Solar panels in Loughborough, our home town
- RECC member
- 6-year workmanship warranty
- Insurance-Backed Guarantee
The roofs we grew up around
We didn't pick Loughborough off a map. We're based here, so we know how the roofs across the town behave, and it's rarely a long drive to come and see one.
The streets fanning out from the centre and the university are red-brick Victorian and Edwardian, with steep slate roofs and narrow slopes facing the road. A lot of it is the rented and shared stock of the Golden Triangle. On a roof like that, space is the thing that decides the system, so the slope that catches the most sun does the heavy lifting. Which way a roof faces, and what shades it, matters more here than on any newer estate.
Head out to Shelthorpe, Thorpe Acre, Garendon or up toward Nanpantan and the picture changes. The estate and detached houses there give us wider tiled slopes and far more room to place a full array where the sun actually lands. Bigger isn't automatically better, though, so we've set out what size you actually need on its own page rather than push the largest system that happens to fit.
Several conservation areas, and a bell foundry
Loughborough carries more heritage protection than most towns its size, so a quick planning check is just part of how we quote here.
There are several conservation areas, from Church Gate and Queens Park to Victoria Street and Leicester Road. The Grade II* John Taylor bell foundry, still casting bells off Freehold Street, sits under listed-building rules of its own. Most of Loughborough falls outside all of this. Whether a given roof needs an application, and when a listed building needs consent, depends on which roof and which building, so we've set out the planning rules in full separately.
The town's Article 4 direction near the university trips people up, but it only removes the automatic right to turn a house into a shared home. It says nothing about panels. We handle the planning check, and the network operator's connection notice with it, wherever your roof sits.
A few minutes away, wherever you are
Being based in town means we're rarely far off, whether you're in a centre terrace or out on one of the estates.
Because we're local, arranging a visit to look at the roof before we quote is quick and easy to sort. Solar nearly always raises a question about battery storage, and if you're also weighing up an EV charger in Loughborough, that shifts the numbers again.
Just up the Soar, Quorn and Syston are within easy reach too. You can see everywhere we work on our areas we cover page.
Common questions
- Which parts of Loughborough are conservation areas?
- Several of them, including Church Gate, Queens Park, Victoria Street and Leicester Road, so a bit more of the centre is covered than people expect. Most of the town, though, sits well outside them. The Grade II* John Taylor bell foundry is listed in its own right. And the Article 4 direction near the university that worries people only covers turning a home into a shared house, so it doesn't touch solar at all. We run the planning check for you either way.
- Is solar worth fitting on a student let near the university?
- Sometimes, but the sums sit oddly. In a rented house the tenant pays the electric while the landlord pays for the panels, so the cost and the benefit land in different hands. On top of that, the terraces around the Golden Triangle have narrow slate roofs with limited room, so a big array often isn't on the cards anyway. We'll walk a landlord through where it genuinely stacks up rather than pretend every let is a good fit.
- Do you cover the villages around Loughborough?
- Yes, and from our base in town they're all a short hop. Quorn and Shepshed are on the doorstep, and out into Charnwood Forest the homes around Woodhouse Eaves, Newtown Linford and Nanpantan often have no mains gas, running on oil or LPG instead. Those are frequently where solar with a battery makes the biggest dent in a bill, because the power those homes lean on costs more to begin with.
More questions? See our common questions.