Green Councillor’s new initiative to fight fuel poverty approved by Babergh Council

On 6th October 2022, the Leader of the Green Party on Babergh District Council, Leigh Jamieson, successfully submitted a motion at the Council meeting which will help to substantially improve the energy efficiency of social housing in Babergh and across Suffolk. Furthermore, this move would help cut the energy bills for tenants across the county.

The UK has the least energy-efficient housing stock in Europe. At this time of drastically rising energy bills, having homes that are damp, draughty and lacking proper insulation means that people are paying for wasted energy. However, ‘retrofitting’ council-owned properties has been an expensive and slow process which needs to be accelerated to respond to the cost-of-living crisis and fuel poverty.

The Lewes Model

In the meeting, Councillor Leigh Jamieson described the success of the 'Lewes model' which was pioneered by Green councillors in Sussex. The model is a partnership of seven councils who pooled their housing maintenance budgets to create a £1 billion fund that will retrofit 40,000 social housing homes. He called on Babergh to agree to research the Lewes model and to start a dialogue with other local authorities and external stakeholders, to investigate if a similar project could be initiated in Suffolk to improve the pace of retrofitting.

He commented, “A Suffolk-wide initiative would create real economies of scale and by targeting the housing directly in council control, we can help kickstart comprehensive retrofitting across all housing sectors in our local authority area. Focussing our efforts on improving energy efficiency in these homes will not only bring down fuel bills for those who need it most but substantially reduce carbon emissions.”