Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund Demonstrator

On 8 July 2020, the Chancellor’s Summer Economic Update announced the UK-wide Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund Demonstrator (SHDF Demonstrator) to support the decarbonisation of social housing over 2020/21, and to boost green jobs as part of the COVID-19 Economic Recovery Plan.

This £50 million programme will support social landlords to demonstrate innovative approaches to retrofitting social housing at scale. The SHDF Demonstrator upscales the Whole House Retrofit (WHR) Innovation Competition.

The SHDF Demonstrator project is an initial investment to learn lessons and catalyse innovation in retrofitting for the £3.8 billion Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund, allocations for which will be determined at the forthcoming Spending Review.

Applications for the SHDF demonstrator will need to be from:

• Local Authorities (LAs), including combined authorities, or
• Consortia led by LAs for work on their retained Social Housing stock and/or Housing Association or Arm’s Length Management Organisations (ALMO) stock within their area.

This eligibility is only applicable to the SHDF demonstrator programme. The future Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund (allocations for which will be announced at Spending Review in the Autumn) is intended to be open to all social housing landlords to directly access funding.

The Department of Business, Enterprise & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has launched the webpage for the SHDF Demonstrator which sets out indicative timelines for the administration of the scheme. BEIS will update the webpage in due course as more details become available.