Introducing Warm Homes: two new retrofit funding schemes for homes across England
Introduction
On 23 September 2024, the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero announced two new retrofit schemes for social housing providers and local authorities across England - the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund and the Warm Homes: Local Grant.
These ambitious schemes will kickstart delivery of the Government’s Warm Homes Plan, which will transform homes across the country by making them warmer, greener, and cheaper to run.
Sarah McClelland from Retrofit Information, Support, and Expertise (RISE) was joined by Programme Directors Caroline Withey and Shaun Garvey from the Department, to discuss these new schemes and the free support available to access them.
Contents
Sarah – Can you walk us through both the Warm Homes: Local Grant, and the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund?
Shaun- The Warm Homes: Local Grant is a new scheme, and a successor to the Home Upgrade Grant. It will provide grants for energy performance upgrades and low carbon heating to low-income, privately-owned households in England to achieve both energy bill and carbon savings.
Caroline – The Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund is, in many ways, a continuation of the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund. It will upgrade thousands of social homes that are below the EPC ‘C’ rating to cut bills and tackle fuel poverty, carrying on the good work that social housing landlords have been doing through our earlier waves.
Sarah – Caroline, are there any changes to the previous waves of the Social Housing scheme that applicants need to be aware of?
Caroline - We've responded to feedback on the earlier waves of funding with some key changes. There are now two new routes to funding, the Challenge Fund and Strategic Partnerships, so organisations can decide the route that suits them best. There have also been some policy changes, including changes to the cost caps and eligible properties. All the changes are detailed in the briefing webinars on the RISE website.
Sarah - Any changes with the Warm Homes: Local Grant, Shaun?
Shaun – We’ve raised the household income threshold to £36,000, meaning the automatic eligibility of around 1.6 million households nationwide. We’ve also streamlined our application process and criteria; we want to make sure that every eligible local authority that expresses interest gets some funding.
Sarah - What would be your top recommendations to organisations seeking to submit a funding request for one of the Warm Homes scheme?
Caroline – Firstly, familiarise yourself with the scheme guidance – the briefing webinar recordings on the RISE website will give you a solid understanding.
And make the most of all the support that is offered through the RISE service. RISE can help you to make those early, vital decisions about which route to go down, and then their bespoke support will make sure you develop really strong programme plans and funding requests.
Shaun - Knowing that local authorities have many priorities, my first tip is to get senior buy in; this is something that can really determine the success of a programme. The RISE Support Managers can offer you a huge amount of help with this, so ask them for that support.
To hear the full conversation between Sarah, Caroline, and Shaun – listen to the RISE podcast available now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Key Information about the Warm Homes schemes
Both Warm Homes schemes are currently open for applications.
Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund will close at midday on 25 November 2024.
Warm Homes: Local Grant is will close on 1 December 2024.