FTSE 250 business Sovereign Housing Association has been awarded over £9 million by the UK Government’s Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund (SHDF) which will go towards the £22.5m cost of retrofitting 1,000 homes in its portfolio.
The grant is the largest to be made towards a project involving the Housing Association’s existing homes, and supports a wider ambition of decarbonising and retrofitting its portfolio of 61,000 homes on its journey to net zero by 2050.
Supporting the United Kingdom government’s commitment to establish a £3.8 billion Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund, the SHDF Wave 2.1 funding round aims to deliver warm, energy-efficient homes, reduce carbon emissions and fuel bills, tackle fuel poverty and support green jobs.
Sovereign’s Homes and Place strategy extends these commitments to include better home affordability, health and wellbeing, and carbon reduction and mapping.
Resident Liaison Officers and retrofit teams will work closely with social housing tenants to explain how newly installed smart-home technology will help reduce their energy bills.
Home improvement retrofit measures have been individually assessed and tailored for each home and follow a fabric-first approach which includes wall insulation, heat pumps, battery storage, photovoltaic (solar) panels, and ‘smart’ home controls. Combined, these measures are expected to deliver an enhanced energy efficiency rating of EPC B and B+ and an improved affordability benefit to our customers where bills could fall by as much as half post-retrofit.
Sovereign describes the project as supported by a ‘data-driven’ approach to continuous learning and improvement which means that on completion of a survey, each home will have a “passport” that records all the retrofit measures needed to achieve net zero. The same passport links to ongoing monitoring within each home to evaluate their operation, demonstrating net zero delivery and allowing quicker identification of faults or poor environmental conditions within homes.
The Housing Association has been closely supported throughout the bid process by Sero who provide digital solutions for planning, funding and operating homes along their decarbonisation journey towards net zero.
Sovereign is leading the way in upgrading our homes to make them warmer, more efficient and set them on the journey to net zero.
Sovereign CEO, Mark Washer, says: “I am delighted that our very ambitious bid has been successful and that we can now start using SHDF funding to improve our customers’ homes, making them greener and cheaper to run. At a time when people are struggling to pay their bills and when the quality of social housing is under scrutiny, Sovereign is leading the way in upgrading our homes to make them warmer, more efficient and set them on the journey to net zero.
“I want to congratulate the bid team at Sovereign for all their hard work in demonstrating to the government that we really mean business when it comes to retrofit. Improving every home we own is core to our mission, and this funding will play an important part in expanding our retrofit programme to thousands of customers.
“Sovereign is leading the social housing sector in retrofit, and we want to share everything we learn on the way. It’s in all our interests to reduce the carbon footprint of social housing. It’s great that the SHDF has been able to support us in this vital work, but government must continue to invest in retrofit, whether its supporting housing associations, providing investment for training and skills or funding research and development into the new technologies that will make net zero a reality.”
Andy Sutton, Sero Co-founder, says: “We are absolutely thrilled that Sovereign have secured funding for this leading project. We’re looking forward to supporting them during the project delivery with Retrofit Coordination and Pathways to Zero to help their customers easily run comfortable, affordable and lower carbon homes.”
Sovereign was part of the first wave of Homes England Strategic Partnerships announced by the government in October 2018.
