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£2bn home insulation grant hand-out for property-owners announced by Chancellor

Grants worth up to £5,000 to boost energy efficiency in homes and boost jobs unveiled – and landlords benefit, too.

Richard Reed

Thousands of property-owners could get grants worth up to £5,000 as part of a £2bn grant scheme to improve home insulation.

The move, announced by Chancellor Rishi Sunak, is part of a £3bn plan to cut carbon emissions outlined in Wednesday’s budget.

The Green Homes Grant will allow households in England to receive vouchers worth up to £5,000 to spend on measures such as loft and wall insulation, double-glazing and low-energy lighting. The government will will provide at least £2 for every £1 home-owners and landlords spend to make their homes more energy efficient.

As well as helping to meet the UK’s 2050 target of achieving net-zero carbon emissions, the move could help support more than 100,000 jobs in the wake of the Covid-19 lockdown.

The Treasury claims the scheme could save up to £600 per year on energy bills.

Help for rental sector

Private landlords welcomed the Chancellor’s announcement that they will be able to apply for vouchers to help fund the cost of energy improvements to rental homes, not mentioned in the Commons statement.

Ben Beadle, chief executive of the National Residential Landlords Association, said: “Improving the energy efficiency of rental housing is good news for tenants, landlords and local economies. We encourage all landlords to make use of this as it will mean housing standards are improved, tenants will save money and it will reduce carbon emissions across the whole sector.”

His views were echoed by David Cox, chief executive of ARLA Propertymark: “Since the withdrawal of LESA (Landlords Energy Saving Allowance), we’ve been calling for a simple grant scheme to help private homeowners and landlords make their properties more energy efficient. Today’s announcement is a big step forward to ensure that they can take the necessary steps to do this and ultimately create a greener property sector in the UK.”

In the wake of the announcement, data communications consultancy Resonance has released the results of its research on 19 million Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) showing the extent to which the energy-saving improvements are required.

The company’s research found that owner-occupied housing is the worst performing of all the home occupancy types:

Average Rating

Type

59.2

Owner occupied

61.4

Rental (private)

68.2

Rental (social)

81.4

New dwelling

45% of homes ‘Very poor’

Resonance has revealed that an astonishing 45% of homes is rated as ‘Very poor’ energy categories in one or more of the EPC categories.

  • Very poor wall insulation – 26%
  • Very poor loft insulation – 18%
  • Very poor lighting efficiency – 17%
  • Very poor window glazing – 7%

The grant scheme has only been announced for England, but the research has found that the least efficient regions of the UK are Scotland and Wales. In England, the regions set to benefit the most are the North-West and the East Midlands.

Tom Fry, head of data at Resonance, said: “The UK housing stock is still very much lacking when it comes to energy efficiency – 35% of UK homes have very poor insulation which means they have little or no loft or wall insulation, or they still have single-glazed windows.”

July 8, 2020

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