Two Rivers Housing secures £4.56m grant to make Gloucestershire homes warmer
We have secured £4.56m from the government’s Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund to help improve the energy efficiency of hundreds of our tenant’s homes in the Forest of Dean and across Gloucestershire.
Over the next three years, we will use the grant to partially fund upgrades to more than 750 of our homes. The upgrades will include energy saving fittings such as solar panels, loft insulation and improved ventilation systems to homes that have low energy ratings.
Investing in our tenants’ homes is a key part of our organisation’s 2024-2027 corporate strategy – ‘Delivering #Twogether’. It forms part of our promise to provide, warm, safe, sustainable homes and help combat fuel poverty in the area.
As part of that commitment, we have already completed energy improvement work in around 300 of our homes in Gloucestershire, including a pilot project to fully retrofit 16 homes in the Gloucestershire village of Blakeney in 2022.
We have also received grants from previous waves of the Social Housing Fund, (formerly called the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund (SHDF)), as well as the government’s ECO4 scheme to help fund this work. This funding has helped us install air-source heat pumps in 225 of its tenants’ homes over the past two years.
The government’s Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund is allocated to local authorities and housing associations for work to improve the energy performance of homes currently rated below EPC Band C. We applied for grant funding from Wave 3 of the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund in a joint bid with Stroud District Council, Gloucestershire City Homes and Cheltenham Borough Council. More than £15.5m has been allocated our four organisations in the latest wave of funding to improve the energy efficiency of homes across the region.
Speaking about the £4.56m awarded to Two Rivers Housing, Jonny Jones, Executive Director of Homes, said: “This will make a huge difference for families in Gloucestershire and the Forest of Dean who have been affected by the cost-of-living crisis and are struggling to heat their homes.
“It will help us deliver on our promise to do everything we can to make sure that our homes are modern, warm, safe and affordable for our tenants to live in.”
Sam Batt, Asset Investment Manager at Two Rivers Housing, said: “We are really pleased to be able to continue working with Stroud District Council, Gloucestershire City Homes and Cheltenham Borough Council to secure this funding.
“Over the last few years, we’ve been investing in our homes to make them warmer and more energy efficient and help reduce energy bills for our tenants. The grant means we can continue to invest in our homes and make them warmer and more affordable to live in for even more of our tenants.”
We manage more than 4,600 homes in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire and nearby Herefordshire. Since 2021, we have completed energy improvement work in 301 of our homes using grants from the SHDF and ECO4 programmes.
