Applications for funding under the Government's Social Housing
Decarbonisation Fund (Wave 1 Competition) close on 15 October.
The Chancellor made an announcement in the 2020 Summer Economic
Update of a new £3.8 billion Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund
(SHDF) to be administered by the Department of Business, Energy
& Industrial Strategy (BEIS).
An initial £62 million SHDF
"Demonstrator Programme" was launched in October 2020
with funding awarded to 17 local authorities across England &
Scotland for 19 projects. Among the projects awarded funding was a
bid from ARCH Executive Board member Warwick District Council.
Projects are expected to complete by December 2021.
Following on from the SHDF Demonstrator projects, BEIS launched
the SHDF "Wave 1 Competition" on 23 August 2021. The competition
runs for 8 weeks until 15 October 2021 and up to £160 million is
available to local authorities and housing associations and
successful applicants will be announced in early 2022. Applications
for the fund should be based on a completion date of 31st January
2023.
The Government say that in total, through this first wave of
funding, up to 38,000 social housing properties - with energy
performance certificate (EPC) ratings of D or below - will have the
chance to receive energy efficiency upgrades, including
installation of insulation and more energy efficient doors, windows
and heating systems.
The maximum grant funding for retrofit works to bring existing
properties up to EPC C or above will depend on the existing EPC
rating of the property and will be capped accordingly:
- EPC D = £10k,
- EPC E = £12k,
- EPC F/G = £16k.
It is expected that up to 15% of total project costs can be
allocated to administration and ancillary costs and registered
providers must contribute at least a third of total eligible
costs.
Full details of the bidding criteria and competition guidance
notes are available on
the Government
website.
A Technical Assistance Facility (TAF) has
also been established to provide technical support for all social
housing landlords interested in accessing funding from the Social
Housing Decarbonisation Fund. It will help with stock analysis; bid
compilation and technical advice. This technical assistance is
being delivered by the Greater London Authority under the name of
the Social Housing Retrofit Accelerator (SHRA) which is available
to all registered providers of social housing across England who
intend to apply to the SHDF Wave 1 competition.