Campaigns
South Yorkshire Climate Alliance Retrofit Campaign
Petition Update
The petition asked the Mayor of South Yorkshire to find the funds to retrofit South Yorkshire homes in fuel poverty now.
Our petition was presented to the Mayoral Combined Authority (MCA) Board and was heard at their meeting on Tuesday, 18th October. The petition was presented by Dr Joan Miller, one of South Yorkshire Climate Alliance’s volunteers.
Response
The MCA’s response acknowledged the importance of a retrofit programme and the multiple benefits it would bring, not only to the environment, but also our health and wellbeing, the cost of living, and the economy, with a boost to jobs and skills.
The MCA informed us that “officers across the Mayoral Combined Authority in constituent authorities are working together under the leadership of the Chief Executive of Barnsley Council on developing solutions to our retrofit needs across the themes of data acquisition, skills and business support, outreach and marketing and, crucially for the request of your petition, finance. Only by tackling those themes in parallel will be able to create a retrofit system that delivers both value and results.”
They said that support from central government is not at the scale needed, while at “the regional level we do not have the funding necessary to deliver retrofit at scale. To target the 300,000 homes currently in fuel poverty would require billions of pounds of investment. We do have money with which we can demonstrate solutions and mechanisms that will allow us to bring in funds from the private sector, pension funds and institutional investors. We are working on retrofit programmes and will continue to explore mechanisms to scale these up for the benefit of community and business.” will take you straight there:
Comment
While we welcome the news that work on developing solutions has begun in South Yorkshire, the lack of funding at both a national and regional level was the basis for the petition, and was why we were calling on the MCA to find creative responses to these difficulties.
Dr Miller asked additional questions at the meeting, including ones to prompt a more detailed response on this point, specifically in relation to a regional investment bank or its equivalent, and a South Yorkshire green municipal bond.
The MCA said it will respond in writing to these questions, and we will update further here when that response has been received.
You can view the webcast of the Board Meeting the MCA website:
https://sheffieldcityregion.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/692468
The retrofit petition is under Item 8, and is the second of the two petitions being presented. You can use the menu on the right hand side of the page to go straight to the section of the video you want to view.
We'll post any further updates or developments here on our website and in our newsletter - you can sign up to our mailing list at the bottom of this page.
To find out more about retrofitting and why is it essential in the fight against climate change, you can read the notes that accompanied the petition here.