Midland Heart has been awarded close to £2.2 million in Wave 2.1 of the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund (SHDF) through the West Midlands Combined Authority bid, as part of a further £778 million investment into UK social housing.
This funding provides vital support to social housing landlords as they make strides to improve the energy efficiency of their homes and move their properties closer to net zero.
Net zero is a key priority for leading affordable housing provider Midland Heart, who has committed to achieving a minimum of EPC C in their homes by 2030. This funding will support their existing incremental retrofit strategy, which focuses on combining conventional incremental approaches with innovative technologies to bring lower carbon and energy efficient measures to their homes.
In particular, Midland Heart have identified solar PV as one such measure. The use of solar PV with diverters for hot water storage in electrically heated properties is a more cost-effective approach to store and use energy, which will be extremely beneficial to customers as they try to mitigate cost of living increases.
At the heart of the organisation, is the belief that any investment into achieving net zero should also benefit customers, keeping their homes warm and energy bills affordable.
Executive Director of Finance and Growth at Midland Heart, Joe Reeves, commented: “As a landlord with over 34,000 homes, we recognise we have a responsibility to reduce energy consumption, become more sustainable and limit our impact on the environment. This funding will help us to deliver our ambitious retrofitting programme, which we believe will both improve the energy efficiency and performance of our homes and make a difference to the quality of life for our customers.”
Midland Heart is focused on the delivery of its retrofit strategy and is pushing forward with planned decarbonisation initiatives established during SHDF Wave 1.
