BCC has new funding for retrofit of social homes, but at this rate of annual funding it will take till 2071

Birmingham Council’s ‘Bolder Greener Bulletin’ for March has recently been published by Ellie Horwich-Smith, the Assistant Director responsible for the Route to Zero climate emergency strategy. It announced that the Council had got Government funding of £24.8million to decarbonise social housing in Birmingham. “With this funding, over the next two years, a number of houses and flats will be retrofitted with various measures like solar panels, external wall insulation, cavity wall insultation, ventilation, loft insulation and double glazing.”

However, the Bulletin adds that “Whilst this achievement marks a major step on our just transition to net zero, we are still clear that there is much more to be done and that further support is needed to carry out more of these schemes on a larger scale.”

How much more does need to be done? We know that BCC’s stock of social homes is about 60,000 – the largest in England. The cost of retrofitting varies and we don’t know the average cost per home that the Council is budgeting for, but if we say a relatively modest £10,000 each on average then the funding would cover 1,240 homes each year.

So far the retrofit of Birmingham’s social housing has barely begun. If the funding continued at the same rate – £24.8million every 2 years – then it would take 48 years to complete the retrofit of Birmingham’s social homes – till 2071.

But the Council’s aim is net zero by 2031. That would require retrofitting not 1,240 homes a year but 6,666 a year on average. At an average of £10,000 each that’s a total of over £66million funding needed each year for the next 9 years.

And that is just for social housing, which is only 14% of Birmingham’s homes. That leaves 86% in private ownership, about 375,000, the majority of which also need retrofitting. How much individual grant funding will the Government make available for them in future –  Conservative or Labour?

Of course, the aim of the Council, with its 3 Cities project with Coventry and Wolverhampton, and the aim of the WMCA, is to attract large-scale private investment in home retrofit. So far this hasn’t delivered, but the hope is that the new measures announced for the WMCA in the Budget, including Investment Zones and business rates retention, will enable the Combined Authority to offer financial incentives for investors in retrofit. Whether that will work at sufficient scale remain to be seen.