The curtain comes down on the Green Homes Grant

Having slashed £1bn from its funding the government has now called time on the Green Homes Grant scheme. It will close to new applications at the end of March and the £300m previously allocated for the GHG will now go into a programme administered by local authorities, targeted at lower income households.

The government said many households were reluctant to apply for the grants – up to £10,000 – because they feared catching Covid from contractors coming into their homes. However, in some parts of the country installers were actually overwhelmed with demand.

Energy Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng emphasised the transfer of cash to the local authority fund, rather than the scrapping of the GHG. “Upgrading the country’s homes with energy efficiency measures means we can cut emissions and save people money on their energy bills,” he said.

“Today’s funding boost will mean even more households across England are able to access these vital grants through their local authority.

“This latest announcement takes our total energy efficiency spending to over £1.3bn in the next financial year, giving installers the certainty they need to plan ahead, create new jobs and train the next generation of builders, plumbers and tradespeople.”

Matthew Pennycook, the shadow minister for climate change, said: “The funding announced doesn’t even come close to plugging the investment gap created by the government’s decision to slash more than £1bn from its Green Homes Grant scheme and then scrap it altogether.

Julie Hirigoyen, chief executive at UK Green Building Council, said: “Slashing more than £1bn in funding for energy efficiency is an absolute travesty for households wanting to take action and for businesses trying to plan ahead, and has created yet another roadblock for decarbonising the country’s 29m homes.We have been left speechless by this news, which comes just days after theEnvironmental Audit Committee sent a clear message to government that ifwe are to meet our legally binding target to be net zero carbon by 2050, urgent action is needed to improve energy efficiency of homes this decade.

“From start to finish the scheme has been beset by problems of Government’s own making. But these should have been fixed, not used to justify its scrapping. In the year of the UK hosting COP26, this is not the sort of example we wanted to be setting for the world – a lesson in precisely hownotto do policy making in this vital sector. With a stream of crucial policies coming down the pipeline for construction and property in the next few months and years, lessons must be learnt as soon as possible and these mistakes not repeated.

“Government is now emphasising the role of local authorities in delivering retrofit and there is absolutely no doubt that they have a key role to play. But they need the certainty of a national retrofit strategy within which to operate locally, and they need to be given financial support and the freedom to innovate. Retrofit has a clear role to play in both levelling-up and driving a green-recovery at the local level, but this requires a genuine partnership approach.”