Council awarded £4.3m through government’s Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund

Thanet District Council has been awarded £4.3million following a successful bid for funding from the government’s Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund (SHDF).

This significant level of funding will allow extensive retrofit works to be undertaken to improve the energy efficiency of five of the district’s tower blocks. The blocks are Invicta House, Staner Court, Harbour Towers, Trove Court and Kennedy House.

The retrofit works will include installing replacement windows and more efficient heating systems. The delivery phase is expected to start in January 2024, and to be completed by September 2025. 

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. This next wave of funding, SHDF Wave 2.1, will award £778million of grant funding to 107 projects across England.

The upgrades will help to cut fuel bills for social housing tenants as well as delivering warm homes and reducing carbon emissions. 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.

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.”