The Warm Home Plan puts local authorities at the heart of ambitions to upgrade five million homes by 2030. But with billions of pounds set to be invested, how best to access and use that funding?
Currently the two main funding programmes for retrofit in England are:
• Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund (WH:SHF):
- Scope: The Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund (WH:SHF) is the primary grant to support local authorities and registered providers with upgrading social homes below EPC Band C.
- Current Status: Wave 3 has allocated approximately £1.29bn for delivery between 2025 and September 2028. Funding for this financial year has also been boosted to approximately £750m.
• Warm Homes: Local Grant (WH:LG):
- Scope: The Warm Homes: Local Grant (WH:LG) provides further funding for local authorities to improve energy efficiency and low carbon heating in low income, owner occupied and private rented homes below EPC Band C.
- Current Status: Launched from 2025, with around £500m allocated for delivery to 2028. It is continuing through this financial year, but longer-term funding is yet to be confirmed.
However, getting best results from many of these funding programmes has historically proved challenging.
For example, the final wave of the WH:SHF predecessor, the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund, which was launched in September 2022, aimed to fit 94,096 social homes in England with green upgrades. It struggled. As of June last year, just 25,009 homes – about a quarter of the original target – had been successfully retrofitted, according to the latest figures from the Government.
Why the funding and delivery delays?
Often with public sector retrofit funding programmes:
• Weak data records can cause delays.
• Limited organisational capacity is a problem.
• Delays in appointing PAS 2035-compliant installers and designers create backlogs.
• Tight delivery deadlines can be hard to hit.
• Resident engagement can throw up problems.
All of these things provide learning for the future. And there’s plenty to look forward to: just last month the Government confirmed that the two existing funding programmes – WH:SHF and WH:LG – are going to be merged at some point into a new, single plan. Look out for the consultation on that later this year.
The proposal is that government finance will come from a new Warm Homes Fund designed to support the entire home upgrade supply chain with loans and investments to bring down costs and scale up deployment of solar panels, batteries, heat pumps and other technologies, and help local authorities and social landlords make their upgrade programmes go further. Low-income and fuel poor households will benefit from around £5bn investment to 2030.
The key message for social landlords is to get current projects completed and use this time to prep for the new funding.
How can LHC help you get better results?
Most procurement teams are time poor and overstretched. Large scale social housing retrofit programmes also tend to still operate with somewhat fragmented supply chains:
• Different suppliers for surveys and retrofit assessment.
• Another for design and specification.
• Separate contractors for installation.
• Handover after handover, adding delays and cost.
Why a joined-up approach matters
But there is good news: Social housing landlords no longer need to shop around for different local suppliers. Instead they can take advantage of a ‘one-stop shop’ at the likes of LHC’s Retrofit and Decarbonisation (N9) Framework.
The multi-disciplinary consultancy workstream (workstream 2 in N9) allows housing providers to appoint local experts for assessment, design, installation, and commissioning of retrofit and decarbonisation works. And, crucially, experts to help with applying for and securing funding, which is particularly time consuming.
LHC clients can also leverage the framework's built-in social value targets (such as local job creation and green apprenticeships) to strengthen the strategic case of their grant application.
Then there is spending the grant. LHC’s Gold Standard frameworks speed up the process in four specific ways:
• Bypassing full tenders: Because suppliers are already pre-vetted, you can avoid the 6-12 month traditional public procurement cycle.
• Direct award capability: You can appoint a contractor in as little as two days, compared to weeks for a mini competition.
• Pre-agreed pricing: The framework uses standardised schedules of rates, which speeds up contract awards and ensures value for money without lengthy price negotiations.
For social housing teams spinning multiple plates, all this is more than a convenience, it’s a practical way to reduce risk and save time.
Decarbonisation is no longer a distant goal; it is a pressing operational challenge. The N9 framework provides a practical, joined-up route to delivery, integrating assessment, design and installation.
Click here to learn more about the Retrofit and Decarbonisation (N9) Framework.