£1.9m funding boost to reduce carbon footprint

Trident Group, working in partnership with Wychavon District Council, has secured £1.9 million from the Government’s Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund (SHDF) Demonstrator as part of an overall bid.

The Government scheme supports the decarbonisation of social housing and aims to boost green jobs as part of their COVID-19 Economic Recovery Plan. This £62m programme will see the upgrade of over 2,300 social homes across the country, to make them more energy efficient and as well as helping meet the country’s net zero emissions target.

The SHDF Demonstrator will also further support up to 3,200 jobs in the green energy sector.

Trident Group will be one of 19 projects in the country looking at what carbon reduction measures can be undertaken on current housing stock. With additional funding by the Group there will be an overall investment of £2.3 million into the project across 73 of our Trident homes.

Trident Group will be undertaking a whole house retrofit approach which will include; the provision of external wall insulation; new high-performance windows and doors; mechanical ventilation; installation of air source heat pumps; and provision of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems. These measures will be installed over the coming year.

Gareth Price, the Group’s Executive Lead for Technical Services, said: “We are delighted that our residents will be benefiting from this project funding. Improving energy efficiency, potentially saving our residents money on their fuel bills and reducing carbon emissions across our homes is very important to us. We will be looking to drive real innovation in response to the challenges that present themselves when retrofitting sustainable technologies to our homes. We look forward to learning lessons from the Demonstrator Project, so that our other residents can also benefit in the future.”

The SHDF Demonstrator project is an initial investment to learn lessons and catalyse innovation in retrofitting for the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund. The results will be carefully monitored following installation and shared across the sector to see what lessons can be learnt and to measure successes prior to more properties receiving similar measures.