Social housing provider, the Peabody Trust, is planning an ambitious programme to fit solar panels to its London housing stock. The move by Peabody is one of the most ambitious retrofit schemes to be undertaken by a social housing provider in this country and is driven by its aim to become a carbon-neutral business by 2020. It has budgetted £23m to spend on fitting photovoltaic panels to existing housing blocks and is now on the hunt for a contractor to carry out the work. The firm is seeking a single contractor to carry out the programme and has given interested firms until 21 January to obtain further details on the plan.

It is envisaged that the installation programme will run for approximately 18 months, but Peabody aims to have the substantial part of the job completed by April next year.

Since last April, when the government's feed-in tariff system was introduced, the market for supplying and fitting PV panels has taken off as homeowners, businesses and those caretaking community facilities such as village halls seek to sell home generated electricity to the National Grid. Some new build projects have been fitted with solar panels as standard but much of the work has involved retrofits to existing structures.

Some Local authorities have also taken the plunge - plans to fit power generating solar panels to council-owned properties in Birmingham are progressing after the council agreed a "green new deal" scheme covering 10,000 homes.

In the biggest proposal for retrofitting houses through an energy efficiency upgrade yet seen in the UK, the council have agreed a £100m proposal designed to create jobs and meet the city's ambitious targets for reducing carbon emissions.

The plan – Birmingham Energy Savers – will be jointly funded by Birmingham council and investment from energy suppliers and commercial banks, and follows two successful pilot schemes conducted in what is Europe's biggest Local Authority.