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Housing Retrofit Pilot Councillor Sharon Thompson, Cabinet Member for Housing and Homelessness, presented a report [at Birmingham City Council Cabinet] on the 3 Cities Whole House Retrofit Pilot. As part of Birmingham’s ambitious Levelling Up Strategy, there is an ambitious plan to make social housing across Birmingham, Coventry and Wolverhampton warmer and greener. This is called the 3 Cities Whole House Retrofit, and the report outlines Birmingham’s initial contribution to this retrofit programme by retrofitting 300 Council properties in Hodge Hill as a pilot. This will allow the Council to test approaches to improving thermal efficiency, reducing carbon emissions and providing energy saving for tenants. This will see £25.986 million capital, and £2.203 million revenue over 30 years, invested in the pilot programme. Councillor Thompson said: “This is an exciting moment in our fight for warmer and greener homes in Birmingham. BCC is one of the largest landlords in the UK and we are responsible for 15% of the total housing stock in the city – that’s 60,000 homes. We know that in order to meet our climate targets we need to make our housing stock more carbon efficient. “This pilot will help us to demonstrate the best retrofit technology and find the most-appropriate ways to make our stock warmer and greener. Alongside our ambitious Levelling-Up Fund bid for a National Centre for the Decarbonisation of Heat, the 3 Cities Retrofit Programme has the potential to change the way that we heat our homes in the future. This pilot, which is the biggest of its kind in the country, is an important first step in achieving this.” Read the full report here Liam Byrne MP said “As chair of the East Birmingham Inclusive Growth taskforce, I’m determined we figure out how to cut create jobs, cut carbon and cut bills. This new retrofitting pilot for Hodge Hill is going to help us figure out just that.”