Grants

A new toolkit for councils and community energy groups launched 18 August, ahead of Great British Energy opening two new funding routes this summer, its Community Fund and a Partnership Fund for joint council-community solar projects

Written by former Cotswold District Council cabinet member Dr Rachel Coxcoon with Community Energy Pathways, UK100 and Community Energy England, the guide gives councils ready-to-edit templates, a cabinet decision paper, a community solar strategy and a full council motion, aimed at councils that want to move fast once the roughly £1bn of GBE funding opens for applications.

23 August 2026 · Source: edie

This site covered Swale Borough Council's own solar-on-the-roof success story earlier this month, a straightforward case of a council installing panels on its own building and cutting its own bill. The new toolkit published 18 August is aimed at a more ambitious version of the same idea: councils partnering with local community energy groups to build shared solar projects, funded through Great British Energy's Community Fund and a forthcoming Partnership Fund, rather than a council paying for panels on its own roof outright.

The practical problem the guide is trying to solve is one this site has touched on before with the Warm Homes local grant coverage, that councils often have the land, the buildings and the political will to back a community energy project, but not the in-house expertise to write a cabinet paper, structure a community solar strategy or draft a council motion from scratch. Templates for exactly those documents, built by people who have already run this process at Cotswold District Council, cut the time between a council deciding it wants to act and actually having a fundable proposal ready when the money opens.

That timing matters because GBE's Community Fund and Partnership Fund are both expected to open for applications this summer, and the roughly £1bn earmarked for this kind of partnership funding is not going to sit open indefinitely. The guide's authors are explicit that councils which have already done the groundwork, decision papers signed off, a strategy in place, a motion passed, are the ones positioned to move fastest once applications open, which in a competitive funding round tends to matter more than the strength of the underlying project idea.

For East Kent readers, the relevant question is whether Kent County Council, Dover District Council or any of the district authorities covering Sandwich pick this template up. Nothing in the guide is specific to any one region, and a council-community solar partnership funded this way is exactly the kind of scheme that could sit alongside existing local NHS and public-building solar activity in the area, Kent and Medway Mental Health NHS Trust's own solar rollout being one example, if a local authority is willing to do the groundwork. Worth watching whether any East Kent authority puts in an early application once the funds actually open.

Read the original: edie. Commentary is Sandwich Solar's own editorial view; the original reporting is credited to its publisher.

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