Quick answer
If you rent from a housing association or the council, your landlord decides whether panels go on the home. You can ask, in writing, about planned works, how homes are chosen, export payments, disruption and maintenance. Plug-in panels still need the landlord’s permission. The Warm Homes: Local Grant does not list social tenants among the groups it serves.
Why the landlord makes the decision
Solar panels are fixed to the roof, cabled through the loft and wired into the home’s electrical installation. All three belong to the landlord. A tenancy agreement normally lets you live in the home and decorate it within limits, but it does not let you alter the structure or the wiring without consent, and panels do both. In general terms the landlord is also responsible for keeping the structure, the roof and the electrics in repair, and insures the building. Anything bolted to that roof becomes part of what the landlord has to look after.
That is why the useful question for a tenant is not “Which firm should I call?” but “What is my landlord planning, and how can I find out?” The rest of this page is about getting a clear answer to that, and about what to check if panels do arrive.
How many Winsford households this applies to
The council’s planning paper describes Winsford as a town expanded in the 1960s to take new residents from Manchester and Liverpool (Places background paper, 2024). Sixty years on, the Census still shows that history. In Over & Verdin, the largest of the town’s five wards, 28.2% of households rented from a social landlord in 2021. Wharton followed at 23.9% and Swanlow at 20.5%, with Dene at 13.0% and Gravel at 9.1%. Across Cheshire West and Chester as a whole the figure was 14.6% (Census 2021 on Nomis).
Worked out from each ward’s total, that comes to roughly 3,213 households in the five wards whose roofs are a landlord’s to decide on. The full breakdown, with private renting and owner-occupation beside it, is on who decides about solar in Winsford, and the house types behind those numbers are on Winsford homes by ward. For why the town grew the way it did, see the salt town and solar.
How social landlords usually go about it
This guide cannot tell you what any particular landlord intends; only the landlord can. What can be said in general is how such decisions tend to be made, which helps in reading whatever answer comes back.
- In programmes, not one home at a time. Landlords with many homes tend to plan energy work in batches, grouped by house type, area or the timing of other work such as reroofing.
- On the evidence of surveys. Stock condition surveys and energy assessments show which homes are poorly rated and which roofs could take panels.
- Alongside other measures. Insulation, heating and ventilation often come before or with panels, because a home that loses heat gains less from extra electricity.
- Within funding rounds. Money for improving social homes reaches landlords through their own budgets and other routes, and it arrives with timetables that shape what happens when.
- With some roofs left out. Steep north-facing slopes, heavy shade, small or awkward roofs, or covering that needs replacing soon can all push a home down the list.
None of this means a request is pointless. It means the answer may be “not yet” for reasons to do with the whole programme rather than your home in particular, and that a well-timed question can put useful information on the landlord’s file.
Questions to put to your landlord
Write them down and send them together. A single clear message is easier to answer than a series of phone calls, and it leaves a record. These are the points that matter most:
- Planned works. Is solar, or any other energy improvement, planned for this home? If so, roughly when?
- Which homes. How does the landlord decide which homes are included, and has this one been assessed?
- Ownership. If panels are fitted, who owns them, and are they treated as part of the building like the boiler or windows?
- Export arrangements. Will the household benefit from the electricity used at home, and who receives any payment for electricity sent to the grid? Will the meter be changed?
- Disruption. How much notice will be given, how long will scaffolding stand, will anyone need access to the loft or the consumer unit, and how will the household be told?
- Maintenance. Who looks after the panels and inverter, how should a fault be reported, and what happens to the panels when the roof needs repair?
- Charges. Does fitting panels change the rent or any service charge for this home?
Ask for the reply in writing, keep it with your tenancy papers and note the date. If the answer is that nothing is planned, a short follow-up a year later costs nothing but a few minutes.
If panels are offered
A landlord who does plan to fit panels will usually write first and may ask for access for a survey. That survey is the landlord’s, carried out by the firm or staff they choose, and the firm works for them rather than for you. Even so, it helps to be ready with information only you have: where shade falls on the roof during the day, any leaks or damp you have reported, and what is stored in the loft.
Once the system is in, find out three things. First, where the inverter and isolator switches are, so you can recognise them and tell the landlord if a warning light shows. Second, how to see what the system is making, if there is a display. Third, how much of your daytime use could shift to sunny hours. Panels lower bills mainly through electricity used while they are generating; export and self-use explains how the pattern works through the year in Winsford.
Plug-in panels and balconies
Small plug-in kits are sometimes suggested as a way round a landlord’s roof. The planning side changed in 2026: an amending order brought plug-in solar into the permitted development rules as solar PV, and it ruled out fixing such kits to wooden walls, balconies, enclosures or cladding (SI 2026/896; Part 14 of the order).
Planning is only one hurdle, though. A tenancy usually forbids fixing things to the outside of the building, and the landlord is responsible for the electrical installation the kit would connect to. So a tenant who wants a plug-in panel needs the landlord’s written permission first, whatever the planning position. If permission is refused, ask why and keep the answer. Planning rules in Winsford sets out the wider rules.
Why the Local Grant is not the route here
West Cheshire’s Warm Homes: Local Grant can include solar PV and runs until 31 March 2028. The council describes it as being for owner-occupiers and private tenants on lower incomes in homes rated EPC D to G; social housing tenants are not among the groups it lists (council support page; GOV.UK). For a housing association or council tenant, then, the grant is not something to apply for. Improvements to social homes come through the landlord’s own plans. The full list of schemes, and who each one is for, is on grants and schemes.
Tenancy, repairs and moving on
In general terms, panels fitted by a landlord are the landlord’s to repair. Report any problem through the normal repairs route, as you would a leaking gutter, and do not try to clean, move or reset anything on the roof yourself. If a fault means the system stops working, the household loses its daytime electricity from the roof until the repair is made, so it is worth reporting promptly.
If you move to another of the landlord’s homes, the panels stay with the building. Keeping the landlord’s written replies helps if you later want to ask about solar on a new home, because it shows what you were told and when. Flats raise further questions about shared roofs and communal supplies; flats and solar deals with those.
Where to go next
If you rent from a private landlord rather than a social one, the position is different: see private renters and landlords. If you have a question about your own home that this page does not answer, send it through the question form. This guide is published independently and does not act for any landlord or for the council, so it can explain the rules but cannot speak for either. Short answers to related questions are gathered on the FAQs.