Harrogate charity's key role in new £900k project to help improve energy efficiency in town's housing stock

The government-funded scheme will offer free energy reduction plans, helping to make homes warmer, cut carbon emissions and save on heating bills.

One of the key local partners in the new project, which will run from February, is Zero Carbon Harrogate.

In 2022, the independent environmental charity carried out a successful survey across the Harrogate district which showed that 94% of respondents wanted to look at ways of reducing their carbon emissions in their homes.

After winning a grant of more than £150,000 from the Energy Redress Fund, the charity has launched a series of awareness workshops for local people to helping them understand how they could retrofit their homes, particularly people who own older, stone-built houses.

They also set up training schemes and paid for professionals and tradespeople to take courses in retrofitting.

The success of Zero Carbon Harrogate’s recent efforts has resulted in Retrofit Assessors and Retrofit Coordinators who guide householders in understanding how to make their homes warmer and save on heating bills.

Zero Carbon Harrogate’s Retrofit Programme Manager said: “People in Harrogate are genuinely interested in making their homes warmer and cheaper to run, while contributing to the reduction of carbon emissions.

"Without the Energy Redress Fund’s support, we couldn’t have got this off the ground, but we have made significant advances and started to develop a local retrofit economy.

"I’m really pleased with our progress so far and look forward to the next phase of work”.

Harrogate now boasts a Retrofit Network, bringing together people working across the district to improve local housing.

With the support of Zero Carbon Harrogate, business and tradespeople, including architects, surveyors, mortgage advisors, landlords, builders and heat engineers have attended retrofit events.

Britain as a whole is saddled with some of the oldest housing stock in Europe, resulting in the UK’s 30 million homes accounting for more than 21% of the country’s total carbon emissions, with most of this coming from heating.