£9m makeover for Southampton council tower blocks

More than £9million will be spent on five council tower blocks in Southampton to upgrade them and make them more energy efficient.

The tower blocks sit next to Southampton Water, in International Way, Weston. Work will include removing external wall panels and replacing with new coloured external cladding, new wall insulation, installing new double glazed windows and balcony doors.

The existing landlord controlled electric heating will also be replaced with a centralised gas powered boiler house within each block supplying individually controlled and metered heating (via the boiler house) and hot water to each property.

Southampton City Council successfully campaigned for and won more than £6million of grant funding from the Community Energy Saving Programme (CESP), via British Gas towards the energy saving works. And at yesterday evening’s cabinet meeting the council agreed to contribute a further £3million to enable a whole host of other improvement works to be carried out at the same time.

Councillor Peter Baillie, cabinet member for housing, said: “The work will vastly improve the look of the buildings, make them more energy efficient and give tenants and leaseholders much improved homes. They will also have control of their own heating for the first time with every home to be individually metered. British Gas has assured us that residents will pay less so it is wonderful that we can help to bring down people’s heating bills.”

The work comes after major improvements over the last few years including a concierge service and decent homes work which saw new kitchens and bathrooms added to the properties.