Grants and funding for solar panels for housing associations

Funding for social-housing solar in 2026 is real but tightly time-bound, and the biggest retrofit grant is no longer open. Wave 3 of the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund closed to applications on 25 November 2024; the landlords on its list are now delivering, and all of that grant must be spent by 31 March 2028. What still funds social-housing solar now is ECO4 to 31 December 2026 for homes at EPC E to G, the Social and Affordable Homes Programme for new build, SEG export income and the 0% VAT window that runs to 31 March 2027. The deadlines are hard, and the rules around PAS 2035 compliance and grant defrayal are unforgiving. This page (updated October 2026) sets out what happened to Wave 3, the routes that still matter and how they fit together.

The Warm Homes Plan: the umbrella over everything

The £13.2bn Warm Homes Plan, re-committed at the June 2025 Spending Review, is the government-wide programme that funds home decarbonisation across 2025-26 to 2029-30. It covers insulation grants, low-income household upgrades, low and zero-interest loans for solar, batteries and heat pumps, and crucially for social landlords, the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund. It also funds retrofit-skills training to grow the supply chain. Think of it as the framework the specific funds sit within, not a fund you apply to directly; the £13.2bn is the plan-wide figure, not a Wave 3 budget.

Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund: Wave 3 closed, now in delivery

This was the main event for registered providers and local-authority landlords in England. Wave 3 of the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund, the successor to the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund, was allocated £1.29bn in the Autumn Budget 2024, to be delivered from 2025 until 2028. It targets existing social housing below EPC band C in England. The application window closed on 25 November 2024 and the list of successful landlords was published on 11 March 2025. Wave 3 is now closed to new applications. The Greater Manchester and West Midlands combined authorities and their constituent councils were not eligible for the national Wave 3 because they received devolved allocations; housing associations with stock there had to split mixed-stock projects and seek funding from the appropriate stream. For the landlords on the list, the delivery window runs to September 2028 and all grant must be spent by 31 March 2028, so defrayal sequencing matters as much as the allocation itself.

What funders want to see is a fabric-first, PAS 2035-compliant programme with credible archetype modelling, a clear tenant-benefit plan, and a realistic delivery schedule that spends the money on time. For landlords now delivering Wave 3, that means the SAP and EPC uplift modelled per house type and the delivery batched so grant is defrayed before the 31 March 2028 deadline. This site does not prepare funding packages: we publish this guide and reply by email to enquiries.

ECO4 and ECO4 Flex: topping up the lowest-rated homes

The Energy Company Obligation funds retrofit for low-income and fuel-poor households, paid for by obligated energy suppliers rather than the landlord. In social housing, ECO4 can fund insulation or first-time heating in homes rated EPC E to G. ECO4 Flex lets local authorities refer fuel-poor or vulnerable households who fall outside standard means-tested criteria. ECO4 runs to 31 December 2026, and the scheme needs PAS 2030/2035 and TrustMark-registered installers, so check both before appointing one. It blends well with the Warm Homes Fund as a way of covering measures on the very lowest-rated social homes, and it is most useful when stacked rather than used alone.

Smart Export Guarantee: ongoing income, not a grant

The Smart Export Guarantee is not capital funding, it is an ongoing income stream from exported electricity that can subsidise the wider programme over the system's life. Tariffs vary by supplier; the better fixed rates open to anyone are around 12 to 13p per kWh (October 2026, indicative), and small suppliers pay about 3 to 6p. Payments require an MCS-certified installation of up to 5 MW, and SEG is mandatory for licensed suppliers with 150,000-plus customers. The key decision is who registers and benefits from it. On dwelling-level installs the most tenant-friendly model lets residents self-consume the generation (the bill saving) while the landlord, or a split-benefit partner such as Octopus Tenant Power, takes only the surplus export. That income, modest per home but meaningful at portfolio scale, is part of how a programme pays for itself.

Social and Affordable Homes Programme: for new build and regeneration

Where the work is new build or regeneration rather than retrofit, the Social and Affordable Homes Programme 2026 to 2036 is the route: £39bn over ten years, administered by Homes England outside London and the Greater London Authority in London. It succeeds the Affordable Homes Programme and funds new affordable and social homes built to the Future Homes Standard, where rooftop solar is effectively standard. Designed-in PV costs far less than retrofit and pairs naturally with air-source heat pumps and a fabric-first envelope. If you are building or regenerating, get solar onto the drawings at design stage and fund the homes through this programme rather than retrofitting later.

How the routes stack, and the pitfalls

These funds are designed to be combined. A landlord already on the Wave 3 list typically uses the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund as the core capital, ECO4 (to 31 December 2026) to cover the lowest-rated homes, SEG income to subsidise over the system's life, and the Social and Affordable Homes Programme for any new-build strand; a landlord without a Wave 3 allocation can still use the other routes. Installing solar PV in social homes, which count as residential accommodation, also carries 0% VAT in Great Britain until 31 March 2027, then 5% from 1 April 2027 (VAT Notice 708/6). The common mistakes are planning delivery without a deliverable defrayal schedule (the money has to be spent by 31 March 2028, not just allocated), underestimating the PAS 2035 retrofit-coordinator overhead, and assuming direct award is allowed when compliant procurement through a framework like Fusion21 or Procurement for Housing is effectively required under the Procurement Act 2023. The landlord's team, or its retrofit coordinator, handles the modelling, the compliance and the procurement route so the funding actually lands and gets spent.