FAQs
I often see news about 100% free energy efficiency grants given out to people who are on benefits. Whenever I try to apply, they say I need to speak to my housing association and they will be able to advise me. Can you provide more information about this?
There is funding available to deliver 100% free energy efficiency upgrades to domestic properties, but unfortunately most of these grants are aimed at privately owned homes and aren’t accessible to social housing landlords. There is one grant, ECO 4, that is available to social housing landlords but sadly it’s not completely funded. Freebridge would be expected to contribute to around 60-70% of the costs which unfortunately we don’t have a budget to allow us to do this. We are focusing on larger scale planned decarbonisation works to our homes. Currently we are upgrading 99 homes via the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund (SHDF) Wave 2.1, a £2.7million pound project (recently seen in Streets Ahead). The next round of SHDF funding for Wave 3 for upgrades in 25/26, 26/27 & 27/28 is due to open for applications late summer 2024, and Freebridge are currently in discussions to allow us to apply for this funding to support our capital investment towards deliver more decarbonisation and energy efficiency upgrades to more of our homes between April 2025 – March 2028. |
Can tenants pay to have Solar PV installed themselves?
Currently the answer is no, due to legal complexities around ownership of the property and that of a potentially installed system, maintenance and repair etc. However, this is something we would like to be able to explore with a view to supporting those tenants who are willing to fund these improvements, and we are doing some work in the background to see if there is a way that this can be done (although a final decision is likely to be a little while off just yet). |