This council is turning to the private sector to fix Britain’s draughty homes and reach net zero

The UK has the oldest, draughtiest housing stock in Europe and the progress on fixing existing homes is slow – it’s a cost that residents are paying in energy bills and the country is paying in the climate crisis.

The need to decarbonise the country’s social housing stock comes at a time when local authorities are already feeling the financial pressure of housing.

In Bristol, the local authority has teamed up with the private sector to turbocharge efforts.

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Bristol City Leap is a public-private venture launched by Bristol City Council in January 2023 with the legally binding target of retrofitting 28,000 council properties over the next five years. The partnership with US-based renewable energy firm Ameresco is aiming to create 140,000 tonnes of carbon savings as Bristol races to reach net zero by 2030.

That work involves insulating homes, installing solar panels and transforming heating and cooling systems. Larger projects on renewable energy such as wind farms are also in the company’s remit.

“Looking at the kind of scale and the nature of the challenge around the climate emergency, we were acutely aware that to continue on that trajectory, investing unprecedented amounts for a council and a local authority comparable to others, it just simply wasn’t going to be enough,” said James Sterling, communications and social value manager at Bristol City Leap.

“This is a thing that we’re seeing all over the country now with ever-decreasing public budgets. We know that the public sector isn’t equipped to solve decarbonisation standalone.

“It needs to be a partnership approach. It brings that knowledge and expertise and also innovative, bold solutions for decarbonisation. Harnessing private finance means things can get done at a much greater pace at a much greater scale. It really puts a rocket under those opportunities.”

Around 29 million homes will need to be retrofitted before 2050 for the UK to reach its net-zero commitments, according to the UK Green Building Council. That includes 19 million homes rated below energy performance certificate (EPC) band D.

The work will be up to owner-occupiers to insulate their own homes and invest in heat pumps, solar panels and other measures with the support of government grants.

Private landlords will be required to upgrade the homes they rent out by 2030, energy secretary Ed Miliband announced at the Labour Party conference. Lobby groups have called for landlords to receive more financial support to carry out the work.

The responsibility for decarbonising social housing falls on housing associations and local authorities. There are four million social homes in England alone.

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Social housing is traditionally occupied by lower-income families but it is also likely to be more energy efficient than private rented or owner-occupied properties.

The proportion of homes in the social rented sector in the EPC A to C band rose from 36% to 70% in the last decade, the English Housing Survey found.

But progress in getting other housing up to scratch has been relatively slow, hampered by escalating costs and labour shortages.

The Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund introduced by the previous Westminster government has, so far, delivered 43,200 measures installed in 22,300 homes. A relative drop in the ocean compared to the scale of the issue.

The National Housing Federation chief executive Kate Henderson has been pleading with the government for months to release more of the grant funding under the scheme – more than £1bn – to allow housing associations to up the pace.

The programme has now changed names under Labour with the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund now set to run until September 2028 as part of the government’s Warm Homes Plan.

Bristol City Leap’s Sterling told Big Issue the government’s stance – and reversal on the ban of offshore wind farms – could pave the way for swifter progress and make the public-private partnership more viable.

“If I’m honest, we’re starting to see really good movement in the last couple of months from government and rhetoric of a very different tone towards greening the country and the contributions that can make to the economy, which is fantastic to see,” he said.

“We’re also seeing a change in narrative around decarbonisation in the domestic sector which has always been a real challenge because it’s not necessarily investable as a project. 

“There aren’t fiscal returns to be made – but there are social returns to be made – from cladding someone’s house or putting a new heating system in. It doesn’t generally kind of stack up in terms of a business case.

“So we have to try and balance those projects. Where we have a project like building a wind turbine, there’s a very obvious kind of rate of return. It’s a 50-year payback so it’s very, very long-term growth, patient capital.”

Bristol City Leap is seeking to fill some of the labour shortages in the industry, offering green jobs to people who are set to be at risk as part of the green transition.

The initiative has delivered 100 jobs in its first year and is targeting 1,000 new jobs over the next five years. 

Sterling said he hopes Bristol City Leap can become a blueprint for other local authorities to follow suit. The group has been working with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and think tanks to provide a framework and a model that can be replicated.

“It’s the coming together of those two sectors, combining the expertise from the private sector along with the assets and the convening influence that a local authority can bring to a partnership,” said Sterling.

“The intention for Bristol City Leap is to not only kind of make a significant dent in the decarbonisation of Bristol, but also to create a model for city scale to decarbonisation that other cities, regions, towns can follow.”

With another winter of rising energy bills and the clock ticking on the climate crisis, the time for innovative ways to ramp up decarbonisation is now.

Find out more about Bristol City Leap.

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