Eligibility and the Building Upgrade Finance Process

Eligibility and the Building Upgrade Finance process

To be eligible for Building Upgrade Finance:

• Your building must be an existing, non-strata commercial building (office, industrial, retail) in the City of Parramatta Local Government Area, and
• The upgrade works must result in an environment improvement.

Upgrade planning

Talk with a building professional to identify upgrade opportunities for your building and develop an upgrade scope of works. For holistic building upgrades energy audits can help to better understand your building and help to prioritise upgrade works.

Building professionals can also assist with upgrade eligibility and technical requirements of Building Upgrade Finance.

Discuss the scope of upgrade works with a finance provider for Building Upgrade Finance eligibility.

While you can use any finance provider for Building Upgrade finance, the following finance providers have specialised products available:

Environmental Upgrade Agreement contract

Once eligibility has been confirmed the Environmental Upgrade Agreement (EUA) contract is prepared by the finance provider, with input from Council, the building owner and energy/technical consultant. The EUA contract facilitates the repayment of the finance through council’s rates processes to the finance provider. Typically, the finance provider will prepare the EUA contract and the building owner’s Letter of Offer, at the same time.

All upgrades using Building Upgrade Finance must use the EUA contract approved by the NSW Government.

Fees and charges

Council provides Building Upgrade Finance on a basic cost recovery basis. Council's application and annual administration fee is generally paid as a part of the first repayment.

To encourage and support local building owners to carry out Building Upgrade Finance upgrades, from September 2018 Council will waive the fee for the next 10 agreements signed in the City of Parramatta Local Government Area. This is valued at approximately $12,000 for each agreement.

Upgrade works

Once the EUA contract is executed by all three parties (building owner, finance provider and council), the funds are released to the building owner and the upgrade works are undertaken.

Post-execution

Once the EUA contract is executed by all three parties (building owner, finance provider and council), the funds are released to the building owner and the upgrade works are undertaken.

A brief annual report of works completed and savings verified is to be provided by the building owner to Council each year, for the term of the finance. The annual report (building) template is included as Schedule 8 of the EUA contract.

Part of Council’s role in facilitating the repayment of the finance through the rates system is recovery of unpaid repayments. Council’s Enforcement Procedure outlines this process, and forms a part of the EUA contract (Annexure 1).