National Warm Homes Council

  By  David Lennan , Chairman,  National Warm Homes Council The Energy Saving Trust and leading home and decarbonisation organisations wrote to the energy minister last week to highlight the key areas that must be addressed in the government’s Warm Homes Plan (WHP), which is expected to be unveiled in the summer. For the WHP to achieve success, the Trust is calling for a boost to public awareness on the net-zero transition, better access to funding and finance to overcome the upfront costs to making home-efficiency improvements, and greater support for the retrofit supply chain. The WHP is being launched at a time when millions of families are still reeling from rising energy prices and fuel poverty. The Plan commits to investing £13.2bn to lower bills and emissions while making homes warmer and improving energy security. As part of this investment, the government plans to upgrade five million homes over this parliament. However, the government is moving too slowly to mee...

By   David Lennan , Chairman,   National Warm Homes Council The government recently closed its public consultation on improving home energy performance. But do plans to reform Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) go far enough for millions of families across Britain living in cold, damp, and unhealthy homes?   Improving the UK's housing stock is critical to achieving the government's climate objectives. According to government statistics, houses account for around 20% of the UK’s total greenhouse gas emissions, with 13% of households in England classed as fuel-poor. Supporting people to make energy efficiency improvements to their homes will help lower emissions, with the added benefit of significantly reducing energy bills and energy demand. Leaky, poorly insulated, energy-inefficient homes are, by their very nature, expensive to run, and this in itself should encourage homeowners to upgrade their properties. However, government policymakers should be reminded that the...

  David Lennan , Chairman,   National Warm Homes Council In the second of a two-part blog on key considerations for civil service policymakers preparing to publish the Warm Homes Plan (WHP) in the spring, I examine the sectors to upgrade homes first and the broader implications of delivery relating to partnering with SMEs in the retrofit sector to support the workforce and energy-saving technologies needed.  I t is taken as a given that for decades, the easiest sector to scale up retrofit into is the social housing sector. It has always been ripe for scaling government interventions, and therefore, it makes sense that this sector is the one already with the best insulation.  Moreover, one contract in the social sector can lead to hundreds of properties being treated, and there is already a set of tier-one contractors (such as members of the National Home Decarbonisation Group) who can scale up to do the work subject to workforce availability and training. Nonetheless...

David Lennan , Chairman,   National Warm Homes Council The government's much-anticipated publication of its Warm Homes Plan (WHP) is due in the spring. But what should civil service policymakers include in the plan to ensure the government is able to successfully deliver it in the time frame to which it has committed?  In a two-part blog, and to coincide with a one-to-one meeting at Number 10 today on this very topic, I set out some considerations and priorities for the government in delivering its WHP. In this first blog, I explore the challenges confronting ministers and possible policy solutions. In the second to be published in February, I will examine the sectors to retrofit first and explore broader implications of delivery relating to finance, SMEs in the retrofit sector and the workforce needed to support such measures.  To provide some context, fuel poverty is quickly becoming a crisis waiting to happen. A recent report by Warm This Winter found that about 9 mill...

David Lennan , Chairman,   National Warm Homes Council The government has just revealed new updates to its Warm Homes Plan to improve the energy efficiency of homes in the UK. At the heart of these plans is support for people switching to heat pumps. But with rising energy prices and fuel poverty increasing across Britain, will electrification be the most affordable and scalable solution to Britain’s cold homes crisis? Millions of families continue to live in heat-leaking and expensive-to-heat homes, where they struggle with cost-of-living pressures. Friends of the Earth claims that nearly 10 million people in the UK are living in cold, damp and poorly insulated houses. The poorest households could be paying up to £600 more a year simply to heat their homes. High energy bills continue to make things worse, with energy prices likely to remain high and volatile for a long time. The government’s approach to tackling these challenges was outlined last week. The next steps of the Warm H...

David Lennan , Chairman,   National Warm Homes Council The next Budget on 30 October marks a real opportunity to give a boost to green growth that could help address the heat-leaking homes blighting the lives of millions of low-income households and families across Britain. But how can the Chancellor use the forthcoming budget to support homeowners to lower their emissions and bills while creating more jobs and bolstering the UK economy?  With the energy price cap rising by 10% from next month, there is an increasing need to support families with home decarbonisation and offering more affordable heating options. However, the costs of retrofitting are becoming unaffordable for too many. The Federation of Master Builders claims that VAT costs put off about four million households annually from making any energy-efficiency changes to their homes.  Currently, VAT relief for energy-saving materials is limited to a very prescriptive list of low-carbon technologies, barely updat...