Heat networks
Communal heat networks (aka district heating)
As of 2025, about half a million homes in the UK are on some form of communal heating, where heat is produced communally and supplied to a number of homes via pipes. The homes that are supplied from that one source may be all in the same building, or on the same estate or development, or even in a larger district. Heat networks have been hugely successful in other countries, most notably Denmark, where they supply about 64% of homes with heat and hot water. And there are some excellent examples in the UK.
Are heat networks “green”?
The heat source is most commonly a huge gas boiler. But heat networks can also use waste heat, e.g. from incinerators or data centres, or they can use heat pumps to draw in and concentrate heat from the surrounding environment, such as from the ground or a river, or draw on geothermal sources. On these grounds, the government has promoted heat networks as a move towards net zero. The intention is that by 2050, one home in five will be heated this way. And increasingly, new heat networks are being built to use these green sources of energy from day one.
At present, wind farms are producing so much electricity that their owners are paid billions of pounds to turn them off on windy days. On very windy days they produce so much power that it risks overwhelming the national grid. The same is true of solar farms when it’s sunny. In line with Fuel Poverty Action’s campaign for Energy For All, we are pressing for this “excess” instead to go free to people who need it to heat and power our homes. Heat networks have potential to facilitate this transfer. With their pooled resources and more space for insulated hot water or other energy storage, they could make free hot water available long after the weather has changed.
There must be a catch…
Unfortunately, the UK heat network industry was established without regulation or planning. Networks are generally run by private companies, whose primary objective is profit, or sometimes by housing associations or local authorities. In both cases, the people responsible often lack the funding and/or the expertise to run them well. Yet locally, they are a monopoly. The customer has no choice of supplier. You cannot switch, and you generally cannot leave the network for another form of heating. The result is that networks are often badly designed, badly installed, badly maintained, and badly administered. Many are extremely inefficient, which means costs go through the roof, and so do carbon emissions if gas is being used. Procurement (e.g. of gas) may not be done well, causing extra high prices especially in a volatile market. The heat provider simply passes on the costs of their bad management to the end user. Unlike other forms of heating, there is no price control. In many old networks, residents have no meter, and can’t even save money by turning off the heating and going cold.
In sum, while heat networks can bring lower costs and greater health and comfort, they are having the opposite effect in many housing estates and blocks all over the UK. Residents are hit with prices soaring beyond all control, frequent outages of heat and hot water, and a total lack of accountability.
Light at the end of the tunnel?
Since 2015, FPA has been supporting residents organising against the injustices they face as users of heat networks. Often ignored by both the fuel poverty lobby and organisations fighting for “greener” homes and heat technology, the half a million households on heat networks have faced an uphill battle. For information on some of these fights, see our research reports from 2017 and 2021 or the website of the Lambeth Tenants Heat Campaign, where Lambeth Council has been taking residents to court to evict them when they cannot keep up with their heat bills, which at one point were as much as £80 per week for heat and hot water alone. It is common in Britain for people to go cold, but we know of no other cases where they are in danger of losing their home.
In 2021, after years of campaigning, the government finally accepted that regulation of district heating was needed. We turned our efforts to ensuring that when the promised regulations are finally passed, they are fit for purpose – see our recent consultation submissions for details. The results however are not very encouraging. The new regulations offer very limited protection on prices. There will be technical standards laid down that heat providers are expected to meet, and residents will have recourse to advice from Citizens Advice, and, at least in some cases, to the Energy Ombudsman. But efforts at “consumer protection” are fatally undermined by the way the industry is set up. And crucially, there will be no equivalent to Ofgem’s price cap for the present regulated energy industries (gas and electricity). Nowhere is there a more evident need for a guarantee of essential energy.
More positively, residents on heat networks, tenants and leaseholders together, are increasingly coming together to fight their corner. At the very least, we have a right to expect the same standards, protections, and prices that people have elsewhere. Using a “greener” technology can and must make people’s lives better. It should never make them worse!
