Earlier this year, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero awarded up to £630m to Local Authorities (LA) through the Home Upgrade Grant: Phase 2 (HUG 2) scheme. This was part of a £1.8 billion package of funding to boost energy efficiency and cut emissions of homes and public buildings across England.

Setting you up for success

With funding allocations now confirmed, successful LAs are being encouraged to continue moving forward with their preparations for the delivery of their retrofit programmes, by applying to sit the Delivery Assurance Check (DAC).

This next important stage in the process allows authorities to demonstrate they are set up to procure and resource their programmes and provide an update on their progress before the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero releases further funds.

As a reminder, the DAC takes the form of a friendly conversation on MS Teams. It's all about working with you to set your project up for successful mobilisation and delivery.

The fully funded one-to-one support provided through the Home Upgrade Hub, the support service delivered by Turner & Townsend, will help you to prepare everything you need before your interview and even includes a mock interview.

Blackpool Council, who along with its consortium members were awarded £41.4m through the HUG 2 scheme, recently passed the DAC process. Its team shared its experience of using the service:

“After a positive experience with the Social Housing Retrofit Accelerator (SHRA) programme, we decided to sign up for support from the Home Upgrade Hub service for our proposed HUG 2 programme. We wanted to be certain that our application was watertight.

“Using the support of the Home Upgrade Hub meant we had covered all the required annexes and documentation from the outline application through to successfully passing our DAC. It was reassuring to have the team on hand to make sure we stayed on track and when we had queries – particularly for the fraud documents, which were new to us in terms of their format and the level of detail required. 

 “By the time we completed our mock DAC interview with Turner & Townsend, we felt more than ready to progress through the real thing with a project we really felt confident in delivering well.”

What happens next?

Once the DAC has been successfully passed, Local Authorities will be able to move into project delivery by submitting their batch applications. This involves providing housing stock data, measure mixes, and final costs for a group or ‘batch’ of homes that are ‘ready-to-retrofit’.

Provided the batch application meets the requirements, funding will be released for the proposed batch, drawing down against the funding agreed at the outline application stage.

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has recently published a detailed Delivery Guidance for Local Authorities document to support successful applicants as they enter into the delivery phase of the HUG 2 scheme.

Further free resources are available via the Home Upgrade Hub, including podcasts, on-demand masterclasses and blogs to help guide you through delivery.

If you’ve made a successful HUG 2 application and have any questions or concerns about the next steps, you can email info@homeupgradehub.org.uk where a dedicated team is ready to help.