News

This week (commencing 7 September) the National Housing Federation led #HomesAtTheHeart campaign focuses on the role of social landlords in lowering carbon emissions and working to provide greener homes, which are increasingly important for people’s health and finances.

Reducing fuel poverty for our tenants goes hand in hand with reducing the carbon footprint of our homes and our business. While our resources are limited, and we must prioritise keeping homes safe places to live, we’ll invest in activities and technologies that create a carbon saving and improve energy performance.

Ways we’ve been tackling climate change and helping to make our communities greener include:

• introducing super-efficient modular homes to our housing mix;
• installing ‘A’ Rated Worcester Bosch combination boilers in almost a thousand homes in 2019-20;
• upgrading 15 large gas boiler units at communal heating sites to more energy-efficient ones;
• continuing to install air source heat pumps on the Green Lane estate in Horwich and looking how we can roll out this technology elsewhere;
• designing a renewable water heating system to be considered for an electricity only heated estate;
• helping customers save money by switching energy providers- just between January and April, our energy advisor Tom, at our social enterprise Starts with you, helped households save a total of £23,956 this way.

To respond to the increasing impact of climate change, we’re also working with other organisations and social landlords in the Greater Manchester Housing Providers partnership to identify new solutions to reduce carbon emissions further. We aim to develop an Environmental Sustainability Strategy for the Bolton at Home Group by April 2021.

This is just the start and our plans for the next five years will see us rolling out measures to become more sustainable.

#HomesAtTheHeart is led by the National Housing Federation (www.housing.org.uk). It's a call for a once-in-a-generation national investment for quality affordable housing to be at the heart of plans for social and economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

We’re supporting the Homes At The Heart campaign together with Arcon Housing Association (www.arcon.org.uk) and other members of the Greater Manchester Housing Providers partnership (https://gmhousing.co.uk).

We’re doing our bit to show the Government how investment in social housing and the work that housing providers do boosts the economy, creates jobs and improves people’s lives.

You can get involved in the campaign and conversation on Twitter and Facebook. Use and look out for the #HomesAtTheHeart hash-tag.