data around that, that’s, so there’s the hard data, if you like, that we’re gonna measure, but most tellingly it’s qualitative, right? It’s the data that you’re speaking to your customers and saying, what does that change look like? We can tell on the care site from reducing amounts of hours, both commissioned by the local authority, but I have to be careful with that, because with pressures they have, they can do that regardless of change. But, we know our own care plan, so we can see if someone needs us less.

Now, there’s a tension and a dichotomy there because that may reduce business for us. And you have to be careful because our vision is helping people live life to the full. Living your life to the full is probably not having increased amounts of intervention. It’s, if they can, having a bit less intervention. So that’s something, again, we can manage almost on a data piece. But we need to go in and capture the stories of our customers. I’m not sure we’ve been great at that over the years Charleston gives us the opportunity to do that, gives us the opportunity to work with building Hillcrest as well with maybe different groups too to be able to do that and that will be a real focus for us but you can see like that day you can get from minute one from day one when you’ve allocated, not just allocated the house, but people are giving the keys you maybe I don’t know if you spoke to some of the people that are going into the homes at the open day but it’s the phrases like ‘won the lottery’.

It’s one of our housing officer Andrew in Dundee, a brilliant committed guy. He let our last of the four-bedroom houses on Friday and the guy in the family was in tears because his kid was able to access the entire house. Those stories of things that probably capture the imagination more, make more of an impact, perhaps make more of a political impact even. The hard data, we do need to translate that into savings for primary care, for health and social care. we’re a bit of a ways from that, but that’s, I think, is where we’d like to be.

A template for future development?

Kieran Findlay

So here comes the question that you preempted earlier. Given the site, the technology, partnerships, that word again, is this the template for developments of this nature going forward? 

Simon Fitzpatrick 

Again, I’ll sit on the fence, I don’t know if it’s the template, I think that… a template. Well, and I think the funding pressures that social housing, and probably, you know, of private as well, means that we will have to work together differently and pool our resources and our money. So if we take it back again from partnerships to really practical things, I talked about the gap between a standard two-bedroom house and the Blackwood House two bedroom flat being about £25,000. That’s the tech, it’s increased floor space and it’s the change in design. Can you get five partners? Can you get five partners who want to put £5,000 in? Maybe one of them is the Scottish Government, I would hope that it would be. One of them would be the RSL provider themselves. So say it’s Blackwood, are we willing to take a bit of a haircut on a net present value calculation? We might be able to, because it’s your purpose, it’s your strategy, it’s your goal.

Would another partner be like we said in the UK where you have industry partners saying I want to test this bit of tech. I think those partnerships, that definition of partnership is one of the templates. And I do think that yeah RSL providers, particularly maybe the smaller specialist providers are going to have to get on board with maybe the likes of Hillcrest and Link and do more together.

Some of that then comes down to how you know that story piece again, how well can you demonstrate the product makes a change in people’s lives. I’ll tell you this, an accessible house, so just what we describe as accessible, and there’s some great stuff out there, but let’s see just a wheelchair-adapted bungalow, it’s £10,000 more than a standard property if you like, you know, if we’re, if the Blackwood House, excuse me, not where, it’s £15,000 more than that, the gap is not insurmountable, and we’ve built, you know, the Scottish Government’s targets, let’s say we’ve built 60,000 over the last five, six, seven years. I think everybody has a debate on that actual number. What, maybe 3,000 of those are actually accessible? You start to multiply that by £15,000. It’s far from a number that makes you go, you know, and I think that that’s the approach that we will need to take, whether it’s formalised or whether it’s, you know, there’s, like I say, a degree of informality around that. 

So again, certainly a template, and we don’t build enough of these anyway for it to have to be a massive system change. If you’re building 50, you can literally get down and say, how do we get 15 grand off this house? How do we value engineer some of those things down? Who’s going to come in and put £5,000 or £3,000 or whatever else in it?

Jimmy Black

Well, you might think the NHS might, because according to the official opposition in the Scottish Parliament anyway, delayed discharges are at their highest level for a long time and we keep hearing figures for the cost of keeping someone in hospital. It wouldn’t take long before they racked up £15,000 or £25,000 saved. It’s just a matter of how do you get that resource transferred? And that seems to be the thing when you have a body which is already overcommitted. If you save it some money, they’re not going to give you the money. They’re going to go and employ another doctor or employ another nurse. So it’s difficult to try and work out how saving some other arm of the state money is actually going to be of benefit, but that I think is the conundrum that we have to solve.

Simon Fitzpatrick 

We do, and I think I mentioned to you before that when we look at social return on investments, bandages always win because they cost virtually nothing and they save lives. So it’s very hard to… your primary care will always kind of win that debate, right? It’s whether we can then in the round and say, look, okay, you’re going to win most of that debate. So can we just have £2,000, £3,000? Can we build the mechanism for that? But seeing the absence of that mechanism there, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try in the meantime and demonstrate it. We often fear failure in social housing, right? Because, well, I don’t know, we built multis. I don’t think multis are a bad thing at all, but you know, that’s the, we might have voids or anything.

Jimmy Black 

Simon, at least one part of this podcast believes that multis are a very good thing.

Simon Fitzpatrick 

Yeah, yeah, no, no, no, no, absolutely. I don’t want to start a fight here either, by the way. But, you know, so we fear failure, which I think then restricts us to try things, it’s like a void, which is just an empty house if we can start to use the right words around that. It’s like that’s the worst thing ever. It’s not actually. If you build 50 houses and you’ve got one empty house, you build 49 houses that are being occupied. So I would encourage us not to stop in the face of not having that system change, but instead deliver to force that or to make the case for that system change. Hopefully that makes a bit of sense. 

Legacy

Jimmy Black 

There’s a number of areas that we’ve not been able to cover. One of the big things in the Summit was about how we sort out existing housing. And maybe that’s for another podcast. But one thing is that you are standing, you said it yourself, you’re standing on the shoulders of giants in the past. Margaret Blackwood would be one of those giants. Fanchea Kelly, your predecessor, was a bit of a giant. She wasn’t very big, but she was certainly a giant. What’s your legacy going to be, Simon? 

Simon Fitzpatrick 

Well, my legacy, hope, will be part of Blackwood’s legacy, which you’d expect, because otherwise you sound like you’re…  sounds like a bam if I was to use a bit of a Dundee kind of vernacular there. Genuinely, I hope that what we’re able to do with Blackwood’s legacy is to continue being at the forefront and the cutting edge of accessible homes and care that is both cutting edge in terms of technology, that doesn’t lose that human touch and human feeling because I’ve been out with a couple of our support workers and if I leave almost, I don’t leave aside the housing because the combination of two is the best case. But the work that they do in that personal care is stunning, it’s phenomenal, it’s jobs that most of us could not and cannot do. Not to stray out, it’s Scottish Housing News, not Scottish Care News. But one of the legacies I would love to see Blackwood is that we start to people like support workers or housing assistants or those upwards of £15 in there, forget £12.50, that’s just not enough, it’s not enough to live on.

So actually, I think yes to forward the case for accessible housing, but to forward the case, and to forward the case for the need of customers, tenants, the wider population on that, but to also combine that in a workforce that is rewarded and paid for the amazing work that they do. So if I was to say, what would I like to leave? Yeah, I’d like to leave people getting paid at least £15 an hour for support workers. Again, my board are going to turn round and go, say what now? No, that would be a personal legacy that I would like to.

Kieran Findlay

Excellent stuff, Simon. Thanks for coming into Dundee and joining this podcast. As I mentioned, this is our last of the Accessible Housing series, but we are touching on it again slightly with our next episode. We’re going to be speaking to MND Scotland and hearing about a project that they’ve got on with Thenue. 

Thanks again to Simon, thanks to my co-host Jimmy Black, I’m Kieran Findlay and we’ll be back in a couple of weeks.