Recommendation 3

Making social housing more energy efficient is crucial for the country’s decarbonisation goals, but, of course, it is also a significant cost for social housing providers. Because energy efficiency improvements do not return savings to social housing providers or private investors, there is little, if any, scope for borrowing to fund decarbonisation measures and private finance is not well developed. The Government must deliver grant funding to cover decarbonisation if these costs are not to be paid for by social housing providers or their residents. Although Government funding exists to cover a fraction of the costs it is insufficient, and therefore puts social housing providers under financial pressure. To mitigate this the Government must bring forward the next tranches of the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund urgently.