The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson has announced a major funding boost to help improve affordable homes in poor condition and support energy-saving works to thousands of homes across London.
Some of the capital’s council estates are in need of urgent repair to improve the homes and lives of thousands of residents living in non-decent properties.
To address this, the Mayor has secured £145m of Government ‘Decent Homes Funding’ that will be distributed to London boroughs to bring homes back to good standards. In addition to this, over 175,000 homes will benefit from carbon-reducing renovations that could save residents up to £180 annually on energy bills.
The Mayor’s Office has contracted Capita to a £3m contract to support the delivery of energy-saving improvements worth at least £50 million, to homes by 2017.
The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson said: “This vital Decent Homes investment will enable us to help boroughs transform some of the poorest quality council estates and social housing in need of urgent repair.
“Many families are also rightly concerned at the cost of their energy bills so I’m delighted to be able to put in place a programme of energy-saving measures for homes across the capital. This will result in renovations that lower energy bills for thousands of residents.”
Retrofitting is vital in reducing CO2 emissions with 36 per cent of London’s CO2 emissions produced by housing.
The Mayor’s Office hope to save 93,000 annual tonnes of carbon with the three year retrofit programme, and have a new delivery team in place thanks to funding by the European Local Energy Assistance Fund.
Properties will be given a range of cost effective measures including boiler upgrades, insulation and heating upgrades.
Support is expected to initially focus on large landlords, predominantly stock-owning London boroughs and housing associations but the team will also be aiming to support environmental retrofit activity on a much wider scale.
From today boroughs are invited to bid for Decent Homes Funding, the new £145 million fund is in addition to the £821 million share of the Decent Homes programme, agreed with the government and committed to 14 boroughs during 2011-15 to help transform social housing in the worst conditions.
As part of the bidding process each borough will be required to review the potential for additional building of homes on their estates. This funding will put each eligible borough landlord in a position to deal with the maintenance and repair of their stock independently from 2016/17.
Bidding closes 19th September 2014 with announcements of successful borough landlords in early November 2014.
Notes to editors
1, The Decent Homes programme was a ten year initiative introduced to improve the condition of council homes. Not all councils were able to meet the target to bring their homes up to the Decent Homes standard by the end of 2010. The Government has committed to provide London with backlog funding for those boroughs that have not been able to meet the 2010 target after the 2011-15 programme. Following the 2013 Spending Review additional funds were announced for 2015/16 for eligible councils and Arms Length Management Organisations in order to tackle the Decent Homes backlog.
2, Retrofit programme (called RE: NEW) – 90 per cent of funding for the RE:NEW programme team (£2,513,700) is being provided by the European Investment Bank European Local Energy Assistance facility under the CIP-Intelligent Energy Europe Programme. This is being matched by a 10 per cent contribution by the GLA of €335,160 (£279,300). The team will provide a free programme development service including scoping, business case development, technical, funding and procurement support. In addition they will provide a platform for knowledge sharing across London and work to provide innovative solutions to continuously increase the scope, scale and speed of retrofit delivery in London.The team is in place and available to provide support until July 2017. For more information on RE:NEW visit http://www.london.gov.uk/priorities/environment/tackling-climate-change/...)