Camden Climate Fund increases support for residents, communities and businesses
Camden is increasing the financial support it is offering to residents and households, businesses and community groups to reduce the environmental impact of buildings through the updated Camden Climate Fund.
Since it was launched in 2017 the Climate Fund has proven to be a popular and successful way to support our residents, businesses and community groups to improve the energy efficiency of their homes, community buildings and places of work. This helps to reduce carbon emissions and tackle the climate crisis.
From 2021 to 2024 the Camden Climate Fund provided over £200,000 to support projects. For the latest round of the Camden Climate Fund we are increasing the amount and range of support to help accelerate our work to help address the climate crisis.
Recent successful projects include a Camden Climate Fund grant to Think & Do to provide free energy saving tips and advice to help residents reduce their energy bills along with small energy saving measures such as draught proofing.
Community energy group, Power Up North London was also awarded funding through the Camden Climate Fund to support the installation of new solar energy arrays on Regent High and Parliament Hill schools. The solar was installed over the school summer holidays and is already reducing the schools’ energy costs and is expected to save 30.5 tonnes of CO2 e per year.
The update Camden Climate Fund will also increase the maximum grant amount available to households and provide greater assistance to small businesses and voluntary and community sector organisations. The new Camden Climate Fund is also designed to incentivise small and medium-sized businesses to undertake larger retrofit projects.
For community energy applications we are also increasing the amount that can be applied for and have broadened the reach of the community energy fund to support energy efficiency measures such as lighting upgrades and insulation.
Councillor Harrison continued:
“Although the Camden Climate Fund has proven successful since its launch, we wanted to make these changes to provide further incentives for residents, businesses and community groups to improve the energy efficiency of their buildings and cut carbon.
“To further support applications the local planning authority will also be offering free pre-application advice service for households and organisations looking to retrofit their homes, community buildings and places of work. The advice will consider whether permission is required and support the applicant in cases where planning applications are required. We believe this will help to remove a perceived barrier for those looking to undertake improvements but who are worried about navigating the planning system.”
The fund is financed by carbon offset payments collected from developers through Section 106 (s106) legal agreements which are required to be paid under Council planning policy where applications fail to meet required carbon reduction targets set by Camden Council’s Local Plan. The relevant s106 agreements require that the contributions must be used to reduce carbon emissions.