We’re delighted to announce we’ve been awarded £6.1m from the Department of Energy and Net Zero’s (DESNZ) Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund, thanks to a successful bid alongside 22 other social housing providers in the Tees Valley Combined Authority consortium.
As a result of this award, more than 1300 Gentoo properties are set to benefit from energy efficiency improvement work, such as PV panels, loft insulation, low energy lighting, air source heat pumps and smart heating controls. This will significantly improve the energy efficiency of our homes and make our customers' homes more efficient.
This builds on our existing and previous retrofit programmes which were awarded under Wave 1 and Wave 2.2 of the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund. Alongside our partners Mears and RE:GEN, we have already completed energy efficiency improvement work to 392 homes on Wave 1 and over 300 homes to date on Wave 2.2, with a further 400 homes to benefit from these works by summer 2025.
Peter Akers, Director of Asset and Sustainability said: “We’re delighted to have been awarded funding from the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund. This funding is vital for supporting retrofit projects to make our customers warm and comfortable in their homes.
We’ve already achieved so much from previous waves of funding which has contributed to us improving the EPC of more than 20,000 homes in total to EPC C by the end of 24/26. The further £6.1m Warm Homes funding will enable us to build on our existing retrofit work to prioritise warm, safe and comfortable homes for our customers and contribute to the government’s plan to elevate all homes to EPC C by 2030 and achieve net zero status by 2050.
I’m looking forward to seeing what we will achieve with the further funding and hearing from our customers about the improvements to their homes.”
The Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund will see around £44m invested into making homes across the North more sustainable. The announcement comes at an important time for funding in Sunderland with Sunderland City Council also being awarded a £1.5m grant from the Department of Energy and Net Zero’s (DESNZ) Warm Homes Local Grant to support the decarbonisation of up to 100 homes in Sunderland, reducing carbon emissions and further supporting Sunderland’s ambition to be carbon neutral by 2040.
