Case study · City of York Council, York
60 off-gas homes, from the sign up event to the warranty pack.
A whole house retrofit of privately owned off-gas homes for City of York Council under the Home Upgrade Grant, phase 2, including finding and signing up the households. Project led by Miles Sharples, now Managing Director of Energy Giants, with a skilled, accredited workforce.1
The numbers from the programme
60
Off-gas homes
Privately owned homes in the City of York area.2
£600k
Programme value
From the programme documentation.3
7
Measure types
Heat pumps, solar PV, room in roof, internal wall, cavity and loft insulation, and ventilation.
The measures
Off the oil, the LPG and the storage heaters.
Homes off the gas grid are often the most expensive in the country to heat. The Home Upgrade Grant pays to fix the fabric and the heating together: room in roof, internal wall, cavity and loft insulation to cut the heat demand, full ventilation upgrades to keep the home healthy, then air source heat pumps and solar PV to supply what is left.
Getting the order right is the whole job. Insulate first and the heat pump can be sized for the house it will heat, not the leaky one that was there before.
The work
Finding the households was part of the job.
On this scheme the sign up and qualification of homeowners sat with the delivery team. Working with the Energy Friends charity and the Fairer Warmth team, the programme ran sign up events at local community venues, where Energy Friends also gave energy saving advice and booked one to one appointments for help with retrofit and fuel bills.
Energy Friends then supported the dedicated resident liaison officers in guiding each owner through the whole process, from survey to the handover of warranties.
Delivery itself followed the same turnkey model as the County Durham and Darlington programmes: pre-installation building inspection, retrofit assessment and design, installation, compliance, customer sign off, warranties and TrustMark lodgement, to PAS 2030 and PAS 2035 on the programme.
The programme
A council scheme for homeowners.
The client was City of York Council, delivering the Home Upgrade Grant, phase 2, to privately owned homes off the gas grid. A single named project manager coordinated with the council and its agent, with a shared Teams dashboard of delivery KPIs and weekly meetings with the contract administrator to report progress and deal with issues.
In-house resident liaison and retrofit coordination officers, supported by Energy Friends and the Fairer Warmth app, kept homeowners informed and the programme records every home as meeting the PAS requirements.4
What was delivered
The specification.
| Client | City of York Council |
|---|---|
| Scheme | Home Upgrade Grant, phase 2 (HUG2), for homes off the gas grid |
| Homes | 60 privately owned off-gas homes in the City of York area |
| Measures | Air source heat pumps, solar PV, room in roof, internal wall, cavity wall and loft insulation, full ventilation upgrades |
| The package | Homeowner sign up and qualification, pre-installation building inspection, retrofit assessment and design, installation, compliance, customer sign off, warranties and TrustMark lodgement |
| Community partners | Energy Friends charity and the Fairer Warmth team |
| Standards | Delivered to PAS 2030 and PAS 2035 on the programme |
| Project lead | Miles Sharples, now Managing Director, Energy Giants1 |
| Status | Recent retrofit project, complete |
- Step oneSign up and qualify
Each household qualified for the scheme and talked through what would happen, before any survey.
- Step twoSurvey and design
A pre-installation building inspection, a retrofit assessment and a design for each home, not a blanket specification.
- Step threeInstall
The measures sequenced so each one supports the next, with residents told the dates and kept informed throughout.
- Step fourHand over and lodge
Compliance checks, customer sign off, the warranties and the TrustMark lodgement, home by home.
Running a grant scheme for homeowners? Talk to a team that can fill it.
Councils: homeowner schemes need households found, qualified and supported, not just installed. The team that delivered this programme is now at Energy Giants, working as a retrofit subcontractor for councils and main contractors.
Notes on the figures
- This programme was delivered under a contract held by a previous company. It appears here as the track record of Miles Sharples, who led it, and of the skilled, accredited workforce and office team now at Energy Giants. Energy Giants was not the contracting party.
- Homes: 60 privately owned off-gas homes, from the programme documentation.
- Programme value £600,000, from the programme documentation.
- Grant claims and PAS compliance as recorded in the programme documentation.
- No energy, bill or carbon saving is stated on this page. Savings depend on the house, the measures and the year, and any figure we publish later will carry its assumptions.
- Photographs on this page are illustrative and are not of York properties.