Green Homes Grant boost approved

Published: 7 December 2021

Derby City Council Cabinet has approved the transfer of £0.4million from the City Energy Savings Programme (CESP) to the Green Homes Grant (GHG), Local Authority Delivery (LAD) phase two Scheme.

The transfer includes of £0.213m in the current year, and a brought forward amount of CESP funding of £0.187m from 2022/23.

The Green Homes Grant (GHG) is designed to save households money, cut carbon emissions, and create green jobs through improvements to energy efficiency in homes. After the launch of the GHG in July 2020, the council received LAD funding of £0.5m. In April 2021 cabinet accepted an additional £1.590m for phase two of the scheme.

The programme included 166 properties in total, of which 113 (revised down to 100) were in the private sector and the remaining 53 being in Council ownership.

The measures comprise primarily of external wall insulation and the original forecasts set the estimated cost per property to be between £8000 to £9000, well below the maximum £10,000 offered through the LAD funds.

Following a procurement exercise, due to increased due to inflation of both materials and labour elements, the current cost per property is now closer to £14,000.

With a shortfall of £4,000 over the 100 privately owned properties, the transfer of the £0.4m for the CESP will cover the unexpected inflation in costs, whilst still providing good long-term value for money as the Council seeks to meet its climate change emissions targets.

Councillor Steve Hassall, Cabinet Member for Regeneration, Decarbonisation & Strategic Planning & Transport said:

We are in a very challenging economic environment with costs rising but this is a very valuable scheme for the long-term health of the city and we didn’t want to lose the opportunity to protect and improve so many homes with the Grant funding

Combining the City Energy Savings Programme and the Green Homes Grant funding will allow us to make better use of our money and deliver more improvements to low-income fuel poor households.

Environment