Thanet District Council has been awarded £4.3million following a successful bid for funding from the government’s Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund (SHDF).
The funding will allow extensive retrofit works to be undertaken to improve the energy efficiency of five of the district’s tower blocks.
The retrofit works will include installing replacement windows and more efficient heating systems. Work is expected to start in January 2024 and be completed by September 2025.
The upgrades will help to cut fuel bills for social housing tenants as well as delivering warm homes and reducing carbon emissions. Thanet council says the funding will also support around 9,000 jobs in the green energy sector and deliver carbon emissions savings equivalent to taking up to 6,000 cars off the road in any given year.
The funding will go towards a £21.9m programme of capital works at Staner Court, Invicta House, Kennedy House, Trove Court and Harbour Towers
The grant bid was discussed by councillors last December as part of a £40million project to reduce the carbon footprint of Thanet council homes by carrying out works to improve ratings on Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs), improve insulation and install heat pump technology.
The decarbonisation project is part of the council’s work to reach targets under The Climate Change Act, amended in 2019, which commits the UK to becoming ‘net zero’ by 2050.
The authority has £10 million for the works earmarked in its Housing Revenue Account but needed external funding to help pay for the programme for properties to be EPC grade C compliant by 2030 and net zero by 2050.
Bob Porter, Acting Director of Place at Thanet District Council, said: “The SHDF funding will allow us to make significant improvements to our housing stock, and tenants will benefit from warmer, more energy efficient homes, with lower energy costs. This is especially important when many of our residents are feeling the impact of the current cost of living increases and is an important step in helping us to achieve our goal of reaching Net Zero by 2030.”
In 2022, SHDF Wave 1 awarded 69 projects with funding worth £179million, to upgrade around 20,000 social housing properties which currently have Energy Performance Certificates (EPC) with a rating of C or below. The next wave of funding, SHDF Wave 2.1, will award £778million of grant funding to 107 projects across England.
£40million project to make Thanet council homes energy efficient and cut carbon footprint
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Great news but supporting 9000 jobs ? Are they sure that’s right ?.
That money won’t go far. Bureaucracy and pen pushing will take a fair chunk of that. What with the rising cost of materials.
This really peeves me. We should not have to have valuable staff ploughing through complicated paperwork to make bids for government grants for something as obvious and needed as improved insulation for tower blocks or just for small houses.
Given the need to reduce our use of fossil fuels, it should be ASSUMED that the funds from central government should be available to increase insulation and move over to solar and wind power. And Councils should try to make up reasons/excuses why they WOULD’NT make these changes.
This isn’t a kind-of free choice over what wallpaper to have, or whether to put on an extra pullover today.
It’s about a major switch to renewable power and to reductions in energy use.
The British government is treating it like it’s an option we might like to take up, if we can be bothered to apply.
It’s almost as if the big oil and gas companies have bought British politicians and are making sure that we remain reliant on their oil and gas for the foreseeable future. If Putin had bought the politicians with Russian oil money ,we might hear about it. But all the other firms seem to buy off the leading Parties and we hear nothing about it
Abundant wind power on top of all the tower blocks would reduce the bills for those living in them. It would pay back the cost in little time.
You can’t give that money to TDC it will be wasted through there corrupt ineptitude.
What about some Government Grant monies for similar improvements at Arlington House ?
TDC owns that tower block too.
Or is Arlington deemed sufficiently energy efficient because there are no lifts and residents are having to use the stairs ? ? ?
TDC does not own Arlington House. It owns the freehold of the land on which it stands.
If Arlington House was listed then funding for energy improvements including upgraded windows no doubt might have been available. Yes there is a bitter irony that TDC effectively owns Arlington House and a sizeable minority of residents are also in receipt of state benefits and support.
Hardly, if it were listed you’d need listed building consent for any changes , there would be no additional funding just because a building was listed. Whilst TDC are the freeholder the terms of the maintenance and repair obligations will be in the lease with Freshwater, and whatever is in the lease would TDC try to enforce it if needed?
Turd polishing is alive and kicking, I see.
What “turd polishing” does “BordersArentUs” see in the above article?
Turd polishing (no quotes needed) is the futility of investing time and money in assets that are long past their sell by date. Like retrofitting uPVC units in decaying slumflats.
One would have thought the budget plus the huge numbers of houses going up, tenants could be in better properties and the towers demolished.
It is “turd polishing” with quotes not without. High-rise flats will not be demolished until low-rise social housing has been built and is ready to replace it.
TDC needs to invest in new lifts for Invicta House. They are out again for the umpteenth time this year already, both of them. It’s no fun climbing up the stairs when you are in poor health.