Plus Dane launches £10m retrofit programme

The housing association is set to start work on upgrades this autumn in an effort to make its existing homes more energy efficient.

Plus Dane Housing is working in partnership with Mayor Steve Rotheram and Liverpool City Region Combined Authority to invest around £10m into its retrofit programme.

Plus Dane will invest £5m of its own funds into the programme, as well as the £4.5m that the company has received from LCRCA. The combined authority secured this funding from the second wave of the government’s Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund in March.

Works will be carried out over the next two years to investigate a range of energy-saving solutions and retrofit a number of Plus Dane’s 18,000 properties across Merseyside and Cheshire.

Barry Callow, director of repairs at Plus Dane, said: “Funding from the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund is really making a difference to what we can achieve when looking to retrofit our homes, and we are grateful to the combined authority for helping us to do more with our money.

“Making our homes more energy efficient is a positive thing, not just as part of our obligation to meet net zero targets in the sector, but also for our customers who should see that they don’t need to use as much energy to keep their homes warm.”

This is not the first time that Plus Dane and LCRCA have worked together.

Last February, the combined authority awarded the housing association £1m from the first wave of its Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund allocation to oversee energy improvements to 100 homes.

These programmes form part of Rotheram’s plans to help 10,000 low-income homes to save money on their energy bills.