Fitters are rushing to finish green home upgrades and have warned some projects will be left unfinished after Chancellor Rachel Reeves cut the UK’s flagship grant programme for households in fuel poverty.
Some installers say they have received “death threats” after being forced to suddenly cancel projects and have already started making redundancies due to a funding “cliff edge”.
The industry is warning that around 10,000 green jobs could be lost as a result of the Chancellor’s cuts, which could drive up the cost of green home renovations in the long term.
At the Autumn Budget, Reeves scrapped the Government’s long-running ECO4 scheme, which provides low-income households with grants from £7,000 up to, in some cases, more than £20,000 for heat pumps, insulation and solar panels.
The scheme, which was first launched in 2013, is funded by energy suppliers who pay for it via a ‘green levy’ on household energy bills.
At the Budget, Reeves announced she was scrapping the green levy and would instead provide households with grants via a “warm homes plan” that would be funded via general taxation.
However, the full details of this plan are yet to be announced and the industry believes it will be at least one year until it is up and running, meaning there is no immediate replacement for ECO4 when it ends in March.
Work left unfinished
Installers told The i Paper they are currently having to cancel jobs as they cannot secure funding from energy companies to finish works they had planned.
“I’ve had death threats and everything. You’ve got people leaving bad reviews and saying it’s a scam…it’s absolute carnage,” said David Macneil, managing director of Energy Pig, a Glasgow-based heating and insulation company.
He said his company was having to pay itself to finish jobs that it had already started, as it could no longer secure ECO4 grant funding from energy companies.
“There’s some jobs where we’ve already removed the heating system, so we’re going to have to install that and make no money as a business,” he said.
Anna Moore, founder of retrofit company Domna, said her company recently provided a retrofit assessment for a woman in her 90s in a central London flat. She is living without central heating and uses expensive electric radiators instead.
They were planning to use ECO4 funding to “get her first time central heating and do a little bit of insulation work”, but this work was now unlikely to go ahead, she said.
“There is not another funding solution for her, the practical impact is she doesn’t have first-time central heating and is going into the winter with nothing,” Moore said.
While the ECO4 scheme does not officially end until March, many energy companies have already met their targets under the current iteration of the programme, meaning they are no longer providing funding.
Under the rules of the scheme, energy companies are able to negotiate the funding they will provide for projects directly with the installers.
Nigel Donohue, chief executive of the Installation Assurance Authority, which certifies installations, said energy companies are now trying to “renegotiate some of the work that has been carried out to drive prices down” as installers compete “to get what’s left of the remnants of ECO4”.
It means more expensive measures, like heat pumps or solid wall insulation, are less likely to get funding now, he said.
In cases where companies can no longer secure funding for work that has started, Donohue said customers will have to “rely on the goodwill of the installer to get it finished or you’re left with work that’s incomplete”.
Redundancies
Donahue said some installers have already started issuing redundancy notices to staff, as they did not have the cash flow to wait for the Government’s Warm Homes scheme to be introduced.
Macneill said Energy Pig currently employs more than 60 staff and would have to drop this down to around 20 people if ECO4 is not extended.
The company has just purchased a building in South Lanarkshire to turn into a training academy for green installers, but is now considering renting the building out to other businesses.
“If these people leave industry, they’re not going to come back,” he said. “I think that the sector is spoiled and I don’t see any confidence in investing any more at all.”
Analysis by the climate think tank E3G predicts that 10,000 jobs will be lost across the UK as a result of the cut to ECO4, including many apprenticeships.Scotland is predicted to be the worst-affected region, with 3,940 jobs at risk according to the analysis.
“When we were looking at the closure of steel works, it became a national media centre of attention,” Donahue said. “This Government is now in danger of decimating a whole sector, which has small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in every single constituency across this country.”
Homes with faulty upgrades left in limbo
An estimated 15 million households in fuel poverty – defined as households that cannot afford to keep their homes warm for less than 10 per cent of their income – have received upgrades to their home since ECO4 was introduced.
However, the scheme has received bad publicity as it emerged that tens of thousands of households have experienced major issues with the insulation that has been installed in their homes.
When installed correctly, insulation can massively reduce the amount of energy used to heat homes and thus drive down households’ bills.
However, a recent investigation by the National Audit Office found that poor quality workmanship and a lack of Government oversight have led to 20-30,000 households experiencing problems such as damp and mould.
Your next read
square WORLDThe QAnon paedophile conspiracy is back to haunt Trump
square NEWSArmed police deployed to incident at Heathrow Airport Terminal 3
square LIZ TRUSSThe bizarre claims made by Liz Truss on new YouTube show
square NEWS ExplainedHow the UK’s child ADHD and autism diagnosis rates compare to other countries
The Government has said it will fix the poor work at no cost to affected households; however, Donahue said this work could be impacted by redundancies in the industry.
“Companies have got no ability to trade through this, so therefore no funds to put forward some of the work that needs to be repaired,” he said.
Retrofit companies broadly accepted that the latest iteration of the ECO4 scheme was not working and welcomed plans for a new scheme, but said ECO4 should be extended until the new Government scheme was in place.
A Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokesperson said: “The ECO4 and GBIS schemes were not delivering value for money. We are instead investing an additional £1.5 billion into our Warm Homes Plan, taking it to nearly £15 billion – the biggest ever public investment to upgrade homes and tackle fuel poverty.
“We are doubling down on support for home upgrades and will shortly set out our plans to help households and support thousands more clean energy jobs.”
Hence then, the article about home revamps left unfinished after reeves cuts heat pump and solar grants was published today ( ) and is available on inews ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Home revamps left unfinished after Reeves cuts heat pump and solar grants )
Also on site :