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Landlord claims retrofit will be harder to deliver due to less flexible Warm Homes funding
A housing association has warned that its retrofit programme will be harder to deliver after it missed out on a more flexible government funding route.
Together Housing has warned that its retrofit programme will be harder to deliver after it missed out on a more flexible government funding route #UKhousingTogether Housing Group (THG) had applied to the more flexible Strategic Partnership route under the government’s Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund Wave 3.
According to the government, this route rewards social landlords that have “a proven track record of successful delivery” with more flexible grant funding and a “closer strategic relationship” with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ).
However, the 38,000-home housing association was instead placed in the Challenge Fund stream, which has more monitoring and data-reporting requirements and is intended for “all providers, including smaller landlords or those without previous retrofit experience”.
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Patrick Berry, executive director of property at THG, told Inside Housing: “Despite an extremely strong track record of delivery to contract, although THG bid using the Strategic Partner route, THG is in the Challenge Fund stream for Wave 3, while others without the track record and smaller bids are not. This is without explanation and will make a large programme more difficult to deliver.”
The government offered THG a total of £14.2m in grant funding under the Challenge Fund in March.
The two routes to access grant were introduced in Wave 3 of the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund in response to social landlords’ calls for greater flexibility to help them scale up decarbonisation programmes.
Inside Housing contacted several other social landlords that received large amounts under the Challenge Fund to find out if they had originally bid for a Strategic Partnership.
Some had applied for the Challenge Fund, while others were allocated funding through the Challenge Fund due to merger activities.
Longhurst Group, now part of the merged organisation Amplius, received £20.3m from the Challenge Fund.
Fallon Warren, head of environment and sustainability at Amplius, said: “Due to our merger, we were allocated funding through the Challenge Fund stream, but this has made no difference to our programme delivery.
“We’re delighted to have received such a large allocation of funding for this wave and we believe this is due to our strong track record in delivering previous projects.”
Andrew Rowe, assistant director for housing at North Yorkshire Council, which received £21.9m under the Challenge Fund, said: “Our proposal was evaluated by RISE, a free support service funded by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. We were advised to apply for the Challenge Fund stream, as it was felt this would best suit our current level of experience in this area.
“This does not inhibit the work we want to do, and we are confident we will be able to successfully deliver the project as intended.”
L&Q was allocated £15.7m from the Challenge Fund. An L&Q spokesperson told Inside Housing that it had applied for the Challenge Fund stream and received the amount of funding it bid for.
A total of £1.2bn was given to housing providers under Wave 3 of the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund, across both the Challenge Fund and Strategic Partnership routes.
The scheme, which was formerly known as the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund, distributed a total of £1.09bn in earlier waves under the previous Conservative government.
DESNZ was approached for comment.
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