Social Housing
Carbon Literacy Toolkit for Social Housing
What is the Carbon Literacy® Toolkit for Social Housing?
The Carbon Literacy Toolkit for Social Housing provides you with the tools and resources needed to deliver a day’s worth of Carbon Literacy training. The Toolkit comprises of pre-accredited Carbon Literacy training materials for organisations and staff in the Social Housing sector, and tenants and communities who live in or engage with housing association homes or schemes. The content is regularly reviewed and updated to align with the latest climate change policies and other policy updates within the sector.
The materials focus on what housing associations, tenants and communities can do in their roles to reduce carbon emissions whether that be in the workplace, at home or in the community. The Carbon Literacy Toolkit for Social Housing has been co-developed by Great Places Housing Group and the course development has been funded by the Carbon Literacy for Registered Providers (CL4RPs) Consortium.
Why Carbon Literacy for Social Housing?
The UK has one of the oldest and leakiest housing stocks in western Europe, possibly in the world. Yet 80% of homes that are lived in today will still be inhabited in 2050. Estimates suggest 20% of UK homes already overheat and 5.2 million UK homes regularly flood. With extreme weather events increasing in frequency and intensity in the UK, climate change is a serious concern for households and communities. Many of the demographic groups who are overrepresented in social housing (as compared to the general population) are also expected to experience the impacts of climate change sooner and more severely than others.
Upgrading the nation’s existing homes is one of the biggest opportunities the UK has to reduce carbon emissions and for social housing providers, many of the solutions you can implement already exist in the market. The challenge is finding ways to do this effectively, affordably, and quickly. Carbon Literacy training is appropriate for all members of the workforce and customer-base at any housing organisation. The training has the most benefit when rolled out across the whole organisation, as this bolsters the cumulative effect of every Carbon Literate individual’s low-carbon action, and nurtures meaningful and significant action towards long-term decarbonisation.
Courses
Here you’ll find all of the courses within the Carbon Literacy Social Housing Toolkit. To find out more about each course, click on the individual tiles below.
Key Questions
We welcome enquiries from all organisations working within the social housing sector to discuss the options available to access our Toolkit materials.
The toolkit contains a slide deck with comprehensive guidance notes, a trainer guidance booklet, an activity pack, evidence forms and a getting started pack. These are all the resources you need to deliver Carbon Literacy Training.
Since we are an accreditation body and don’t deliver any training ourselves, we promote Carbon Literacy courses hosted by various organisations. All the open training sessions can be found on our events page.
Anyone who is certified Carbon Literate and has attended one of our free online training sessions – Delivering Successful Carbon Literacy can deliver training to their peers.
Social Housing in Action
Win at Unlock Net Zero Awards
We were delighted to scoop the Skills & Training Award at this year’s Unlock Net Zero Awards in Manchester.
Future Homes Standard 2025
Find out about the Government's upcoming Future Homes Standard, its key features and what it will mean for new social homes.
Housing Retrofit in Action
Find out about more about Broadacres' ambitious retrofit programme for upgrading its older and most inefficient properties.
"We want all our staff, board members, and potentially some residents to be Carbon Literate so they can understand their own carbon footprint, then develop actions in their homes and in the workplace to reduce it."
Robin Lawler, CEO of Northwards Housing
"Carbon Literacy was the first environmental training where we saw the benefit of getting every member of staff trained." "A key outcome from the Carbon Literacy training has been that people are now approaching the environment team to make improvements within their working environment."
Great Places – Silver
"Overall this has been a hugely positive experience, with staff still being training and passing their Carbon Literacy with flying colours on a regular basis."
New Charter – Silver
"Based on the commitments the staff made during the training, the estimated carbon saving is 77 tonnes CO2."
Northwards – Platinum
“We were looking for a training course that would ensure all staff received the same level of environmental understanding, for a reasonable cost. Carbon Literacy fit these criteria perfectly”.
Great Places Housing – Platinum CLO
"It’s really encouraging that since the training a lot of people are talking about reducing their carbon footprint and two people have told us that they have made the decision to change their cars off the back of the training.”
New Charter Group – Silver CLO
“Since the training has been completed our Green Energy Advisor has been inundated with requests from our teams to provide energy advice to our tenants... Based on the pledges the staff made during the training, the estimated initial carbon saving is 77 tonnes CO2.”
Northwards Housing – Platinum CLO
"We need to face up to this major challenge, partly because of the health and quality of life of our own residents. We want to clean up the air that they breathe, we want to reduce the use of plastic that's cluttering our rivers and our green spaces. We want to put Greater Manchester in a position of leadership on this crucial issue that will shape the 21st century, but if we are to succeed it does require radical action now."
Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester
Request a Course
To speak to our social housing coordinator or request one or more of the available courses for Social Housing, please email us at housing@carbonliteracy.com.
Please include the following:
- A recognised social housing provider email address
- Which course you are requesting?
- Why you are interested in this particular sectoral course?
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