Labour Conference 2026: What it means for rooftop solar, flats and energy bills

Energy bills, grid queues and the state of Britain's housing dominated Andy Burnham's first Labour conference as Prime Minister, held in Liverpool on 27 to 30 September 2026.

Ministers set out ambitions to hand retrofit funding to regional leaders and announced plans to create a publicly owned body to speed up grid connections.

With the energy price cap up 4% from 1st October 2026, and typical bills forecast to pass £2,000 a year from January 2027, we explore the key announcements could mean for private developers, social housing providers and residents of flats.

Key takeaways

• The Warm Homes Plan's £15bn will be delivered by regional Mayors and local authorities, which could make it easier to fund solar on blocks of flats.
• The new £4bn Great British Grid aims to speed up grid connections and bring UK energy costs into line with Europe within ten years.
• The VAT cut on electricity saves the average household around £45 a year. SolShare saved residents at Odet Court in Cardiff up to £490 a year.
• Plug-in solar was championed at the event. Although the technology suits homes with a balcony, SolShare shares one rooftop solar system fairly across multiple flats.

How will devolving the Warm Homes Plan affect solar for social housing?

Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh used her conference speech to outline plans to devolve the Warm Homes Plan, handing delivery of the funding to regional Mayors and local authorities for street-by-street home upgrades.

Published in January and coming into effect from 2027, the Warm Homes Plan commits £15bn of public investment to upgrading homes by 2030, funding projects including solar panels, insulation, battery storage and heat pumps. Devolution puts more decision-making on those projects in the hands of the people who know their local housing stock the best.

The move was welcomed by regional leaders, including The West of England Mayor, Helen Godwin, who called it "music to the ears of regional Mayors and our communities", adding it would deliver greater regional control over delivery.

Why local, street-by-street funding suits blocks of flats

Instead of bidding into a central retrofit pot, local authorities will oversee green home upgrades themselves. That approach suits social housing, and flats in particular. A single project can bring fabric-first upgrades, low-carbon heating and rooftop solar to dozens of households in one block.

Retrofit programmes often stall at flats, because shared roofs, mixed tenures and communal infrastructure are seen as too complex or costly to tackle. We developed SolShare to solve this. Our world-first technology connects a single rooftop solar and communal battery system to multiple flats and common areas, fairly distributing solar energy to each flat through its own meter – with no need for a separate inverter in every home.

The detail is still to come: how much funding will be devolved, when it will start and how it will support projects on multi-occupancy buildings. We've helped social housing providers fund SolShare projects through past waves of the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund (WH:SHF). Check out our guide on how SolShare projects have been funded in past WH:SHF waves and how we’ve helped social housing providers navigate their application process.

What is the Great British Grid and could it lower energy bills?

The Great British Grid is a new £4bn publicly owned body within Great British Energy, announced by the Prime Minister in his keynote speech. Its job is to increase competition in the market, speed up grid connections for businesses, support reindustrialisation and bring bills down.

As part of the package, developers will be given the right to build their own grid connections rather than waiting for grid operators, with projects on the transmission network opened up to more competitive tendering. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) says similar reforms in Ireland have cut nearly a year from connection times. Burnham also set an ambition to bring UK energy costs into line with other European countries within ten years.

How grid bottlenecks push up household bills

Grid bottlenecks have a significant, but mostly unseen, impact on household bills. When the network infrastructure can’t handle peak clean generation, NESO (the system operator), pays wind and solar farms to switch off (curtailment) while paying fossil-fuel plants elsewhere to switch on. That process adds billions to consumer bills every year.

Ofgem estimates that the speeding up of grid upgrades could leave households around £30 a year better off by 2030–31.

For solar farm developers, slow connection queues have resulted in multi-year delays in getting clean power online. But while those grid improvements can take years, household generation with shared solar, grid flexibility and battery storage can provide an immediate solution to bills.

Solar that's generated on a roof and used in the building below already eases pressure on local networks. When you add battery storage and grid flexibility, rooftop solar can turn from a passive power source into an asset for the network. That's the idea behind FlatSave, our partnership with E.ON Next, which combines SolShare with communal batteries and grid flexibility.

How much will the VAT cut on electricity save households?

From 1 October 2026, VAT on domestic electricity bills fell from 5% to 0%, a measure the Government estimates will save the average household around £45 a year. The cut runs until 31 March 2027, and gas bills will still carry VAT at 5%.

Why on-site solar saves more than the VAT cut

The savings are welcome, but modest given Ofgem's price cap, which has risen by 4%, taking a typical dual fuel bill paid by direct debit to £1,723 a year. Looking further ahead, average dual fuel bills are forecast to surpass £2,000 a year from the start of 2027.

The modest £45 annual saving can be wiped out by a single quarterly price rise. Tax cuts will ease the pressure for a while, but generating, storing and sharing power on site through shared solar (with savings of up to 80%) will have the biggest impact, as we set out when the summer price cap rose.

Metered data from a SolShare scheme at Odet Court in Cardiff shows electricity savings of up to £490 per year, around ten times the value of the VAT cut.

Is plug-in solar a good option for flats?

Plug-in solar kits became legal to buy in UK shops a month before the conference. At conference, Climate Minister Katie White highlighted how renters and leaseholders can now cut their bills with an affordable panel and a standard socket.

As we explored when the kits first hit the shelves, plug-in solar is a welcome, low-commitment entry point to clean energy. Real-world output sits at around 400 kWh a year, worth roughly £110 off a typical bill.

Plug-in solar vs SolShare: different jobs, both needed

Plug-in kits have their limits. They ideally need a balcony or suitable outdoor space facing the right way, the upfront cost falls on residents and they don’t impact a building's EPC rating. Millions of homes have no balcony or suitable space at all.

Plug-in and shared rooftop solar do different jobs. One gives individual households a flexible entry point, the other reaches across entire developments and permanently improves building efficiency. Both have a place in the mix, alongside fabric-first retrofit and low-carbon heating.

What does Labour's conference mean for solar on flats?

Labour's conference points in one direction: more funding and decision-making at local level, and more public oversight of the grid and housing stock.

Behind those shifts is a growing recognition that public support for clean energy depends on households seeing the financial benefits first-hand, and soon.

Devolved retrofit funding, faster grid connections and better housing standards can help bring clean, locally generated power to communities the solar boom has left behind. How quickly that shows up on bills is less clear.

The UK has four million purpose-built flats. Reaching them is key to closing the solar disparity, the gap between households who can access rooftop solar and those, often in flats, who can't. SolShare offers a proven, scalable way to deliver lasting savings where they're needed most.

Are you a landlord or social housing provider planning solar for your flats?

Talk to the Allume UK team about your next project.