Alectrona
Commercial solar fundingA straight account of what the UK Shared Prosperity Fund was in Yorkshire, why it never offered a single solar grant you could apply to, and why, as it winds down in 2026, it is not a route a private commercial project should be built on.
These are representative example reviews, not yet-collected customer feedback. They are written to illustrate the kind of feedback Alectrona aims to earn and are shown as design placeholders while we gather and verify reviews from our first commercial clients. Alectrona is the commercial solar trading brand of RVTC LTD.
What set Alectrona apart was the documented design pack. We had quotes from three installers, but only Alectrona handed us a full set of drawings, a single-line diagram and a design referencing BS 7671 and the G99 connection process. The whole thing read like an engineering submission rather than a sales brochure. Our M&E consultant reviewed it and signed it off without a single query. That gave the board the confidence to release the capital.
Other firms priced our roof off a satellite image and a desktop guess. Alectrona flew an in-house drone survey, fully insured and flown by a qualified commercial drone pilot, and built a 3D model of the actual roof. It picked up plant, vents and a parapet line that a flat aerial photo had completely missed, which changed the panel layout. I would rather find that out at design stage than on the day the scaffold goes up. The accuracy of that survey is the reason I trusted everything that followed.
As a finance director I was wary of being oversold a system bigger than we could use. Alectrona modelled the array against our actual half-hourly consumption data rather than an annual total, so it is sized to what we genuinely draw on site during the day. They were honest that exporting surplus is worth far less than self-consumption, and built the design around that. The capital case stacked up because the engineering was honest, not because the numbers were inflated.
We were undecided between buying outright, leasing and a PPA. Alectrona laid out all three side by side with the pros and cons of each against our balance sheet, instead of pushing the one that pays them best. They were clear about where a PPA makes sense and where capex wins, and pointed us at our own accountant for the tax treatment. The survey and design took a little longer than I expected, but the thoroughness was worth the wait. Genuinely consultative.
The install crew were tidy and well run, and worked to a clear CDM 2015 plan with a proper site induction and RAMS. What impressed me most was the handover. We received a full commissioning pack with the IEC 62446-1 test results, certification, O&M documentation and an as-built record for our maintenance team. As the people who have to live with this asset for the next twenty years, having that paperwork in order matters enormously. Nothing was left loose.
I expected the usual hard sell and got the opposite. After surveying our site Alectrona told us one roof section was not worth covering because of shading, and that a smaller, well-sited array was the better investment than filling every square metre. There was no commission-driven upselling and no pressure. For a six-figure capital project, that straight talk is exactly what you want from the people advising you. We will be using them again on our second site.
The UK Shared Prosperity Fund has ended. It ran from 2022 to March 2025, took a one-year transition to March 2026, and closes to all activity by 30 September 2026. It never funded solar directly. A few Yorkshire councils used part of their allocation for low-carbon SME grants that could pay toward solar, but most are now closed or committed.
The UK Shared Prosperity Fund was a central-government local-growth fund. Money was allocated to lead and combined authorities, who then designed and ran their own business-support schemes inside their own boundaries. There was never a national "UKSPF solar grant" you could apply to. UKSPF itself did not fund solar at all. What happened in practice is that some individual councils and combined authorities chose to spend part of their allocation on SME energy-efficiency or low-carbon grants, and a minority of those would pay toward solar PV where a prior energy audit recommended it.
In Yorkshire that allocation was administered in different places by different bodies: South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority, West Yorkshire Combined Authority, York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority, and the various district and unitary councils beneath them. So whether anything reached solar depended entirely on which authority covered your site and what scheme, if any, that authority chose to run.
As of mid-2026 UKSPF is in its final wind-down. The programme was given a one-year transition extension for 2025–26, worth around £900m for England, announced at the Autumn Budget 2024. New commitments closed on 31 March 2026, and activity funded under that allocation may only continue until 30 September 2026. That is a spend tail, not a fresh application window. Most council UKSPF schemes are now closed, fully committed, or being wound up. The York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority Business Sustainability Programme, which could fund solar, closed to applications and is in appraisal.
From 1 April 2026 UKSPF is being replaced by two new funds. The Local Growth Fund is worth around £902m across roughly four years, confirmed at the Autumn Budget 2025, but it is restricted to 11 Mayoral Strategic Authorities in the North and Midlands with below-average GDP per head. The Yorkshire mayoral authorities are on that list: South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, York and North Yorkshire, and Hull and East Yorkshire all qualify. Areas without a mayoral authority do not, and funding to places outside the 11 city-regions is not being replaced. The fund is a roughly 60% cut in annual local-growth funding compared with UKSPF, so even within the qualifying areas the money is tighter than before. The Pride in Place Programme is a neighbourhood-regeneration vehicle of up to £20m per place over ten years across 339 deprived neighbourhoods. It is not a business grant and will not fund a commercial roof.
Where a Yorkshire scheme was or is open, eligibility was set by the administering authority, not by central government, and the rules varied by council and by round. The common pattern was:
Public-sector bodies, larger enterprises, and certain sectors were excluded depending on the scheme. These figures and caps are scheme and round specific; treat them as indicators to verify, not fixed rules.
A typical Yorkshire decarbonisation grant ran as capped match-funding. The business received a free energy audit, then applied for a capital grant covering a percentage of approved project cost, commonly 40–50%, within minimum and maximum grant bands, paid in arrears against evidence and subject to subsidy-control rules. Solar PV was eligible only where the specific scheme allowed it and, usually, where the audit recommended it. A private commercial customer could never apply to UKSPF centrally; they had to find an open scheme run by their own local or combined authority or growth hub.
One Yorkshire example is genuinely open at the time of writing. Sheffield City Council's Local Growth Fund Low Carbon Project operates across South Yorkshire, covering Sheffield, Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham, though the premises and eligibility rules vary by local authority. It offers up to 50% of project cost, with a minimum grant of £1,500 and a maximum of £30,000, is SME only, and can fund solar where an energy survey recommends it. The investment must complete by December 2026. West Yorkshire Combined Authority previously ran the REBiz resource-efficiency grant, but that programme ran from 2020 to 2023 and is closed; it is not a current route, so check West Yorkshire Combined Authority directly for any present successor scheme. All of these figures are scheme specific and change round by round; verify before relying on any of them.
For a typical private commercial solar customer, UKSPF is not a route you can rely on in 2026. The programme is closing, there was never a single solar grant to apply to, and most council schemes are now shut, committed, or in appraisal. Whether anything is reachable depends entirely on your specific authority and what round, if any, is currently open there. Most areas have no open solar grant at any given time. Where money does exist it is usually capped match-funding, often 40–50%, a few thousand to around £30k, SME only, geographically restricted, frequently dependent on a prior energy audit, and routinely oversubscribed and first come, first served.
Yorkshire's mayoral areas are better placed than most because their mayoral authorities qualify for the successor Local Growth Fund from April 2026, and some council low-carbon grants such as Sheffield's are open with a December 2026 completion deadline. Even so, it is not yet published whether any of those mayoral authorities will run a direct SME solar capital grant, so the right approach is the same: treat any grant as a possible bonus, not the basis for the project, and size the business case on the unsubsidised cost. If a grant lands, it improves an already-sound investment rather than rescuing a marginal one.
The funding that genuinely supports a private commercial roof is not a grant at all. It is the tax and income position on a system you own.
Each of these has its own page on this site. The reliable grant action, separately, is to check your own council and growth hub or combined authority, South Yorkshire MCA, West Yorkshire CA, York and North Yorkshire CA, or your district council, for what is genuinely open right now.
Indicative, not financial or tax advice. Confirm the position with a qualified accountant or tax adviser. Your figure comes from a survey-led PV*SOL model.
Book a free feasibility and eligibility check. We will model your roof, size the business case on the real, unsubsidised cost, and tell you straight whether any current Yorkshire scheme is genuinely reachable for your site. No grant promises, no headline figure, just an honest read on the numbers.