Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund

WH:SHF Wave 3

The delivery window for WH:SHF Wave 3 will run to 30 September 2028. All grant funding for WH:SHF Wave 3 projects must be transferred to the grant recipient and spent by 31 March 2028, meaning projects can only use co-funding in the final 6 months of delivery.
WH:SHF Wave 3 is open to:

• local authorities
• combined authorities
• registered providers of social housing (including housing associations and arms-length management organisations (ALMOs) that are registered providers)
• registered charities that own social housing

All existing social housing as defined by the Housing and Regeneration

SHDF Wave 2.2

Allocation of up to £80 million of grant funding from April 2024, building on the allocations made under the previous Wave 2.1.

SHDF Wave 2.1

Allocated £778 million of government funding in March 2023. Wave 2.1 proposed energy performance improvements to around 90,000 social homes.

Open to:

• local authorities
• combined authorities
• registered providers of social housing (including housing associations and arms-length management organisations (ALMOs) that are registered providers)
• registered charities that own social housing

All eligible organisations could apply directly to Wave 2.1 either as single bidders or as the lead of a consortium.

The above organisations, along with ALMOs that are not registered providers, could apply as part of a consortium led by an organisation that is eligible to lead a bid.

All existing social housing as defined by the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008 (sections 68-70), below EPC band C, regardless of archetype, were eligible.

SHDF Wave 1

Successful projects were awarded funding late 2021- early 2022. The energy performance improvements in up to 20,000 social housing properties were undertaken, reducing bills and carbon emissions.

Registered providers of social housing (including private and local authority providers) could apply to Wave 1 of the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund (SHDF) to support the installation of energy performance measures in social homes in England. Up to £160 million was available.

The SHDF would upgrade a significant amount of social housing stock to an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating of C. Wave 1 projects would follow a worst first, fabric first, lowest regrets approach to improving the energy performance of social housing by 31 January 2023.

The fund objectives:

• deliver warm, energy-efficient homes
• reduce carbon emissions
• tackle fuel poverty
• support green jobs
• develop the retrofit sector
• improve the comfort, health and well-being of social housing tenants

The SHDF Demonstrator

Launched in October 2020, £61 million in funding was awarded to 16 local authorities for 18 projects.

The SHDF Demonstrator project was an initial investment to learn lessons and catalyse innovation in retrofitting for the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund, for which the manifesto committed £3.8 billion of new funding in 2019.

This demonstrator saw over 2,100 homes improved to bring them up to Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) band C or higher.