Wymondham and South Norfolk homeowners can register free for the council's solar and battery round by 25 September. It is a group-buying auction, not a grant.

South Norfolk Council has reopened its solar panel and battery storage group-buying scheme, and registration closes on 25 September 2026, which leaves homeowners in Wymondham and the rest of the district 39 days from today to put their name down. The council announced the round on 6 August, jointly with Broadland District Council, and says residents “can register free of charge until 25 September 2026”.

The important thing to understand before you sign up is what the scheme is. It is not a grant and it is not a discount code. It is a bulk-buying auction: the two councils gather registrations, pre-vetted installers bid for the whole batch of work, and each registered household is then emailed a personalised offer based on the roof details it submitted. Registering is free and carries no obligation to go ahead, and you can turn the offer down.

Four stages of the South Norfolk solar and battery group-buying scheme: register free by 25 September 2026, installers bid in a group auction, personalised offer and roof survey, then installation, with a note that there is no obligation at any stage
How the round works, from the councils' announcement of 6 August 2026 and the scheme operator's own description of the process

What is on offer

The round covers solar photovoltaic panels, battery storage alongside new panels, and retrofit battery storage for households that already have solar and want to store more of what they generate rather than exporting it. That last option is the one people tend to miss: the council’s own scheme page says you can “register to have battery storage added to your existing solar panels”.

The councils are working with iChoosr Ltd, which runs the scheme under the Switch Together brand. That name change matters if you are searching for it. The scheme spent years as Solar Together, and the council still links to solartogether.co.uk/south-norfolk/home, which now redirects to the Switch Together South Norfolk page. The operator’s site states plainly that it was “Formerly known as Solar Together”, so if you registered in a previous year and are wondering why the old brand has disappeared, nothing has been withdrawn.

South Norfolk Council’s Cabinet Member for the Environment, Cllr Martyn Hooton, said the scheme “gives residents easy access to trusted information and installers, helping them understand whether solar panels and battery storage are the right choice for their property”. Broadland’s Cllr Jan Davis called it “a straightforward, no-obligation way to explore solar panels and battery storage”. The council’s own release is careful on this point, noting that “solar and battery systems are a home investment and will not be suitable for every household”.

What the councils have claimed for it before

The councils have run this round most years, and their earlier announcements are the only figures on the record, each one tied to the year it was published rather than to now:

  • In its release of 2 September 2021, the council said that “in previous years, participating Norfolk households have saved an average of 30 per cent against the market average on the cost of solar panels”, and that the UK-wide programme had delivered almost 5,000 installations.
  • By its release of 23 August 2022, the figure had grown to “over 7,000 installations” and more than 130,000 tonnes of avoided carbon emissions over four years.
  • The 2026 release drops the numbers and says only that the approach “has already supported thousands of households across the UK”.

The 30 per cent claim is a five-year-old statement about earlier rounds, and neither council has repeated it this year. Treat it as history, not as a price you have been promised.

One date the council has not published

Last year’s round, launched on 4 August 2025, closed for registrations on 17 October 2025 and described a reverse auction held after the closing date, with personal recommendations emailed out afterwards. This year’s announcement names the 25 September deadline but does not give an auction date, and neither does the operator’s South Norfolk page. So the sequence is known and the auction date is not, which is worth knowing if you are trying to work out when an offer might land.

Note also that this year’s deadline is three weeks earlier in the calendar than last year’s. If you were waiting for an October cut-off because that is what happened in 2025, it will not be there.

What it means for you

If you own your home in Wymondham, Hethersett, Cringleford, Long Stratton, Diss, Harleston, Loddon or any of the South Norfolk villages, the decision in front of you before 25 September is only whether to get a price, not whether to buy. You will need your roof’s size, orientation and shading, and the registration is free and non-binding. A qualified installer confirms the roof’s suitability at survey stage, which is when an unsuitable roof gets ruled out, so a registration is not a commitment to anything.

Two practical points that the announcement does not cover. First, most domestic roof-mounted panels on a house are permitted development and need no planning application, but the rules are different for listed buildings, for flat roofs and for stand-alone ground arrays, and South Norfolk has a great many listed properties: check before you commit. Applications and decisions across the district are tracked on our Wymondham planning news page. Second, the council release mentions upgrades that “increase property value over time”, which is a claim about the general market rather than a measurement of your street. What homes in your postcode have actually sold for is on our Wymondham house prices page.

If you are a parish council, a village hall committee or a community group rather than a householder, this scheme is not aimed at you. It is a domestic group-buying round, and community-building projects go through the council’s grant routes instead.

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