Salix Housing Journey Underway

Thursday, 21 September 2023

In March 2023, the government announced £1.4 billion through the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund (SHDF) and Home Upgrade Grant (HUG) to go to local authorities, providers of social housing, and charities, to upgrade homes and off-grid households with energy efficiency measures.

The schemes fund improvements to vulnerable households and off-gas grid homes with an EPC rating of C or below and could save tenants between £220 and £400 a year on energy bills. The government says these schemes could also support around 20,000 jobs in the construction and home retrofit sectors, with around 90,000 homes expected to be upgraded.

The programmes form part of the government’s commitment to reduce overall UK energy demand by 15% by 2030, as well as supporting the ambition for the UK to move towards greater energy independence.

We became the Delivery Agent (DA) to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero’s (DESNZ) Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund 2.1 (SHDF) and Home Upgrade Grant 2 (HUG2) in October 2022 ahead of the grant funding schemes being announced.

As DA, our role is to oversee and provide continuous assurance to DESNZ on the successful delivery of these schemes whilst facilitating and enabling continuous improvements through our intelligent client function.

A new arm of Salix Finance, the housing function brings a wealth of public and private sector experience across a range of disciplines and expands our geographic footprint into the North of England. We will provide assurance to DESNZ that some of the poorest quality homes across the UK are receiving the measures needed to improve the quality of life for their residents whilst reducing the overall carbon footprint within the social housing sector.

To that end, we appointed a Delivery Partner (DP), a consortium led by PwC that includes Turner & Townsend and Arup. They are responsible for managing the schemes daily and help us bring the improvement projects to life.

Since forming the partnership, we have been working alongside DESNZ and the DP to set up processes and systems throughout a mobilisation phase. The steps we have put in place will support the proactive delivery of the funding schemes, detect and reduce fraud, as well as bring added value through our learning community approach.

This week (w/c 18th September 2023), we moved into business-as-usual delivery.  That means operational management, oversight and delivery of the programmes have been handed over to Salix and our Delivery Partner (DP) to deliver.

Our Delivery Partner will now manage the interactions and relationships with councils and Housing Associations across England and support them to ensure the schemes are delivered as they should be over the next two years.

Collectively, it’s a significant achievement made possible through the hard work and dedication of the new housing team and the excellent working relationships we have forged with both the Department and our DP.