Motions to Councils

Decarbonising our homes

Council recognises the urgent need to decarbonise heating and power in homes.

Shropshire Climate Action Partnership estimates 20,000 homes per year need to be made zero carbon ready, whilst Friends of the Earth suggest 9,000 homes need insulation upgrades and 5,500 need fossil-fuel free heating systems annually. The collapse of the Green Homes Grant and the failure of the government so far to provide long term dependable finance & market shaping for this purpose make this task more challenging & more urgent. 

Council further recognises the ‘green recovery’ opportunity presented by the need to decarbonise our homes. LGA Inform estimates there could be 1700 jobs in Shropshire by 2030 in low carbon heating and energy efficiency work. 

We note that Shropshire Council has improved the SAP rating for its own on-grid stock to above that for the country as a whole, which given the age of the stock is a credible achievement, but much more remains to be done.

We welcome the council’s initiatives to bring together partners to develop countywide retrofit work, and call on Cabinet to publish a retrofit strategy for the county in early 2022. 

We recognise that, to begin with, establishing the skills and firms to retrofit our homes will rely on developments in the social housing sector. We therefore call on the portfolio holder, Asset Assurance Board and Star Housing Board to consult tenants and seek their approval to design and cost a programme of work that would decarbonise the council's housing stock by 2030. We recommend that all options be considered in the implementation of this programme including partnerships with neighbouring authorities, social housing providers & innovative social & private sector enterprises. 

We recognise that the cost of this investment in our future may exceed the resources of the HRA so we also call on the DCLG to provide the funding necessary to implement this scheme as recommended by the recent Environmental Audit Committee report and we ask the County’s MP to support this request.

This motion was submitted by Councillor Julian Dean and is supported by the Green Group.

Link to Shropshire Council website: https://shropshire.gov.uk/committee-services/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=125&MID=4260#AI17009

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