Work is almost complete on making hundreds of Cornwall Council-owned homes more energy-efficient helping to reduce tenants' energy bills.

Under the government's £4m Getting Building Fund programme the council and Cornwall Housing have recently installed solar panels to 600 homes in Cornwall, saving households an average £495 on their energy bills over the last year.

Carbon emissions reductions for the homes in Bodmin, Liskeard, Bude, Wadebridge and Saltash are exceeding targets as part of the council’s programme to help Cornwall become carbon neutral.

The work has been jointly funded by the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) with council match-funding and additional funds from an Energy Company Obligation scheme.

A further 49 homes are undergoing a series of whole house retrofits including external wall and loft insulation, solar panels and air source heat pumps under the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund Demonstrator funded by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).

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Work on these homes in Falmouth and Chacewater is due to finish this autumn and will reduce the buildings’ heat loss as well as cut down on emissions and energy bills.

The work has been achieved through a partnership with OVO Energy Solutions, part of energy supplier OVO.

Since 2020 the council has also been part of a Whole House Retrofit Innovation national pilot project funded by BEIS to install energy-saving measures to 83 homes in Cornwall.

Due to supply chain pressures caused by the pandemic as well as changes in funding requirements and the scale of the project this work will now not go ahead.

Similar issues have affected 42 homes that were due to undergo whole house retrofitting under the Getting Building Fund and 26 properties under the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund.

Councillor Olly Monk, Cornwall’s portfolio holder for housing, said: "We are committed to improving energy efficiency and reducing the carbon emissions of our homes and have already installed energy-saving improvements to more than 600 properties in Cornwall.  The first homes in Cornwall to undergo a series of whole house retrofit improvements to make them warmer, greener and cost less to run are also nearing completion.

"The past two years have been extremely challenging for the building sector and BEIS recognises that all commissioned whole house retrofit pilot projects nationally faced similar challenges. We apologise to our Cornwall Housing tenants who were due to have work completed on their homes under these pilot projects. We have identified their homes as needing energy efficiency improvements and we are now carrying out a detailed review of all our housing so that we can bid for alternative government funding to enable us to improve the energy efficiency of Cornwall Housing homes."