Why we need to build a WM campaign on home retrofit

* Why we need to build a WM campaign on home retrofit

There are 1.1 million homes in the West Midlands. The large majority need retrofitting. The priority is social housing. I can’t find data for the WM but in the 3 cities - Birmingham Coventry and Wolverhampton - there are 165,00 social housing out of 700,000 homes - about 24%.

The large majority of retrofit in the West Midlands are the responsibility of each of the 7 local authorities, not the WMCA. There are two main sources of funding for retrofit: Government grants to householders and Government funding to local government to attract private investors. 

The grants for householders aren’t big enough, there aren’t enough of them, and there is no effective community publicity campaign explaining retrofit and how to get funding. The current grant awards have ceased but new grants will be available from April 2023. The maximum grant will probably be £15,000 per home, but a householder contribution will be required. The Government hasn’t announced how many grants will be made available.

So far there is no investment by the private sector in large-scale retrofit projects because they don’t see enough profit in it. The most ambitious plan in the WM to attract retrofit investment is the new joint ‘3 Cities’ program, but this requires large-scale pump-priming funding by Government to persuade the market to invest. 

Some suggestions for a unified public retrofit campaign across the WM

•    Demand much more funding urgently from Government for grants and for investment pump-priming.
•    Call on councillors and MPs for active support, especially Labour ones.
•    Produce a common WM campaign leaflet but tailored for each local authority area.
•    Hold public meetings in conjunction with local figures, community organisations etc in as many local areas as possible to explain retrofit and build public support for far more Government funding.
•    Take this campaign into the trade unions in the WM.