We all benefit from greener homes

The challenges are around the lack of appropriate skills for much retrofitting work, the high costs of such work in the UK in comparison with many other European countries, and poor local supply chains.

These challenges are opportunities to develop local economies and create jobs for social housing tenants. Another potentially huge opportunity is the introduction of feed-in tariffs for renewables. If we can get the supply chains and costs comparable to Germany, they provide a rate of return on investment of about 7 per cent and that return would go direct to the social landlord, with additional savings for tenants.

In Birmingham a pilot to retrofit 5,000 homes and 300 work premises has just started. It will do this in a way that provides training and creates jobs, as well as coordinating procurement to drive down prices and attract manufacturing to the city. Birmingham is funding this scheme by providing free renewables (normally photo-voltaics) in return for having the feed-in tariff assigned to them.

This offer could be made to social landlords in the city, but the assumption we made in helping develop the project is that they would be likely to find it more attractive to do this work themselves and keep the feed-in tariff. To make it more attractive, the council would offer social landlords access to their procurement arrangements and technical advice in return for their support for training and the development of the local economy.

There is no reason why this approach could not be repeated elsewhere.

Jon Morris, director, Localise West Midlands, Birmingham