Failure to deliver on manifesto commitments

9 January 2026

Britain has long been acknowledged to have some of the coldest and draughtiest homes in Western Europe. A new drive to deliver warmer homes formed a much-publicised commitment in Labour’s manifesto in the 2024 general election, with a promised budget now of £14.7 billion over five years. This would have added to the £1.3bn annual expenditure by energy companies under the long established ECO scheme to deliver fuel poverty alleviation programmes.

Once elected, civil servants at the Energy Security department were instructed to prepare a comprehensive new Warm Homes campaign, which would deliver  significant energy improvements to 5 million homes during the five year  parliament.

During 2025 there were endless ‘preliminary’ dates set to enable publication of the details of the Plan. Initially this was to happen  “late spring”. After that, “before” and then “after the summer recess”, followed by “together with the Autumn Financial Statement”, and finally “before Christmas.”

Nothing emerged except the Autumn Statement which relieved all energy suppliers of any further responsibilities to run the Energy Company Obligation  (ECO) scheme. Or indeed to fund any energy efficiency programmes for low income households, or anybody else for that matter.

The ‘polluter pays’ ECO concept that had been operating successfully (under several names) for almost three decades was scrapped because it was “not delivering value for money.” Subsequently, no replacement programme has been proposed. There are warnings from the thinktank E3G that this hiatus will jeopardise 10,000 jobs.

The Prime Minister has welcomed this abandonment – he said so twice during his first Question Time in 2026 – because it means that the energy companies can theoretically reduce their prices, thereby apparently helping take £150 off the average fuel bill.

An election commitment was also made to upgrade the statutory commitment to eliminate fuel poverty, established back in 2000 under the Blair government.

A public consultation exercise was run shortly after the election. In the official Ministerial Foreword,  it was stated that “not only has insufficient progress been made on reducing fuel poverty in England, but the scale of the problem has deepened.” The number of households required to spend more than 10% of their income after housing costs on their energy bills also soared to 8.9 million in 2023, more than double the previous rate.

That consultation closed last spring, but since then there have been no further announcements – apart from the abandonment of the ECO scheme, the sole UK-wide fuel poverty elimination programme.

It remains to be seen whether any similar ambition will emerge under the fuel poverty section of the Warm Homes plan. Which, given the time that has already past, can only be operative for two-thirds of this government’s mandate, the first 18 months having been largely wasted.