Tackling Poverty, Climate and Health: Why Prevention Starts at Home

From reactive response to long term change 

Like many local authorities, Laura’s team initially responded to the cost of living crisis with urgent, year-by-year interventions. Vital work, but by definition reactive.  

The new Tackling Poverty Action Plan, running through to 2030, takes a more strategic view. It has been co-designed with communities, education partners, health services and housing providers. It focuses on five interconnected areas: 

• Climate and place 

• Financial resilience 

• Families 

• Health and wellbeing 

• Advocacy  

Housing runs through all of them.  

There is a clear recognition that putting a plaster on a problem is not enough. If they can see early warning signs that someone may be heading towards crisis, the goal is to intervene before the spiral begins. This is where data and trust collide.  

The “just about managing” challenge 

Engaging residents who are already in social housing or receiving benefits is relatively straight forward from a data perspective. There are established touchpoints and information flows.  

The real challenge lies with those who are just about managing: 

• Working households 

• Private renters 

• Families not currently in receipt of support 

• People who have never needed to engage with the council 

They may not feel they need help. They may not have time. They may not trust statutory services. And often, they are one unexpected bill away from crisis.  

We know this pattern well in housing. It takes one shock, a boiler failure, reduced hours, illness, and everything tips.  

Preventative engagement is difficult because it asks people to accept support before they feel the urgency. That requires subtlety, empathy and strong community partnerships.  

Health as the bridge 

One part of our conversation was a project supporting residents with sickle cell disease. 

Residents with sickle cell are particularly vulnerable to cold homes. Exposure to low temperatures can trigger serious health crises. The project focused on low income households and combined: 

• Energy support and help with bills 

• Income maximisation 

• Dedicated worker support 

• Practical housing conversations 

The outcomes were significant, including reduced pressure on NHS services. By building trust through health support, residents began to disclose housing issues, mould, overcrowding, property conditions. Issues they had not previously raised.  

Housing did not start the conversation. Health did.  

But housing was central to the solution.  

Affordable warmth and climate resilience 

Another strand of the action plan is piloting an affordable warmth referral mechanism. Health professionals and children’s centres will be able to refer households they suspect may be in fuel poverty for targeted support.  

Alongside this, there is work to strengthen community spaces as safe havens during extreme weather, not just for cold spells, but overheating too.  

We know UK housing stock was not designed for the climate we are now experiencing. Overheating is no longer theoretical, nor are intense rainfall and flooding. Yet climate can still feel abstract to residents.  

The most effective conversations have not been large scale campaigns. Instead they happen through trusted intermediaries, faith groups, community organisations, local leaders. The messenger matters as much as the message.  

Even small practical changes, such as using postcards rather than official letters, or consistent visual branding to reduce anxiety about opening mail, can significantly improve engagement.  

No wrong front door 

Perhaps the most ambitious element is to simplify the system. Years of short term funding have led to layers of interventions bolted onto other interventions. For residents, it can feel like navigating a maze.  

This is where No wrong front door comes in.   

Wherever someone enters the system, housing, health, community support, the resident has one conversation. The complexity happens behind the scenes. Professionals triage and coordinate so that the resident experiences clarity, not fragmentation. That requires cultural change. It requires services that may not traditionally work together to genuinely collaborate. It requires trust between organisations as well as with residents.  

It is easy to say. Harder to deliver. But absolutely the right direction of travel.  

What this means for Healthy Homes 

Conversations like this reinforce why the Healthy Homes Hub exists. Healthy homes are not a housing-only agenda. There is a poverty agenda, a health agenda, a climate agenda and an economic agenda.  

If we want to: 

• Improve educational outcomes 

• Strengthen financial resilience 

• Prepare for climate impacts 

• Break cycles of disadvantage 

• Reduce pressure on the NHS 

Then we have to start with the home. But we must move our services from a reactive response to preventative design.  

Practical reflections for housing providers 

Based on this discussion, here are some considerations for housing and local authority teams:  

1. Map your early warning data 
   Understand where financial, health and housing data could signal emerging risk before crisis hits. 

2. Build health partnerships intentionally 
   Explore referral pathways that allow health professionals to flag housing related risks early. 

3. Simplify access to support 
   Aim for a no wrong front door approach. Complexity should sit behind the scenes, not with residents. 

4. Engage through trusted networks 
   Work with community groups and faith organisations to build trust where statutory services struggle. 

5. Treat climate resilience as a health issue 
   Overheating, cold homes and extreme weather are health determinants, not environmental add-ons. 

Laura’s role is ambitious. But ambition is exactly what is needed.   

Healthy homes are not an isolated policy theme. They are the infrastructure of prevention. And if we get prevention right, everything else becomes easier.