Torus social housing at Peninsula House, O'Leary Street, Warrington, covered in scaffolding during major refurbishment work in 2026.

Peninsula House, a 12-storey residential tower on O’Leary Street in Warrington, Cheshire, is pictured surrounded by scaffolding during major refurbishment works in 2026. Built for Warrington County Borough Council in the early 1970s on part of the former Peninsula Barracks site, the block contains 82 flats and remains a prominent example of post-war high-rise housing in the town. The extensive scaffold and protective sheeting around the brick elevations indicate substantial external work. A local Warrington history source describes Peninsula House as social housing owned by Torus Foundation, although other historic records show that the block was sold into private ownership and refurbished after 2017. Publicly available sources do not clearly establish that the specific 2026 works shown here are a Torus project, nor that this building is receiving government decarbonisation grant funding, so that connection should not be stated as certain. The wider context is significant. Torus has carried out major energy-efficiency programmes across homes in Warrington, Liverpool and St Helens, combining its own investment with government support. In September 2026 Torus said a three-year £41.8 million retrofit programme had improved 836 homes through measures including wall and roof insulation, replacement windows and doors, ventilation, solar photovoltaic panels and air-source heat pumps. The programme was supported by about £9 million of Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund grant secured through the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority consortium. That fund, now known as the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund, helps registered social landlords improve homes below EPC band C through fabric-first energy efficiency and low-carbon heating measures. The photograph therefore records investment in an ageing high-rise block and the wider challenge of modernising older British housing for energy efficiency, resident comfort, building safety and lower carbon emissions.