Home owners and local tradespeople are set to benefit from new funding to make homes in the region more energy efficient.
Metro Mayor Dan Norris has welcomed a £115,360 cash boost awarded to the Centre for Sustainable Energy following a successful bid coordinated by the West of England Combined Authority which he leads.
Fifty local tradespeople will be trained in skills needed to make homes environmentally fit for the future including solid wall insulation techniques. Residents will also benefit from either free or subsidised retrofit assessments to help them change their homes to make them more energy efficient.
Mayor Norris said: “We’ve got a lot of beautiful Edwardian, Victorian and other older homes in the West of England but they need a helping hand to make them warmer, healthier, cheaper and greener. This investment brings the high skilled green jobs we need, will help reduce emissions and energy bills. This is great news.”
Simon Roberts OBE, Chief Executive of the Centre for Sustainable Energy, welcomed the new funding: “This funding will support a really important next step in making it more straightforward and affordable to upgrade our homes to achieve net zero carbon emissions. That needs more tradespeople trained in the techniques and skills to do high quality installations and decent technical advice to households to help them make decent choices.”
There are over 110,000 homes across the region which can benefit from retrofitting.
Changes to homes in the region will play an important part in making sure the West of England reaches its ambitious net zero targets by 2030.
The funding comes from the government’s UK Community Renewal Fund (UKCRF). The West of England Combined Authority collated the bids into this Government fund, as lead authority for the West of England. This includes the Bath & North East Somerset, Bristol and South Gloucestershire area.
