Column by Mattie Ross, chair of Stroud District Council's housing committee.

Mindful of the pressures on all of our energy bills and Stroud District Council’s commitment to tackling carbon reduction, last week I visited a truly fantastic project being delivered by our housing service, addressing carbon reduction and improving energy efficiency in our council houses.

Accompanied by members of the Council’s Housing Committee, which I chair, and senior management representatives from Bristol City Council, and Homes in Sedgemoor, I had the privilege of looking closely at investment we are making to our council houses at Hamfallow. The interest from across the region in this critical demonstrator projects indicates how important and groundbreaking it is.

I am enormously proud that we are leading the way with our retrofit programme, working cross-party across the chamber, to improve the energy efficiency of our own council house stock, Stroud District Council is being a true exemplar.

As a council we are wholly committed to reaching our zero carbon 2030 goal for the whole district.

Of course, responsibility for carbon reduction sits with all of us, individual property owners as well as larger organisations and it’s important that the council can lead by example.

Over the next seven years we will be investing a further £17million into our energy improvement programme.

A Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund (SHDF) Demonstrator grant is allowing Stroud District Council’s housing service to `deep retrofit’ 28 council houses in the district with the aim of significantly improving energy efficiency, reducing their carbon footprint and fuel costs for tenants.

The SHDF Demonstrator project is an initial investment to pilot the effectiveness of these measures and demonstrate innovative approaches to reducing the carbon footprint of homes. The Hamfallow project will see the installation of a ground loop heating system, photo-voltaic and battery storage, so that we are able to generate and store energy on site.

We’ll then be able to remotely monitor the systems to ensure that they are always working to their optimum capability.