More than 400 households across the Leeds City Region including up to 20 in York, will benefit from £1.7m of funding to tackle fuel poverty and keep household bills low.

In a competitive bid to government, the Leeds City Region Enterprise Partnership (LEP) successfully secured funding to support local people living in homes that are not connected to the gas grid to have central heating installed for the first time. Once installed, central heating has the potential to help households save up to £1,000 a year as well as ensuring their homes become more energy efficient.

In the Leeds City Region, the Better Homes Yorkshire scheme, which launched in March this year, is already supporting residents to carry out energy improvement work to their homes. This new funding will complement the existing programme and ensure over 400 households across the ten Local Authorities and several Housing Associations within the Leeds City Region will benefit from fully-funded gas connections and central heating systems. In York, Better Homes funding has already included encouraging private landlords to invest in the fuel-efficiency and therefore the quality of the homes they rent out.

Cllr David Carr, Executive Member for Housing and Safer Neighbourhoods at City of York Council, said:

“In York, this new, very welcome fund will help around 20 fuel-poor residents to have their homes connected to the mains gas supply free of charge and have free central heating installed.

“These funds are limited and are linked to specific areas within the outer ring road which Northern Gas Networks has identified as suitable for the free gas connection. Officers are currently identifying eligible residents.”