Birmingham is to receive £2.6m from the £12m funding pot to kick start the Green Deal in cities throughout the UK.
The figures, ranging from £600,000 to £2.6M, were awarded to seven regional cities – Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle Nottingham and Sheffield. The award followed a recent call-out to regional governments from DECC to propose early stage Green Deal pilot projects that might benefit from additional central government funding.
Birmingham is to use its fund to upgrade 10 public buildings and 120 households and create “demonstrator homes” to kick-start public interest, as well as an industrial estate retrofit and a district energy installation.
Bristol’s £2M of funding will, from November, deliver energy efficiency measures to 600 households across the city. At least 100 households on low incomes will get fully subsidised retrofits through the Energy Company Obligation.
Newcastle’s initiative Warm Up North, which is looking to increase the energy efficiency of homes across Newcastle, Darlington, Durham, Northumberland and South Tyneside, received £1.2m in funding to retrofit seven schemes in the region, totalling 127 homes – 15 of which will involve the retrofit of mixed-tenure Victorian terraces in the city centre, with works completing in March 2013.
Warm Up North is currently in discussion with eight Green Deal providers, one potentially Sunderland-based Housing Association Gentoo for the £200M framework, which owns 30,000 homes in the area and which is in the process of gaining Green Deal accreditation.
