Nottingham City Homes (NCH) has become the first housing organisation in the UK to pilot a new energy efficiency initiative towards upgrading older housing.

The Energiesprong approach, pioneered in the Netherlands, upgrades a home with new outside walls and windows, a solar roof, and a state of the art heating system, all in a matter of days.

Part of the innovation is how the works are funded; The household pays an 'Energy plan', and the landlord (NCH) receives an on-going income to fund similar works to more homes.

NCN has now signed the first UK contract with Melius Homes to retrofit 10 homes in Sneinton as part of a pilot. In addition, the deal contains an option to extend the approach to a further 400 properties.

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Works will be carried out during this year, with the roll-out programme scheduled to commence early 2018.

Nottingham City Homes Chief Executive, Nick Murphy, said: "While we're delighted to be part of a UK-first pilot programme, it's more important to us that we're creating warmer, more energy efficient homes, which are cheaper to run for residents.

"The Greener HousiNG programme is dedicated to finding the most efficient and reliable solutions, to help us future proof our housing stock and tackle issues such as fuel poverty. As an added bonus the improvements will greatly improve the look and feel of the area."

David Adams, Technical Director of Melius Homes, said: "We are delighted to have been chosen to work with Nottingham City Homes to deliver this ground-breaking contract.  They have shown great foresight in adopting such a radical new approach and we look forward to helping to make a real difference for the local community."

Cllr Jane Urquhart said: "We're very excited that Nottingham is at the forefront of this revolutionary approach, which can help tackle both fuel poverty and climate change.  Many of our residents live in fuel poverty so creating more energy efficient homes to reduce people's energy bills is a high priority for us."

(LM)