Updated 2026-08-03
Social housing retrofit in the UK is funded through a small set of government schemes, but the money from those schemes rarely reaches a contractor as a direct one-off contract. It is usually routed through a procurement framework — a pre-tendered panel of approved suppliers that councils and housing associations can call off from without running a full competitive tender for every project. This guide explains what the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund (SHDF) actually is, how it relates to ECO4, the Boiler Upgrade Scheme and the Warm Homes Plan, and how the money those schemes represent actually becomes a contract a retrofit business can bid for.
The Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund is a UK government grant programme that provides funding to social housing landlords — local authorities and housing associations — in England, to improve the energy performance of their housing stock. It targets homes with lower Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) ratings and funds the installation of energy-efficiency measures and low-carbon heating: insulation (loft, cavity wall, external and internal wall), ventilation improvements, low carbon heating such as air source and ground source heat pumps, and associated works like windows, doors and draught-proofing. The programme sits within the UK's wider net-zero and fuel-poverty policy agenda: social housing tends to include a disproportionate share of the least energy-efficient homes in the country, so upgrading it delivers both carbon-reduction and fuel-poverty benefits from the same spend.
SHDF is administered by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) — the successor to what was originally BEIS (the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy) when the fund launched — and has been delivered in a series of funding rounds usually referred to as "waves". Social landlords apply to a wave for grant funding to cover a portfolio of properties, and, once awarded, the landlord becomes responsible for procuring the actual retrofit works — which is where the contractor market, and the frameworks described below, come in. Because SHDF has been delivered wave by wave rather than as a single continuous programme, contractors watching this space need to track both the funding announcements (which tell you when landlords will have money to spend) and the framework and tender notices that follow (which tell you how that money is actually being procured).
SHDF is sometimes referred to under related or rebranded names as government housing decarbonisation policy has evolved — including as part of the broader Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund branding — but the underlying mechanism is consistent: grant funding to social landlords, delivered in waves, for energy-efficiency and low-carbon heating retrofit of their stock.
SHDF is one of several parallel UK schemes that fund home energy-efficiency and low-carbon heating work, and it is easy to conflate them because they overlap in the measures they pay for. The key structural differences are worth being clear on:
For a retrofit contractor, the practical distinction that matters most is who the customer is: SHDF work is procured by social landlords (often through the frameworks described below), ECO4 work is procured by energy suppliers and their delivery partners, and Boiler Upgrade Scheme work is typically sold directly to homeowners by an MCS-certified installer claiming the grant on the customer's behalf. RetrofitTenders tracks the public procurement side of this picture — the notices published by local authorities, housing associations and other public bodies — since that is the segment that appears on public tender portals rather than being arranged directly between a supplier and its installer network.
Once a social landlord has SHDF (or similar) funding in place, it still has to procure the actual works — and running a full open tender from scratch for every retrofit project would be slow and expensive for both the landlord and every contractor who wanted to bid. Because of this, most social landlords use pre-tendered procurement frameworks: a framework provider runs one thorough procurement exercise to build a panel of vetted, qualified contractors, and individual landlords can then "call off" from that panel — either by direct award or a short mini-competition between framework members — for their specific project, without repeating the full procurement process themselves each time.
Several organisations run frameworks that cover retrofit and decarbonisation works for the social housing sector, alongside general construction and repairs work. These include sector-specific procurement consortia — such as the Communities and Housing Investment Consortium (CHIC), a member-owned consortium working with housing associations, local authorities and other public bodies — as well as regional bodies: some combined authorities, including Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA), have run their own retrofit-specific frameworks covering decarbonisation work across housing in their area. Other named procurement consortia and regional frameworks operate in the same space. Because framework names, lots and scopes change over time as agreements are re-let, a contractor interested in this route should check the current live frameworks and their specific retrofit lots directly, rather than assuming a framework that existed in a previous funding wave is still the live route today.
What these frameworks have in common, structurally, is that getting onto the panel in the first place is usually a bigger hurdle than winning any individual call-off afterwards. Framework qualification exercises typically assess financial standing, health and safety record, technical capability for the specific retrofit measures on offer, and — increasingly — PAS 2035 and PAS 2030 competency (see our companion guide, "PAS 2035 Explained", for what that means in practice) before a contractor is admitted to the relevant lot. Once on the framework, a contractor is then eligible to be considered for direct awards or mini-competitions as individual landlords bring projects forward under their SHDF (or other) funding.
Rather than a fixed-term closed panel, some public bodies use a Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS) for retrofit and decarbonisation work. The practical difference for a contractor is that a DPS generally stays open to new suppliers throughout its life, rather than closing once the initial framework competition ends — meaning a contractor that misses the launch of a framework is not necessarily locked out of that buyer's retrofit work for its whole term, provided it can meet the qualification criteria to join the DPS when it applies. Tender notices for "Dynamic Purchasing System for Retrofit" or similarly worded DPS arrangements are a recurring pattern on UK public procurement portals for exactly this reason, and often represent an easier entry point for contractors new to the sector than trying to win a place on a closed framework mid-term.
Social landlords do not choose which of their properties to retrofit at random — SHDF and related funding rounds have consistently prioritised homes with lower Energy Performance Certificate ratings, since these are both the least efficient to heat and the properties where a retrofit delivers the largest fuel-poverty benefit per property. In practice, this means a landlord's SHDF-funded programme is usually built around a retrofit plan for a defined batch of its worst-performing stock — often identified through stock condition surveys carried out well before the funding application stage — rather than being spread evenly across the whole housing portfolio. For a contractor, this matters because it shapes the shape of the tender itself: a batch of similar archetype properties (a terrace of similar 1930s solid-wall houses, for example) rather than a single one-off dwelling, which is part of why whole-house and multi-property retrofit lots are common in this sector rather than single-property jobs.
Contractors evaluating whether to pursue UK social housing retrofit work funded through SHDF or similar routes typically need to have, or be able to quickly put in place, the following before a bid can be competitive:
None of these are quick to acquire the week a tender is published — which is exactly why contractors serious about entering this market tend to build PAS 2035 capability, TrustMark registration and relevant trade certifications well ahead of any specific opportunity, so that when a framework competition or Dynamic Purchasing System opens, or an individual landlord publishes a retrofit tender, the qualification evidence is already in place rather than needing to be assembled under bid deadline pressure.
Put together, the practical picture for a contractor or supplier looking at the UK retrofit market is: SHDF (and related Warm Homes funding) is the money that pays for a large share of social housing retrofit work; that money reaches contractors mostly through procurement frameworks and Dynamic Purchasing Systems run by consortia like CHIC, regional bodies like combined authorities, or by individual local authorities and housing associations running their own procurement; getting onto the relevant framework or DPS — which usually requires demonstrable PAS 2035/2030 competency — is the real gatekeeping step, more so than any individual project tender; and ECO4 and the Boiler Upgrade Scheme represent separate, parallel routes into similar retrofit and heat-pump work, procured differently (through energy suppliers, and directly with homeowners, respectively) rather than through the same social-landlord frameworks.
RetrofitTenders tracks the public notices for framework competitions, Dynamic Purchasing System openings, and individual retrofit and heat pump contracts published by UK local authorities and housing associations, alongside equivalent public procurement across the EU and the US, so that contractors do not need to monitor every individual buyer's procurement portal separately. See the UK tenders list for current live opportunities, and "PAS 2035 Explained" for what qualification framework operators and individual buyers are actually checking for before awarding this work.
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SHDF is a UK government grant programme, administered by DESNZ, that funds social landlords (local authorities and housing associations) to install energy-efficiency measures and low-carbon heating in their housing stock, delivered in funding rounds known as waves.
SHDF is direct government grant funding for social landlords. ECO4 is a supplier obligation scheme: energy suppliers, not government, are required to fund efficiency measures for eligible households through their own contractor networks. They are procured through entirely different routes.
Frameworks and Dynamic Purchasing Systems run by consortia such as CHIC, or by regional bodies, open for new suppliers to apply at defined points (or on a rolling basis for a DPS). Qualification typically checks financial standing, health and safety record, and PAS 2035/2030 competency before a contractor is admitted.
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One won contract pays for decades of RetrofitTenders.