MORE than 1,500 Southampton homes will be getting improvements as part of a major £27m scheme to slash energy use.

Southampton City Council is launching a new energy efficiency project today which will affect four city housing estates.

Tenants to benefit from improvements will be in Thornhill, Shirley, St Mary’s and Maybush.

The council says the measures will help reduce residents’ energy bills and also provide jobs as the intention is to use local contractors and businesses.

Work will get underway in three tower blocks - Dumbleton, Meredith and Hightown - and more than 40 walk up blocks at Thornhill, with improvements also at Shirley Towers and Milner Court, Shirley, Albion Towers in St Mary’s, and Sturminster House in Maybush.

This is three times larger than previous similar works done in Weston.

Properties will get a range of energy-saving measures including new windows, new heating, which is tenant controlled, as well as external wall insulation fitted to the outside of the buildings, which reduces the amount of heat escaping through walls, new roofs and coloured rendering.

Work will begin next month at Dumbleton Towers, Thornhill, but the council was unable to provide a timescale for completion.

The scheme is being delivered in a partnership between Southampton City Council and British Gas, as part of the Energy Companies Obligation (ECO) - a government scheme which places legal obligations on larger energy suppliers to deliver energy efficiency measures to homes.

Costs are therefore paid through the energy industry and recovered through charges to consumers.

A contract is due to be signed today.

This comes after they collaborated on the Community Energy Savings Project at International Way, Weston, which also provided energy-saving improvements to residents of more than 500 homes - a £9m refurbishment completed in 2013.

However, as previously reported in the Daily Echo in January last year, the council launched an investigation after windows were found to be leaking.

Defective windows had left high rise tenants facing sky high energy bills over Christmas after finding themselves with draughts and leaks.

The council dished out plastic sheeting to residents while engineers tried to make the homes weather tight.

Residents told of constant damp from windows, fears of flooding and using towels to mop up the leaks when it rained.

Cllr Warwick Payne, cabinet member for Housing and Sustainability, said: “This energy efficiency project will provide affordable warmth to tenants, improve the appearance of properties and boost the local economy with job opportunities created by this exciting scheme.”

Ellen Lancaster, vice chair of Maybush Triangle and Area Tenants and Residents Association, who lives in Sturminster House, said the heating bill is a standard charge at present included in the rent and she understood that under the improvements residents will be charged for heating they use by individual meters.

She said: “I think it will be beneficial to tenants.

“There’s an awful lot of people in the building that aren’t working and a lot of single parent families so they are struggling to pay the bills - this will help.”