NHC welcomes new funding for energy efficiency improvements
The government has announced funding allocations for Wave 3 of the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund (previously known as the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund or SHDF) and for the Warm Homes: Local Grant, which are set to improve the energy efficiency of up to 170,000 homes.
Tracy Harrison, Chief Executive of the Northern Housing Consortium said:
“The North has lots of older, colder homes – with 1 in 5 built before 1919 and almost a million households currently in fuel poverty – so this Warm Homes investment will make a big difference to people’s lives. NHC members, including housing associations, local authorities and combined authorities across the North, are working to tackle this by installing tens of thousands of energy efficiency measures from heat pumps to home insulation.
This extra funding from government is very welcome and will boost these efforts, helping to cut carbon emissions, support jobs, cut fuel bills and tackle fuel poverty. We also welcome the move to devolve retrofit funding in the North through the allocation of funding to Greater Manchester Combined Authority’s Integrated Settlement.
This will allow funding to better align with locally led plans for economic growth, training and skills provision, as well as support greater collaboration between housing providers in Greater Manchester. We know there is continuing appetite from our members to continue to make our homes more energy efficient.”
In total, the third wave of the Social Housing Fund will see £1.29bn allocated across 144 individual projects. Funding will be distributed through one of two distinct funding routes. These are the Challenge Fund, which will work in a similar fashion to current funding programmes, and Strategic Partnerships which aim to provide a greater level of flexibility, and reduced up-front administrative requirements, for more experienced providers, or consortia of providers, in delivering their energy efficiency upgrades.
Just less than half of the total £1.29 billion of funding will be delivered through Strategic Partnerships, including a significant proportion of funding allocated to the North. For the North, these strategic partnerships will take the form of large partnerships of housing providers, led by a Mayoral Combined Authority. Major strategic partnerships for the North include:
- Liverpool City Region Combined Authority – £48,090,405
- Tees Valley Combined Authority (this consortium includes housing associations and local authorities in the North East and Yorkshire) – £43,910,533
- West Yorkshire Combined Authority – £25,682,461
Major allocations through the Challenge Fund include North Yorkshire Council, whose £21 million allocation, was the single largest allocation through this route.
In addition, government announced a further £600 million for the Warm Homes: Local Grant. This funding is to be allocated to local authorities to improve the energy efficiency of homes of low-income households living in owner occupied or privately rented homes. In total, almost £150 million was allocated to 46 local authorities in the North across 23 bids. Allocations to councils in the North are in the table below:
| Local authority | Funding allocation (Local Grant) |
| Barnsley | £1,538,552 |
| Blackpool (as part of a consortium of 13 councils) | £30,039,099 |
| Bradford | £7,106823 |
| Calderdale | £3,206,150 |
| Cheshire East (as part of a consortium of 3 councils) | £7,782,725 |
| County Durham | £2,055,853 |
| Darlington (as part of a consortium of 4 councils) | £13,953,865 |
| Doncaster | £1,604,111 |
| East Riding of Yorkshire | £1,500,000 |
| Gateshead | £1,500,000 |
| Hartlepool | £2,391,408 |
| Kingston upon Hull | £3,402,806 |
| Leeds | £5,963,439 |
| Liverpool City Region (as part of a consortium of 6 councils) | £31,805,813 |
| Newcastle upon Tyne | £2,294,325 |
| North Tyneside | £4,281,163 |
| North Yorkshire | £5,974,078 |
| Northumberland | £2,530,853 |
| Sheffield | £3,406,008 |
| Sunderland | £1,500,000 |
| Wakefield | £1,500,000 |
| Westmorland & Furness (as part of a consortium of 2 councils) | £11,828,581 |
| York | £2,037,677 |
| North | £149,203,329 |
The Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) will receive an allocation of this funding as part of the Warm Homes and Public Sector Decarbonisation Devolution Programme, as part of their integrated settlement. Details of this will be announced as part of the Spending Review.
Full lists of funding, for both the Challenge Fund and Strategic Partnerships of the Social Housing Fund, can be found here. The full list of funding allocations for the Local Grant can be found here.
