- Two Rivers Housing secured £4.56m in funding from the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund.
- Retrofitting work will improve the energy efficiency of homes rated below EPC Band C.
- The work will help make its homes warmer and reduce energy bills for families in Gloucestershire.
Two Rivers Housing has secured £4.56m from the government’s Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund to help improve the energy efficiency of hundreds of its homes in the Forest of Dean and across Gloucestershire.
Over the next three years, the Gloucestershire-based housing association will use the grant to partially fund upgrades to more than 750 of its homes. The upgrades will include energy saving fittings such as solar panels, loft insulation and improved ventilation systems to homes that have low energy ratings.
Investing in tenants’ homes is a key part of the organisation’s 2024-2027 corporate strategy – ‘Delivering #Twogether’. It forms part of its promise to provide, warm, safe, sustainable homes and help combat fuel poverty in the area.
As part of that commitment, it has already completed energy improvement work in around 300 of its homes in Gloucestershire, including a pilot project to fully retrofit 16 homes in the Gloucestershire village of Blakeney in 2022.
The housing association has also received grants from previous waves of the Social Housing Fund, (formerly called the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund (SHDF)), as well as the government’s ECO4 scheme to help fund this work. This funding has helped Two Rivers Housing install air-source heat pumps in 225 of its tenants’ homes over the past two years.
The government’s Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund is allocated to local authorities and housing associations for work to improve the energy performance of homes currently rated below EPC Band C. Two Rivers Housing applied for grant funding from Wave 3 of the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund in a joint bid with Stroud District Council, Gloucestershire City Homes and Cheltenham Borough Council. More than £15.5m has been allocated to the four organisations in the latest wave of funding to improve the energy efficiency of homes across the region.
Speaking about the £4.56m awarded to Two Rivers Housing, Jonny Jones, Executive Director of Homes, said:
“This will make a huge difference for families in Gloucestershire and the Forest of Dean who have been affected by the cost-of-living crisis and are struggling to heat their homes.
“It will help us deliver on our promise to do everything we can to make sure that our homes are modern, warm, safe and affordable for our tenants to live in.”
Sam Batt, Asset Investment Manager at Two Rivers Housing, said:
“We are really pleased to be able to continue working with Stroud District Council, Gloucestershire City Homes and Cheltenham Borough Council to secure this funding.
“Over the last few years, we’ve been investing in our homes to make them warmer and more energy efficient and help reduce energy bills for our tenants. The grant means we can continue to invest in our homes and make them warmer and more affordable to live in for even more of our tenants.”
Two Rivers Housing manages more than 4,600 homes in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire and nearby Herefordshire. Since 2021, it has completed energy improvement work in 301 of its homes using grants from the SHDF and ECO4 programmes.