Warm Homes Local Grants - solar panels especially

[MJOverInvestor]

I'd be really interested in knowing if people on the board had any experience with applying for grants for solar panels from the government programme. Especially if accepted, does it take a long time to be approved, are there visits before approval is given? Urban, conservation area stories also much appreciated. (The property has a butterfly roof that isn't visible from the street and is south-facing and the household earns less than £36,000 a year.). Thank you in advance.

We are in the process of having a ASHP through the government programme. We started by approaching the local company with a good reputation that fit them.

For the ASHP they started by coming out and doing a detailed site visit and accessing our suitability for the heat pump. The process was very very thorough as there was lots of information to gather and things to look at and we received a very detailed report back from their visit. We had to wait a couple of weeks for them to fit us in for the visit and we received the report back in another couple of weeks.

When we gave them the go ahead, they handled the application for the grant for us, we didn't have to get involved in that, which was great. We have just heard from them that we have been accepted for the grant and are now just waiting for an installation date from them. Being accepted for the grant took another 2 weeks, so, so far it has been 6 weeks from enquiry to waiting for installation date which we believe is now pretty imminent.

Not solar, I know, but I imagine that the process would be similar and a similar length of time.

Thank you! That's really good information. I actually heard back today with the name of the company that will do the survey - and I'm impressed by the speed of it too.

I tried to apply a couple of years ago. I got turned down because my 200yr old terrace is in a conservation area and they didn't know if the roof would be strong enough. The council were fine so long as the panels were at the rear of the house, but the grant peeps told me to get a survey to assess the roof before they could make a decision.

But yes, they did come round and visit first.

Start at the WHLG page on gov.uk website. That lays out the basic criteria for eligibility - currently England only. Fill in the details and take it from there. It's pretty straight forward. WHLG is overseen by your local authority and they will then be in touch to check eligibility, discuss what you are hoping to get done and then organise a contractor to make a survey. It has been going for a number of years and the pot of grant cash would run out quite quickly.

It's all a bit confusing (I worked in the sector until early this year) because there was/is ECO4. This was paid for by the energy companies and was nationwide. This now running until the end of this year but AFAIK stopped taking applications in March. There are also various schemes run by local councils that can help depending on your circumstances. It's well worth taking a look online to see if there's an energy charity local to you as they keep up with all the changes, grant schemes opening and closing, which local councils are doing what and they can help with applications and advice.