Work to begin to improve energy efficiency of South Gloucestershire homes

Work is due to start this month to improve the energy efficiency of 153 homes in South Gloucestershire.

Over the coming year we’ll be investing £2.5m to refurbish homes in Yate, Coalpit Heath, Chipping Sodbury, Wickwar, Acton Turville and Old Sodbury, by fitting new external wall insulation to some of our existing homes. All of these properties are non-traditionally built homes which were built in the period following the Second World War as a quick solution to the housing shortage.

The work is part of our new strategy to invest more than £300m maintaining and upgrading our homes over the next five years. We’ve appointed Sustainable Building Services, an award-winning building contractor with 40 years’ experience working in the social housing sector, to carry out the work. And in May they joined us as we held two open days in Yate for customers whose homes are in this year’s programme. Around 40 households came along to find out more and have their questions answered.

Now we’re focusing on beginning work on the first homes and Sustainable have already started setting up their compound in Yate.

Project manager John Potter said: “We’re really pleased to be getting started on this year’s programme of improvement works to our customers’ homes. We want our customers to be spending less on their fuel bills so they have more money for other things. By fitting new external insulation to homes we can improve their thermal efficiency making them warmer and cheaper to heat.

“Over the past few years we’ve had some amazing feedback from customers whose homes we’ve fitted insulation to saying how much warmer they are. But it’s not just about the improvements to the energy efficiency; we want to provide homes that people are proud to live in. And we’ve had so many positive comments from people over the past year about how happy they are with how their homes look after the work has been finished. Hopefully all the customers whose homes we’re improving this year will be similarly happy.”

Over the past few years we have completed similar refurbishments to 668 homes in South Gloucestershire. Last year we improved the energy efficiency of 144 homes in the Thornbury area.