I received a letter on Thursday from RCA Regeneration telling me that they had applied for planning permission so that E-ON could fit external wall insulation to my home. My home is of Wimpey no fines construction and massive amounts of heat goes straight through the walls.

I did start a thread quite a long time back about insulating my property. I did prefer the idea of using a small amount of internal insulation due to cost and doorways etc, even though external insulation was recommended by people on this forum as the best and safest method of insulating these types of properties. For various circumstances and reasons I did not do it, although I had recently started thinking about it again and planned on getting it done this year.

It has turned out quite fortunate that I didn't go ahead with that because E-ON are planning on doing the work for free from what I have been told when I telephoned RCA about this. I was told that the energy companies have been forced to carry out work on solid walled properties or face penalties. All to do with carbon emissions.

Previously, no one wanted to do anything to help people with solid walled properties, I had asked a number of organizations and all said no help was available.

Last year or possibly the previous, I received a planning application regarding external insulation on the council property next door, so it seems that it might have some connection to that. I have not seen or heard any more about that so far. I wondered whether they had to go back to the drawing board because the building regs did change shortly after, tightening the requirements. Another point is that this area is being re-developed and many of these properties have been or are being demolished, although mine was to remain.

I have been told that E-ON will send a letter about this and it should of arrived before the letter I received from RCA. A survey carried out and providing that I am in agreement, the work will be completed before the end of this year.

I live in Kings Norton, Birmingham and there is meant to be another area also having this type of work done, although I have forgotten where.

Therefore, anyone with a solid wall home might be worth asking some questions and find out whether you can get this type of work done on your property.

Those are the only details I have so far. Hopefully I will know more when I receive something from E-ON in the next week.

Good luck to anyone else with a similar property.

Is this going to be done as part of the 'Green Deal', leaving the property with a 20 year (or is it 25 year) loan attached to it.

Similar scheme being offered by British Gas round here, BUT only if someone in the property is in receipt of benefits of one kind or another. There is also a cap on the amount of funding available, I THINK 80% in some cases, although I need to check that figure, which threw me because I couldn't see how anyone on benefits could afford to make up that missing 20%, given how much EWI can cost overall.

<blockquote><cite>Posted By: SteamyTea</cite>Is this going to be done as part of the 'Green Deal', leaving the property with a 20 year (or is it 25 year) loan attached to it.</blockquote>

No, not from what I was told. It is meant to be free to everyone in suitable solid wall homes, providing the houses have been decided not to be demolished and doesn't depend upon income or benefits.

I was told by the person at RCA regeneration that the energy companies are being forced to do this or face a windfall tax. The only thing required is that enough people agree to it, which I cannot see being a problem.

I won't know any more until I receive something from E-ON. I was told that the E-ON letter should of been sent before the RCA letter and he apologised for this not happening in the correct order.

When I received the planning application details for the council home next door I thought, "why are they not offering something to private owners, even if it is at a reduced cost, rather than having one home with walls that stick out like a sore thumb?"

However it all means another change of plans. I have been wanting to fit some new door frames and internal doors which cannot go ahead until internal insulation is done or ruled out. Obviously, I would rather not have to fit internal insulation and external is the preferred option if it doesn't cost me anything.

I thought that I would point out that insulation for solid walled properties does now seem to have changed and at last, some help is being given. Therefore it might be worth asking a few questions to help encourage this further.

When posting, would people please remember that the forum is visited by others who are not as clued-up as themselves and may find reference to organisations by their initials confusing.

So...

A Lower Layer Super Output Area (LSOA) is a GEOGRAPHIC AREA.

Lower Layer Super Output Areas are a geographic hierarchy designed to improve the reporting of small area statistics in England and Wales.

Lower Layer Super Output Areas are built from groups of contiguous Output Areas and have been automatically generated to be as consistent in population size as possible, and typically contain from four to six Output Areas. The Minimum population is 1000 and the mean is 1500.

There is a Lower Layer Super Output Area for each POSTCODE in England and Wales. A pseudo code is available for Scotland, Northern Ireland, Channel Islands and the Isle of Man.

The Organisation Data Service publish files created on their behalf by the Office for National Statistics, which link POSTCODES to the Lower Layer Super Output Area.

For further information on Lower Layer Super Output Areas, see the Office for National Statistics website.


(There you go, now everyone is a clever bugger.)

Thanks everyone for clearing those points up. Indeed not everyone, including me, knows what they mean.

Re-reading the letter and it does mention Community Energy Savings Programme (CESP), although as I stated, I was told that it is not dependent on a persons income per se, although the area is not all that well off by any means so could be considered a low income area.

The estate is under re-generation with a great deal of re-building and demolition of large portions of the estate. It won't change the people :(

Will this free EWI be offered in Scotland and if so from who/where?

Jonti

Is it no longer necessary for the owner of a house to provide a certificate before the council will accept a planning application?

Sorry for the acronyms, I was in a hurry and couldn't actually remember what LSOA stood for, thought I'd leave the googling to the OP.

There is CERT (carbon emission reduction target) funding available for EWI (external wall insulation). In Wales at least. I don't want to post details here for fear of spamming. But there is anything from £400-15,000 available towards the cost. If you're off-gas, and claim any type of benefits, it's almost fully funded now.

...no-one in my household is in receipt of benefits, and I'm certainly not drawn to the Green Deal.

...and that exhausts all options, correct?