Gary Carter
Maximising Retrofit Funding: The Importance of Managing Conflicts of Interest
Retrofit and getting funding is complex so it's likely at some point that you'll look for external help to navigate it and bring some...
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We’re decarbonisation funding consultants helping maximise grant and other funding you can claim for retrofit work. We identify, optimise, obtain and administer funding for you, dealing with all the complexity so you can focus on your core business.
Housing Associations & Local Authorities
Maximising Retrofit Funding For The Social Housing Sector.
Problems We Solve
We're vastly experienced in the sector and we know that the challenges with delivering retrofit are real. We've designed our services to directly solve problems related to affordability, funding complexity and constrained resources.
01
Funding shortfall
With retrofit set to cost the sector many millions of pounds, more funding is needed. The current funding pots don't go far enough leaving a funding deficit to begin with.
02
Complexity
The retrofit funding landscape is hugely complex and as a result, most are only scratching the surface of what could be achieved in terms of winning funding. There is money being left on the table today due to not planning and executing retrofit projects effectively and assessing the whole of the funding market.
03
Knowledge gaps
Our research shows that an expert service, bridging the gap between social housing and funding streams, would hugely benefit the sector. We're an expert service with an understanding of what’s possible, how to optimise it, how to manage funding criteria changes, and just as importantly, how not to go about funding and become ineligible and possibly subject to punitive terms.
04
Bandwidth
Our experience working with social housing clients tells us the sector is always under pressure and resource constrained. We recognise the challenges of delivering quality housing as well as additional pressure WHQS has put on the sector not to mention now having to deliver retrofit. Our research shows that many don't have bandwidth or resources to become funding experts as well.
How We Do It
Independent Funding Consultants
The problems highlighted above represent a significant challenge to the sector. Adding funding complexity to funding knowledge gaps and lack of bandwidth to deal with all this in detail creates a perfect storm where not all the available funding for social housing retrofit is being drawn down, which considering there's already a funding shortfall to begin with, is a problem.
We’re retrofit funding specialists, helping clients in the social housing sector to optimise and maximise the amount of public (and private) funding they can claim for retrofit.
We're not affiliated with building contractors and do not provide delivery and funding packages ourselves, therefore you have complete transparency between the funding available and your project install costs.
How We Do It
Accelerating Retrofit With Innovative Funding Solutions
Optimised Retrofit Grant Funding
Seeking and obtaining free available grant funding should be a non negotiable for housing associations grappling with affordability of retrofit.
Grant funding is admittedly complex though and navigating it sometimes won't get on your to-do-list. We've designed our services around grant funding so that we do the heavy lifting so you don't have to.
What's more, we've built our entire grant funding service around the concept of optimising the funding that's available. In other words, we establish for each of your properties how to leverage the funding that's available to the fullest extent possible meaning retrofit becomes more affordable and you reduce capital expenditure on projects.
Financing For Solar PV
Solar PV is a significant opportunity for the social housing sector to not just accelerate retrofit and improve SAP ratings but to reduce energy costs and mitigate against the risk of future energy price inflation.
Public sector grant funding for solar PV is a little restrictive for social housing but we've remained as passionate about PV and committed to it's wider adoption than ever.
Accordingly, we're bringing innovative funding options from the commercial sector into social housing that will help accelerate wider PV adoption and deliver all it's associated benefits more widely into the sector, all whilst helping to limit the amount of required capital investment in projects.
What We Do
Services For Social Housing
We're here to help you strategise, plan, find, optimise, secure, deliver and administer retrofit funding for your projects with the goal of delivering the maximum amount of grant funding possible to your retrofit projects.
We have deep experience in social housing and expertise in funding retrofit projects. We find the very best value funding solution for your projects from grant funding sources and innovative funding mechanisms created by Optify.
What We Do
Multiple Ways To Fund Retrofit For Optimal Results
With access to green financing, mechanisms to provide fully funded battery and solar PV schemes as well as grant funding that's available to social housing, we have several ways to help make retrofit more affordable and minimise capital expenditure on projects. We’re completely funder agnostic; we’re not affiliated with any specific utility company or funder so when we advise you on retrofit funding and find funding for you, you'll have access to the whole funding market and we're therefore able to achieve best value for you.
We assess your properties (or project) by doing a multi dimensional funding optimisation appraisal to assess your specific funding requirements and identify the best/ optimal funding package available for your requirements with the safety of additionality non-compliance already addressed whilst ensuring adherence to PAS and TrustMark and specific funding criteria.
We will also soon be launching innovative funding options not seen before, read about this here. Our clients will be able to claim this additional funding on top of grant money that can currently be claimed, making more contribution towards the cost of your retrofit obligations.
Content From Our Blog For Housing Associations
Benefits
We've proudly built our services to address challenges in the market in order to make a telling contribution to retrofit progress. Scroll down to read how this affects you.
There are many important points to consider regarding retrofit funding which have all been built into our offering to you. Critically:
Funding is not retrospective. Not getting your funding package correct at the start can often result in becoming ineligible for certain funding. Funding is very rarely retrospective so it is imperative that funding packages and structures are considered and clearly established prior to starting work. Engaging with us right at the start of project planning will help deliver better results.
Our expertise, knowledge and funder relationships afford our customers the opportunity to both blend and optimise their funding when working with us.
We enable funding and work delivery aggregation. This separation of funding from work delivery is very important in order to:
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Remove the risk of lack of transparency between chargeable work costs and funded work costs
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Ensure that you have control over the funding and how and when it’s delivered into your supply chain/ contractor. This is a vital part of any successful construction related project
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Avoid conflicts of interest where a contractor supply chain may otherwise have opportunity to focus on maximising their funding profit rather than quality of delivery
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Allow all parties to focus on their value enhancing input, i.e. contractors focus on work delivery whilst funders focus on funding
01
Maximising retrofit funding for you
We structure retrofit projects so each benefits from as many sources of funding that scheme rules allow. This can only be achieved with our unique whole of market approach which considers all funding sources, individual property requirements and structures projects so that the risk of becoming ineligible for certain funding streams is avoided.
02
Get more retrofit done, sooner
We make obtaining retrofit funding more straightforward and pain free for clients, making it quicker and more efficient to get funding requests through the process, speeding up retrofit projects, getting more done quicker and enabling funding to go further.
03
A specialist partner acting in your interests
We act on your behalf so you don’t need to recruit or develop skills or knowledge of the funding process or hire a specialist team. We provide the bandwidth to assess all funding options on a property by property basis so you don’t have to. We’ll administer the application, act as liaison between funder and client, ensure all conditions for funding are met and deal with getting funds to clients when work is done, providing a scenario where there is no reason for a client not to optimise the funding they can get.
04
Delivering more social value to contract holders
By accelerating and doing more retrofit will help enhance benefits to contract holders such as reduced energy consumption, warmer homes and fuel poverty gap reduction.
05
Compliance and risk management built in
We're abreast of all latest developments in retrofit funding so you never fall foul of changes to eligibility rules which can affect funding settlements. We also manage additionality checks for clients, ensuring that carbon saving claims are not duplicated and possible punitive clauses applied.
06
Innovative new funding mechanisms to minimise capital expenditure on projects
With our innovative new funding mechanisms focused on minimising capital expenditure on projects, our clients will have access to funding sources that others won’t.
Useful Resources
EPISODE 01
Retrofit Funding Best Practice For Social Housing
Join Nathan Gould and Gary Carter in the very first of our Ten Minute Talks, a series of short on demand seminars about topics of interest in the world of retrofit and decarbonisation funding. In this first episode, we go through what a best practice process looks like for retrofit funding for the social housing sector and things to look out for and make sure you get right if you're embarking on a retrofit project.
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