A new company could be set up by Swindon Borough Council in a bid to make homes more energy efficient.

The business would allow the local authority to attract funding for the improvements needed to lower heating costs and carbon emissions generated by homes.

Labelled a community interest company – a private concern which must have a role in improving its local area – it would also also set up schemes to train people with the skills they need to fit out houses and other buildings.

Councillors votes unanimously to back the idea, put forward by Conservative councillor Matthew Courtliff and Labour environment spokesman Jane Milner-Barry. The council’s cabinet member for climate change Keith Williams must now investigate the possibility of setting up the company to “perform residential and commercial energy efficiency audits in Swindon and to encourage the training and creation of retrofitting jobs in the community to support this initiative".

Coun Williams is instructed to try and find the funding to get it running.

As a CIC, rather than the council, it could attract funding from government and other sources such as charities and trusts to help pay for improvements such as double and triple glazing, insulation and adding things like ground or air-source heat pumps.

Coun Courtliff said: “Heating residential and commercial property is one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions in the UK.

“We want to get housing in Swindon to be as environmentally friendly as it can be. That can be achieved by retrofitting properties to a high level of energy efficiency.”

Coun Courtliff said improving existing housing was better for the environment than knocking it down and building new properties with higher efficiency standards.

“Retrofitting a property to meet the highest standards of energy efficiency generates around 10 per cent of the emissions of a new build," he said.

Coun Milner-Barrynsaid that bodies such as Warm and Safe Wiltshire were able to provide some funding but were restricted as to the types of homes they can offer such help.

She was much in favour of the CIC providing training in retrofitting houses, adding: “These skills will be in great demand in the future and it would be great to provide people in Swindon with these skills, equipping them for the future.”

Coun Williams was pleased to be given the action. He said: “Swindon has slightly higher average energy efficiency rating for its housing than nationally, because so much of our housing was built in and since the 1990s.

“But a significant amount of housing is older. A fabric first approach, such as insulation, is far less costly and gives a far greater benefit. I am very happy to give my support to this motion.”