Wales and Scotland lead UK on council housing solar panel uptake

But in Wales and Scotland, council homes with solar panels have surpassed private homes.

North West Wales is the region with the highest proportion of council homes fitted with solar panels, at 33.8%, equivalent to one in three homes.

This was followed by North East Wales at 21.7%, and Scotland’s Aberdeen and North East at 13%.

Southern Wales reported the sharpest rise in progress, up from 0.3% last year – the lowest rate in the UK – to 8.1% today, which is around the national median.

Scotland’s Highlands and Islands also went up to 9% from 4.7% last year. In England, the East Midlands reported the biggest improvement, accounting for more than one in three of all new council solar installations nationally over the past year.

The region’s number of council homes with solar panels nearly doubled in the last year to 9,625, from 4,875.

London recorded the lowest proportion of council homes with solar panels, at 1.6%.

Low rates were also reported in Edinburgh and Lothians at 2.7%, South East Wales at 2.8%, South West Wales at 2.9%, and Yorkshire and the Humber at 3%.

Although Wales and Scotland lead the way on proportional uptake, the scale of the upgrade challenge is greater in England because of the greater size of the country’s council housing stock.

In sheer volumes, England has far more council homes fitted with solar – 74,998 homes. Wales and Scotland, by comparison, have 6,309 and 28,330 council homes fitted with solar respectively.

English councils fitted 13,287 homes with solar panels last year, compared to 3,115 installations in Scotland and 1,520 in Wales.

Gryd’s figures reflect all residential properties reported in FOI responses received, including homes owned or leased by councils or managed by ALMOs on their behalf.

The figures do not include social housing owned and managed by private registered providers, or solar installations on blocks of flats.

Mohamed Gaafar, chief executive and co-founder of Gryd, said: “If the upcoming tranche of Warm Homes Fund investment is deployed effectively, we could well see councils leapfrogging the private market by this time next year.

“But councils’ reliance on government funding cycles alone creates stop-start progress. While public funding will always be essential, partnering with private capital can also help councils and housing providers accelerate deployment at a scale that current budgets struggle to support.”

He added: “The capital is there; what’s needed is effective policy to let it flow in at pace and scale, ensuring the benefits of the clean energy transition are felt equally across every type of household.”

Earlier this month, a housing body raised concerns that new fire safety regulations could make smaller homes “unviable” for solar panels.

The Housing Forum argued that proposed guidance could “substantially reduce” the number of panels that can fit on a roof, and may make smaller and terraced homes “unviable” for solar panels.

Last month, the government launched a call for evidence to address the disparity between the number of houses and flats that have solar panels.