The biggest social housing landlord in Grimsby has been forced to abandon their plans to install solar power systems in 3400 properties in North East Lincolnshire. The landlord is one of the first to react to the coalition’s plan to cut help with solar panel installations.
Shoreline Housing Partnership claim the cuts to feed-in tariffs mean the planned scheme no longer stacks up financially. Unfortunately this means tenants will be denied the chance to save 40% on their energy bills which would have helped ease families out of fuel poverty. Shoreline Housing’s partner (who cannot be named due to a confidentiality agreement), had already found a construction company to carry out the installation work, which would have given forty workers a secure job for at least seven months.
SHP Chief Executive, Tony Bramley, has said: “We, along with our partner, had been working on the scheme for eight to nine months. It had been gradually moving forward and over the past few months we had been consulting with tenants. The impact of the Government’s announcement is that it has brought the whole scheme to a halt. Our partners and their investor are now unwilling to proceed in the current climate.”
Shoreline have 8000 properties that are all protected by landlord insurance in North East Lincolnshire and the coalition had promised solar power investors payments for twenty-five years for each kilowatt of electricity fed into the National Grid. The payments under the FIT (Feed-in Tariff) would cover the investment cost of the installation in about ten years and then boost income for the remaining fifteen years. But now the coalition has announced their plan to cut FIT payments by more than 50% from December 12th. The few weeks left before then mean that there is not enough time for landlords to go through the lengthy process required.