Innovative programme design and capacity building for area-based retrofit
All local authorities need to find ways to reduce carbon emissions from homes of all tenures, including more affluent private sector households, to achieve local and national net zero ambitions.
However, there are currently no incentives or support systems in place to encourage able to pay households to act.
Leeds City Council has been working with the private sector, via the Prime Minister’s Business Council, since late 2022 to develop a blueprint to tackle this problem. This is an innovative area-based approach, aiming to design and create a smooth customer journey and new incentives or financial products, largely financed by the private sector, to remove barriers to entry.
The MCS Charitable Fund will help to build capacity within Leeds to support this developing framework, alongside other funding partners. We aim to create sufficient momentum and certainty to allow contractors to mobilise without the need for works to be underpinned by government grants or a high proportion of social housing, then to roll this model out to other communities within Leeds, West Yorkshire and nationally.