Collective approach to project challenges supports delivery success
A multi-member consortium in the North West of England has successfully upgraded more than 900 homes
Hundreds of families living in social housing across Cumbria are now benefitting from warmer homes and lower energy bills thanks to an ambitious energy efficiency project.
Led by Westmorland and Furness Council, the project saw upgrades to 993 homes owned and managed by South Lakes Housing, Lune Valley Rural Housing Association, Progress Housing Group, Eden Housing Association and Westfield Housing Association.
Council housing retrofit manager Patrick Jenner said: “Westmorland and Furness Council took on the lead role within the consortium and almost acted as a conduit to enable each consortium partner to participate in the programme.”
Watch our short video with Patrick, who speaks about how this consortium model has enabled success and the benefits of work like this for residents across the region.
On the main motivations behind this work, Patrick said: “so that we can look at improving homes and householders and people’s lives in Cumbria in the long term.”
This project was enabled thanks to more than £5 million in funding through the government’s Social Housing decarbonisation Fund Wave 2.1.
Funding for this scheme is delivered on behalf of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and assured by our teams here at Salix.
The open dialogue between consortium members, who would meet to prevent, discuss and overcome challenges, has also been cited as a key enabler for project success.
Patrick added: “One of the biggest successes, I think, has been the way that consortium partners have worked together to support each other.
“It’s been fantastic to share that knowledge, particularly around those more complex projects and flag to other consortium partners where the barriers have been, things to look out for when they’re looking to treat their own housing stock.”
Paul Smith, head of property services for South Lakes Housing, said: “What has been good is when you go into these meetings with all the other organisations, they’ve all got the same issues as us and we can talk about those issues and we can talk about the supply chain, we can talk about how contractors are doing and it’s great to share that and have that benchmarking across each of us.”
Matt Lyons, asset manager at Eden Housing Association, said: “Although there was only 70 properties included, we were able to take lots of learning from those 70 properties and transfer that to a whole host of other measures on other properties across our portfolio as well.”
Team Salix was on site in Cumbria to speak with council stakeholders and residents and hear about the positive outcomes seen from the scheme.
Key changes for residents largely focused on warmer homes and lower energy bills.
Our assistant director for housing Kevin Smallwood said: “We’ve been in Cumbria to hear about how funded schemes not only contribute to the national net zero target, but are impacting local areas and having a positive impact on residents by creating warmer homes, healthier homes and more cost-efficient homes, which means savings to their fuel bills.”
Watch our short video below to hear more from Kevin.
With delivery on site at all 993 homes now complete, consortium members are looking ahead to further energy efficiency and retrofit works at benefit to their residents.
