Camden announces ‘major retrofit’ for 3,000 council homes

Camden Council is to invest millions into a “major retrofit” of 3,000 of its social homes in a bid to boost energy-efficiency and “save tenants money”.

At last Wednesday’s cabinet meeting (11 November 2024), the Town Hall announced its new £20 million scheme to bring down the carbon emissions of its council homes while cutting energy costs for residents.

Camden’s ‘retrofit at scale’ project will see solar panels and battery storage installed in nine per cent of its social homes.

Council leader Richard Olszewski (Labour party) said: “With this project, we will be investing in tenants’ homes, enabling them to save money on their energy bills, reduce their carbon emissions and thus play their part in tackling the climate emergency.

“This first phase could reduce Camden’s carbon emissions by as much as 943 carbon tonnes a year, on top of the 63 per cent reduction in the council’s emissions since 2010,” he said.

The council plans to use an innovative approach or “special purpose vehicle” which would see £9.5 million in funding from an institutional investor — the energy supplier — while the rest will come from the local authority.

Olszewski confirmed that some of the council’s contribution would be supported by the social housing decarbonisation fund (SHF).

Cllr Tom Simon (Liberal Democrat), the council’s opposition leader, said the scheme’s objectives were “laudable” but he was concerned with the financial risks.

“The question boils down to: what’s the worst case scenario, and what would the consequences for the council be financially?” he asked.

Cllr Steve Adams (Conservative) complained of the project’s “many practical problems”, and asked for reassurance that the market had been tested in terms of potential investors.

The council leader said he did not want to “go down the terrain of hypothetically predicting doomsday scenarios”.

“Part of our funding contribution is based on our winning the third wave of SHF, and we’re fairly confident of securing that,” he said, but if the council’s bid is unsuccessful it would its own resources to “fill the gap”.

The program’s summary report states that this could cover between 25 and 50 per cent of construction costs, including design works.

Olzewski also assured that if the council was unable to mitigate risks thrown up before procurement, it would not proceed, but “we wouldn’t be bringing it to cabinet if we weren’t confident”.

Executive director for supporting communities, Gillian Marston, added that organisations were interested, “and this is how we’ve been able to get [the scheme] to this state”.

However, council documents note that the experimental nature of the retrofit model means there will be a limited pool of supplier organisations with the resources and ability to work with the council.

The previous government introduced the social housing decarbonisation fund to subsidise council housing retrofit in 2022.

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) this year announced £1.21 billion more would go to social housing providers to make them more energy efficient, as part of the funding’s third wave.

The social housing decarbonisation fund aims to bring as many council homes as possible to an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating of C by 2035, “where practical, cost effective and affordable”.

Fuel poor homes, which are both low-income and have low energy efficiency, have an earlier target to achieve an EPC C rating by 2030.

The charity National Energy Action (NEA) defines a household as fuel poor if it needs to spend more than 10 per cent of its income on energy to provide adequate heating.

Olszewski mentioned that other council leaders in the capital had recently agreed to establish an office for retrofit in London so that local authorities could share knowledge on making housing stock more energy-efficient.EPC