Lack of contractors will hinder net zero push, major SHDF bidders warn

“[But] we should be, in the next five years, cutting 44% of our carbon emissions if we’re going to hit our 2040 target. We’re nowhere near that… we’re probably not even doing a 10th of the work that we should be doing”.

In March, Liverpool housing association Regenda bought Ecogee, a contractor that specialises in retrofit and net-zero solutions, which Ms Gordon said was an “interesting step… to expand a local business and bring jobs into the area”.

Ms Gordon added that she would like to work with other local housing associations that were not in the consortium, “so that we’re not flooding the market… with the same contracts and competing and driving up prices”.

A member of the Greener Futures Partnership, another consortium of large housing providers, said the contractor base had been a “limiting factor” in some bids for decarbonisation funding.

The collaboration, between Abri, Anchor Hanover, Hyde, Home Group and Sanctuary, won £40.4m in the last SHDF round.

Rose Bean, director of assets and sustainability at Abri, told Inside Housing: “What’s probably been the limiting factor in a number of these bids isn’t just financial capacity, it is how we got the contractor base to physically deliver this.”

This issue was a factor behind the consortium’s launch of a £1.5bn procurement framework in January to bring in contractors and consultancy support.

“We’re looking at economies of scale and driving efficiency for our procurement,” Ms Bean added.

“Collectively, we’re going from [retrofitting] around 460 properties to 5,500 [in wave two]. That takes significant planning.”