Asked by
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to
provide guidance to homeowners and landlords to ensure that homes
are improved to the highest possible environmental standards.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for
Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy () (Con)
The Government’s ambition is for as many homes as possible to
reach EPC band C by 2035. Our Simple Energy Advice service
provides tailored advice and guidance for home owners and
landlords on how to improve the energy performance of their homes
and has received over 1.7 million users to date. We are also
looking to improve the tailoring of recommendations on energy
performance certificates to individual properties.
(Lab)
My Lords, it is a mammoth task to bring the many millions of
homes in this country up to the standard suggested by the
Minister. What are the Government going to do to ensure that we
have enough trained workers, apprentices and others to do the
work? Surely we need a massive training programme for the skilled
workforce that is required to bring our homes up to standard.
(Con)
I agree with the noble Lord: we need exactly that. We are working
both through the Department for Education, with some of its
training investments, and with many of the private sector
providers which are also introducing new schemes, apprenticeships
and training even as we speak. I went up to visit some of them
only a few weeks ago, and the way industry is coming to the fore
with these advancements is very impressive.
My Lords, we are going to need a massive step change if we are to
achieve reductions in emissions. An important element of that
will be providing financial incentives for people to adopt the
new technologies and get their houses sorted out, such as the
money people can make from selling surplus energy from their
solar panels. What is Her Majesty’s Government’s assessment of
other small, domestic, green energy production methods which
might help us offset emissions from the built environment?
(Con)
The right reverend Prelate is right to draw attention to some of
the export guarantee schemes that we already have. I also draw
his attention to the boiler upgrade scheme, which we will be
introducing from April next year. That is £450 million of
straight, upfront grants for people to install heat pumps.
(Con)
I remind my noble friend that I am president of National Energy
Action. Does he agree that much can be achieved through building
regulations to make houses more energy efficient and more
resilient to flooding? Does he share my disappointment that the
review for sustainable drainage systems will not be concluded
till autumn next year? Will he use his good offices to ensure
that the regulations are brought forward by the middle of next
year at the very latest?
(Con)
I thank my noble friend for her question. She is right that
building regulations have an important role to play. From 2025,
the future homes standard will ensure that new homes produce at
least 75% lower CO2 emissions compared to those built to current
standards.
(Lab)
My Lords, will the Minister indicate when the Government will
publish a long-term strategy for the sector, so that home owners
and landlords seeking to meet new energy-efficient standards do
not find in the years to come that they have to undertake further
work to meet changed standards?
(Con)
With regard to landlords, we consulted in the summer on raising
energy performance standards of rented property to EPC C by 2028.
I am happy to tell the noble Baroness that we will publish our
response to that consultation shortly.
(LD)
Does the Minister agree that, given the house price variability
in the UK, landlords who operate in the lower-income market see
this as an investment that will not be returned, as it is usually
the tenant who pays the fuel bill? Does he agree that more
incentives might be needed to meet targets in these areas? Can he
reassure us that the—dare I say it—failed one-size-fits-all
funding systems we have had previously will not be repeated and
that local authorities will have more genuine autonomy to meet
local needs and overcome their particular local barriers?
(Con)
The noble Baroness makes a very good point. Local authorities are
of course one of our key delivery partners through many of the
schemes that we currently subsidise. We are spending billions of
pounds on home upgrade grants, the local authority delivery
scheme, the social housing decarbonisation fund and so on, and
local authorities are our key partner in those projects.
(Lab)
Housing retrofitting is arguably one of the toughest
infrastructure challenges the UK has ever seen. Concerted public
sector intervention will be required to have any chance of
achieving the legally binding and local net-zero targets. I was
pleased to hear that the Minister visited Leeds last week to see
schemes that are developing on the ground. However, we had to
wait months for the Government’s heat and buildings strategy, and
it was a massive letdown when it was published in October.
Unfortunately, there was no replacement for the ill-fated Green
Homes Grant for home owners. Can the Minister simply explain
where the long-term retrofit plan is?
(Con)
The heat and buildings strategy is our long-term retrofit plan.
Within that, we announced a number of forthcoming consultations;
previous questions have referred to the consultation on the
private rented sector. The noble Baroness referenced the visit I
made to Leeds last week to look at the local authority installed
measures that are going so well. We continue to invest large sums
of money in these projects.
of Cheltenham (LD) [V]
The Government propose that private landlords will be required to
pay up to £10,000 to ensure that the properties they rent out
have an energy performance rating of C or better. Given that NRLA
data suggests that the net annual rental income for landlords is
under £4,400 a year, what financial support will be available for
private landlords to make the energy improvements required of
them?
(Con)
There are a number of financial packages that private landlords
letting to low-income tenants can take advantage of; I referred
to some of the schemes earlier. Private sector landlords are
entitled to take advantage of them, but the noble Lord is right
and points to one of the dilemmas in the private rented sector,
which is that the investment is made by landlords but the benefit
is gained by tenants through lower fuel bills.
(GP)
I hear the optimism and the claims, but, sadly, these are not
carried through into government action and the Government know
that full well. The Public Accounts Committee reported yesterday
that the Government’s
“Green Homes Grant … Scheme … underperformed badly … and risks
damaging … future efforts”
to deliver net zero. It also said that it is “not convinced” that
BEIS has
“fully acknowledged the scale of its failures with this
scheme.”
If you do not understand how or how badly you have failed, how
will you ever deliver this green stuff that you clearly do not
understand?
(Con)
I am sorry the noble Baroness thinks we do not understand this
“green stuff”—we have her advice to rely on, constantly, and she
tells us all about it. To be serious, she is of course right that
the National Audit Office acknowledged that the Green Homes Grant
scheme did not deliver at the pace we would have expected.
Nevertheless, we did deliver some 80,000 vouchers and spent some
£300 million on precisely the kind of measures that I know the
noble Baroness would support. We have certainly learned lessons
from the Green Homes Grant and are taking those forward in future
grant schemes, such as the boiler upgrade scheme to install more
heat pumps, which I am sure the noble Baroness will also welcome.
