Our Story

The impact that housing has on the Climate Emergency through emissions from our homes is both a priority for the LCR, and as a nation. On average, the city region’s housing stock contributes 30% of our total carbon emissions. Coupled with the fact that 14% of the region is in fuel poverty, the need for a fair and greener future has never been higher.

The Liverpool City Region Combined Authority is committed to addressing long-standing fuel poverty challenges and ensuring homes are warm and healthy, as well as supporting ambitions towards a Net Zero carbon city region. Working with the Local Energy North West Bug, the Local Authority Delivery Scheme has already made a start, targeting retrofit measures in the city region’s most deprived neighbourhoods.

However we still have a lot of work to do; we estimate that around 65% of our homes are EPC Band D or worse, and as a third of our emissions come from our homes, energy efficiency improvements and the decarbonisation of our housing stock are essential aspects in mitigating the impacts of climate change.

We believe that addressing challenges in neighbourhoods where energy efficiency isn’t up to standard, we can then tackle the pressing issues of fuel poverty, deprivation, and poor health.

The Challenge

As the scheme targets those in our most deprived neighbourhoods, it was important to make sure this scheme was in the right hands at every stage. We worked via the Local Energy North West Hub and with Prodcure Plus – an organisation specialising in construction frameworks – to establish a framework of assessors and installers to meet our LAD2 and future retrofit needs.

This allowed us to make sure we procured the correct delivery partner, and led to appointing Next Energy to lead the generation and design on properties and to carry out the assessment and installation. Equally, we knew it was vital to engage with local authorities to ensure the success of these schemes. Effective communication about the properties and needs of local authorities’ residents allowed funding to be allocated most effectively.

By speaking with the local authorities and identifying properties most suitable for retrofit, it allowed us to identify the fastest route to ensuring that the funding made a transformative impact on the energy efficiency of the homes.

Without working in this collaborative way, we wouldn’t of been able to deliver the project at pace and up to the required standards for the funding, and most importantly, our residents.

Our Solution

 Our aim to is reach our target of 1,120 homes retrofitted across the LCR through the £11.38 million investment, and to improve the energy efficiency of as many of these homes as possible up to an EPC Banc C or above. This is done through a fabric first approach, such as insulation, homes in EPC bands D-G can be helped to Band C, with work done to ensure future measures can be implemented easily.

Our collaborative approach to the project has allowed us to establish effective lines of communication with funding and supply partners, and put us in good stead for future funding bids.

As a result, we were selected to lead on the North West’s Green Home Grant Local Authority Programme and will receive £52 million to neighbouring local authorities across the North West to improve the energy performance of 7,000 homes. The £52 million will be split across the five North West regions, based on population, fuel poverty and the energy performance of their housing stock.

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