Collaboration of the year: the Midlands and Wales

Warm Powys is a collaborative project that delivers resident-first, quality retrofit for rural households. Powys is largely rural and dominated by hard-to-heat homes that are often off the gas network, which can make retrofit complex.

 

Under the national ECO4 Flex local authority referral mechanism, misinformation, variable workmanship and weak handovers were common, resulting in low satisfaction levels where schemes lacked robust local oversight. Warm Powys’ partners – Powys County Council alongside Warm Wales, Severn Wye Energy Agency and the Robert Owen Community Banking Fund – collectively invest 100% of ECO4 Flex declaration fees, usually paid by installers to local authorities, back into the scheme.

 

This covers resident benefits that are beyond the standard ECO4 scope – such as free domestic batteries, 12-year servicing and warranties for heat pumps, and a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ policy for installers. These choices have transformed the ECO funding mechanism into a high-trust public service.

 

To date, Warm Powys has installed more than 8,100 measures in more than 1,000 homes, with independently verified satisfaction measures of more than 93% – all through a trusted and scalable model for rural retrofit delivery.

 

The judges said:

“This is an outstanding example of collaboration that raises the bar for retrofit delivery nationally. Warm Powys demonstrates how partners can transform a national funding mechanism into a trusted local public service”