Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund

The Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund Wave 3  is the new government’s name for what was known as the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund Wave 3. 

The fund provides money to social housing providers to insulate social homes, improve energy efficiency and upgrade heating systems. This offers housing associations financial support to retrofit social homes and tackle fuel poverty for residents, deliver carbon savings to progress toward net zero by 2050, and grow the retrofit sector.

Applications to the fund opened on 30 September 2024 and are open until 25 November 2024. Successful applications will be announced in early 2025 and organisations will have until 30 September 2028 to complete works.

The government has published guidance for applying and we recorded a webinar to assist housing associations through this process. There is also free support from Retrofit Information, Support and Expertise (RISE) – formerly known as the Social Housing Retrofit Accelerator – including application support, training and delivery guidance to help social housing providers and their supply chains across England plan and deliver successful domestic retrofit programmes.

There have been significant changes to the design of the fund and we are pleased to see many of the concerns raised by the NHF and our membership have been addressed.

The fund is more flexible than previous waves. The minimum of 100 houses needed in applications is removed for housing associations that manage fewer than 1,000 homes. The £7,500 average cost cap per home can be applied across a portfolio of properties. More flexibility is available for multi-tenure schemes and there is additional grant funding where heat pumps or heat networks are being installed. Additionally, there are also longer delivery windows compared to previous iterations of the scheme.

The government has not yet confirmed the total funding allocation. At the Autumn Budget, the government announced an initial £3.4bn for the Warm Homes Plan, including £1.8bn for fuel poverty schemes, likely including the Warm Homes Fund: Social Housing Fund. However, the full extent of the scheme’s funding will be decided as part of the Spending Review in 2025 and we are seeking significantly more grant funding for home decarbonisation as part of that process.

Greater Manchester Combined Authority and West Midlands Combined Authority areas

For members in the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) and West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) areas, funding will be devolved to the Combined Authorities. Therefore, for projects split across these areas and elsewhere in the country, funding must be sought from the appropriate scheme for each project. However, requests for a single funding source will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Please contact WMCA or GMCA directly with enquiries.

Why is funding needed?

The aims and outputs of this fund align strongly with our long-term strategic asks for retrofit and decarbonisation.

For the UK to meet the target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050, all social housing must be decarbonised. NHF research published in 2021 found that on top of existing investment plans, the additional cost of decarbonising housing association homes would be £36bn. This is at a time when social housing providers are facing other essential costs to meet new regulatory measures to ensure homes are safe and high quality.

While housing associations have made great progress in improving energy efficiency, about 715,000 homes still need work to bring them up to EPC C, and we need to double the current pace of retrofits to achieve this by 2030. The Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund will help housing associations to meet the requirements of forthcoming Minimum Energy Efficiency Standard regulations (due to be consulted on by the end of 2024).

As well as improving insulation, decarbonisation means installing clean heat sources for homes. According to the Climate Change Committee, 10% of UK homes will need to have heat pumps installed by 2028. At present, just 1.4% of housing association homes are heated by heat pumps but the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund provides additional grant funding for heat pump installations, which will help housing associations install more of them at a greater pace.

Who to speak to

Rory Hughes, Policy Officer

Rory.Hughes@housing.org.uk

Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund

Greater Manchester Combined Authority and West Midlands Combined Authority areas

Why is funding needed?

Who to speak to

Rory Hughes, Policy Officer

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