Our client secured £1.4m from the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund Wave 2.1 to make over a hundred of their homes warmer, cheaper to run, and less carbon-intensive. The funding was welcome for the social housing provider and the residents. However, what came with it was a programme of significant complexity, with multiple retrofit measures, 124 occupied properties, a fixed delivery window, and a reporting framework requiring evidence of what was installed in every home and what difference it made.
The housing provider needed one contractor to look after the programme. Rather than using a main contractor managing a chain of specialists they’d never met, they chose one team, responsible for everything, from the first resident letter to the final commissioning certificate.
That team was Carbon3.
How the programme ran
Before anyone set foot in a home, Carbon3’s in-house design team surveyed each of the 124 properties individually. Every house is different, with different wall construction, different existing heating systems, and different occupancy patterns. The measure package for each home was designed around what that specific building needed to reach EPC C as a minimum. We took this approach instead of a standard bundle rolled out across the estate, which is easier to do, but may not get the EPC results needed for every home. Find out more about what EPC C means for housing stock here.
Resident engagement was prioritised by Carbon3 from the start. We first sent letters explaining what was happening and why. These were followed by meetings where residents could ask questions before work began. Then appointment scheduling began, prioritising residents’ lives, not just the programme. When someone wasn’t in, Carbon3 rescheduled. When a resident had concerns about a particular measure in their home, Carbon3 addressed them directly. The client didn’t need to field those calls.
On site, Carbon3 coordinated every trade, including heat pump engineers, insulation teams, ventilation specialists, and electricians for the lighting and controls.
The sequencing of each stage mattered. Getting the order wrong, or leaving a measure incomplete while moving on to the next property, creates problems that are expensive to fix in occupied homes. Carbon3’s site managers held the programme together across all 124 properties.
What was installed, and why it works as a package
Five measures were installed across the programme, but not every home had every measure.
An 8kW air source heat pump replaced the older, inefficient heating system in each property. Cavity wall and loft insulation meant the heat those pumps generated stayed in the home.
DMEV controlled ventilation kept air quality healthy in homes that were now better sealed. Door cuts allowed the ventilation to work properly through the whole house.
LED lighting cut consumption from one of the most straightforward sources available. Heating controls gave residents the ability to manage their warmth without needing to understand the system underneath.
None of these measures performs as well in isolation as it does alongside the others. A heat pump in a poorly insulated home works harder and costs more to run. Insulation without ventilation creates moisture problems. The whole-house approach is what delivers real improvement in how a home feels and what it costs to live in.
Where some homes had existing insulation, LED lighting, or DMEV, Carbon3 checked the existing quality and removed and replaced where needed.
What residents have now
The homes that came out of this programme are vastly different from where they started. Residents who were relying on old heating systems that took hours to warm a room now have heating that responds, and costs less to run. Walls that used to let warmth out are holding it in. In homes where people were genuinely cold in winter, these features make a huge difference.
The retrofit process isn’t easy for residents. Having multiple trades work through your home over a period of weeks is not comfortable, and Carbon3’s resident engagement programme was built around that reality. Residents were told what was coming, when, and what it would involve. Nobody was surprised by something happening in their home that they hadn’t been prepared for.
What the housing provider had to manage
Our client only had to speak to one programme manager, with the whole in-house team managed through them. That meant they only had one set of updates on progress across all 124 homes, instead of conflicting information across subcontractors.
The Director of Development and Strategic Asset Management at the social housing provider described the SHF funding as a milestone step in the organisation’s sustainability journey, and said the programme would make a real difference to residents’ lives.
Carbon3 looked after all of it, so our client could focus on their residents.
If you need to decarbonise your stock, but don’t have the facilities to manage the programme, contact us today to find out how we can replicate this approach for you.
