SDC Leader's blog - w/c 8 September 2025

“This Tuesday (9th), Housing Committee meets with a full agenda – including updates to several policies and a report on our work to improve the energy efficiency of council homes.

We are refreshing our empty homes strategy so that we can improve housing availability in our district.  If you know of any empty houses in your area, please do let us know at https://www.stroud.gov.uk/report-it/empty-property/

We are also updating our shared ownership policies and will have a number of properties that will be eligible for shared ownership over the coming months – please keep a look out for those.

Over the past three years, we’ve raised the average energy rating of our housing stock to EPC band C – five years ahead of target and we continue to make progress.  We now aim to have all of our properties C rated or better by 2030. We’ve even won an award for our retrofit programme - upgrading existing homes with measures such as insulation, new windows, and renewable heating. 

The real win is for tenants. In one of our schemes, households are expected to save around £703 a year on energy bills.  Another programme is delivering savings of £614 - plus big reductions in carbon emissions and improvements in health and wellbeing and educational performance whilst saving the NHS and others money.

We’ve invested in this work and successfully bid for funding too. In March, we secured £5.2 million to support improvements like solar panels, insulation, and low-carbon heating. Officers are now exploring further funding opportunities to keep the momentum going.

 We’re also investing in people. Two new roles are now being advertised – a Retrofit Tenant Liaison Officer and an Energy and Carbon Officer. If you’re passionate about sustainability and community, take a look at www.stroud.gov.uk/jobs ”

Cllr Gary Luff, Chair of Housing Committee