Renting in Leeds: solar panels for tenants and landlords

How Leeds households hold their homes

The 2021 Census counted 341,466 Leeds households. Owner-occupiers made up 57% of them, split almost evenly between 28% who owned outright and 29% paying off a mortgage or loan. Private tenants accounted for 21.8%, and social tenants for 20.4%, with Leeds City Council itself the landlord for 15.1% (ONS Census 2021). Put into households on our arithmetic, private renting covers about 74,400 Leeds households, and all forms of renting together, 42.2% of the total, roughly 144,100 of the city's households.

That matters for solar because, for every one of those renters, the person paying the electricity bill and the person owning the roof are two different people. The table shows whose agreement roof panels would need in each case. Shared houses and flats add complications of their own, which the guide to shared houses and flats works through. One arrangement sits in between: an owner who takes in a lodger keeps the decision, because a lodger has no say over the building at all.

Who gives permission

A private tenant rents the use of a home, not its bricks and slates. Panels are bolted through the roof covering, cabled down through the loft and wired into the consumer unit, and tenancy agreements commonly bar alterations of that kind without the landlord's written consent. If a letting agent runs the let, the request still ends up on the landlord's desk; the agent simply forwards it. Pressing ahead without consent puts the tenancy and the deposit at risk, and it is not a route worth trying. If the landlord says yes, get the agreement on paper, including who owns and maintains the panels and what becomes of the arrangement when the tenancy ends.

Council tenants sit in a different position again. Because Leeds City Council is the owner, anything on the roof is its decision, and panels arrive through council programmes rather than one-off requests. Housing association tenants, the remaining 5.3% of households in social housing, deal with their association in the same way. What a social tenant can usefully do is ask whether their street or block is lined up for energy work, and report cold or damp so that it is on the landlord's file. The Warm Homes: Local Grant described below is not open to either group: it is limited to privately owned homes rated EPC D to G, where the household earns under £36,000, someone in it gets an income-related benefit, or the address falls in a qualifying area (Leeds City Council).

Energy costs weigh most on the households with least power to change their homes. On the 2024 figures, 11.1% of Leeds households, about 39,913 in number, were in fuel poverty, just under the Yorkshire and the Humber rate of 11.3% (DESNZ).

Local help for privately rented homes

In Leeds, the Warm Homes: Local Grant is run by the city council, and solar PV is on its list of fundable measures. Its scope takes in privately rented homes as well as those lived in by their owners. A home has to be privately owned and rated EPC D to G, and the household has to earn under £36,000, get an income-related benefit, or live in one of the areas the scheme names (Leeds City Council). At the time this guide was checked, demand had closed it to new applications. It is due to stay open until March 2028, with the possibility of reopening after a review from April 2027 (Warm Homes Leeds). Households able to fund the work themselves get no grant for solar (Warm Homes Plan).

With a let property, the practical questions come before any form. Whatever is installed belongs to the landlord's building, so nothing happens without the landlord's say-so. It is worth finding out from the scheme how it treats income in a rented home, and whether a landlord would be expected to put money in, and worth reading the home's certificate before assuming it sits in the D to G range. On ONS figures 32.6% of Leeds terraced houses with a certificate are rated C or better, which leaves 67.4% at D or below (ONS). The funding page covers the wider picture.

What a landlord weighs up

For a landlord, panels mean a roof alteration, a line on the property's EPC and a piece of equipment to look after across changing tenancies. The government's Warm Homes Plan proposes stronger energy performance standards for privately rented homes (Warm Homes Plan), and less bought-in electricity is one of the things an EPC calculation rewards. On an older terrace, insulation and heating may shift the rating further than panels; the certificate's own list of recommendations shows the order for that particular house. Across all Leeds homes with a certificate, 49.7% are rated C or better, compared with 53.3% across England (ONS), so the city begins a little behind the national picture.

• The roof first. Slipped slates, tired flashings or a leaking valley are easier to put right before fixings go in than after. Any scaffold put up on the public pavement or road needs the council's licence (Leeds City Council), so settle who applies for it. The guides to terraces and semis and back-to-back houses cover the house types most Leeds landlords let.
• The bill and the export. Where the tenant pays the electricity, the tenant gains from daytime use; agree in writing who holds the export tariff. The export payments guide explains how that works.
• The file. Store the MCS certificate, the network notification and every warranty with the property's records, where the next EPC assessor can find them.
• Faults and access. Agree how a tenant reports a fault, and give fair notice of any days with scaffold, roofers and an electrician on site.
• A later sale. Panels stay with the building when a let property is sold, so the certificates and warranties become part of the sale paperwork.

The cost of solar in Leeds shows what systems have cost at the Yorkshire and the Humber averages, and the installer checklist lists what to confirm before signing.

Plug-in kits for tenants

Plug-in solar kits with an output of no more than 800 W have been lawful in Great Britain from 27 August 2026 (SI 2026/848). A kit plugs into an ordinary socket and needs no roof work, which makes it the one form of solar a tenant can realistically arrange alone. Fixing it up is another matter: brackets on an outside wall, a window frame or a balcony rail change the building, and the tenancy decides whether they need the landlord's consent. Council and housing association tenancies carry their own rules on fixtures, so a social tenant should check with the housing team before putting one up. Counting a kit as 0.8 kW of south-facing panels tilted at 35° in the city centre, it would produce around 762 kWh a year on our arithmetic (PVGIS), roughly 30% of Ofgem's typical yearly figure for a household, 2,500 kWh (Ofgem), most of it on long summer days. The Energy Saving Trust publishes guidance on choosing and using one (Energy Saving Trust), and the plug-in solar guide covers where kits can and cannot go.

Raising it with your landlord

A short, specific letter or email gets further than a vague question. Cover these points:

1. Precisely what you have in mind: panels across a named roof slope, or a small kit and the spot you would put it.
2. The home's current EPC band, taken from its certificate.
3. Where it applies, the local grant: the Warm Homes: Local Grant covers privately owned homes rated D to G when the household earns under £36,000, gets an income-related benefit or lives in a qualifying area, and it could be worth a look if it reopens to applications.
4. What you offer in exchange: access for the work, prompt reporting of faults, and a written note of who holds the export tariff.
5. A fallback: if the roof is ruled out, ask whether the landlord would accept a plug-in kit.

A request that answers a landlord's likely questions in advance is easier to agree to. If you would like someone to read the wording before it goes, the question form on this page goes to the guide's publisher, and the reply comes by email.