Background
As we move closer towards our net zero future, the pressure builds to accelerate progress, not least on the housing sector to push retrofit onward. There are many challenges with getting it done though with affordability, bandwidth issues and scarcity of resources all making life hard for those on the coal face.
Getting Retrofit Done
The benefits of retrofitting our housing stock are undisputed but the total bill for UK retrofit will be in the hundreds of billions of pounds. We’ve all been planning for getting stuck in to the task at hand for some time now and there have been pockets of progress but as new money comes forward in the guise of the latest wave of the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund in England and ORP in Wales we will see more progress.
Despite this money being available, many in the sector are already actively looking at where they get more money from to be able to keep pace with the rate at which retrofit needs to be done.
Getting that extra money is easier said than done though with huge levels of complexity to navigate. As well as this, it’s our view that going after additional funding without a carefully thought out strategy will often result in less funding being found than could have been with a laser focus. It’s for this reason that we’ve devised the concept of optimising retrofit funding.
A Response To The Challenge: Optimising Retrofit Funding
Optimising retrofit funding involves consideration of a number of factors that all contribute to whether you arrive at the right answer, which has to be finding the maximum amount of money possible.
Putting together an optimal funding package for a property, isn’t just about the biggest pot of money though. A big pot of money is no good if something about the project causes it to not be eligible.
Neither is it any good if the objectives of the scheme aren’t aligned with your work delivery objectives.
The problem of what to do next if this happens has been resulting in housing providers either drawing a blank in terms of getting funding or ending up with some kind of outcome they’re not pleased with in terms of what measures get implemented and how, due to a sub optimal funding outcome.
This is quite likely to happen where there is only one funding option on the table, giving the sense to housing providers that it’s that option or nothing.
This is where Optify does things differently; our funding optimisation methodology assesses properties individually to identify the best possible funding route and outcome, i.e. the most money possible, for each individual property, based on the characteristics of the property, the occupants, the energy efficiency status of the property and measures it may need to improve it and then throws into the mix your target energy pathways and work delivery plans.
This could all result in two properties next door to each other being funded from different sources but both achieving the most amount of money they could possibly have achieved.
How Social Housing Providers Are Now Optimising Retrofit Funding
Our funding optimisation services deliver not just optimised funding but also a done for you process where funding application, administration, compliance, risk management and governance is all taken care of, meaning this major headache is removed. Put simply, we’ve devised solutions to the key problems preventing mass uptake of retrofit funding and wrapped them all up into our optimisation service.
If funding and executing retrofit is currently a headache for you, get in touch to see how we could help.