Clearview South September 2014 - Issue 154 | Page 19

INDUSTRYNEWS

Government closes Green
Deal Home Improvement Fund
following surge in demand
The government has closed its Green Deal Home Improvement Fund
(GDHIF) on 25 July after a surge of interest in the energy efficiency
grants saw around £70m of applications lodged in just a few days.
The decision sparked anger
across the energy efficiency
industry, which accused the
government of once again
changing policy at short
notice.
The government announced
earlier in the same week that
the £120m GDHIF had seen
£50m of vouchers assigned since
the scheme’s launch last month,
offering households up to £7,600
towards the cost of energy
efficiency improvements.
Ministers announced that
they were cutting the cashback
offer for solid wall insulation
improvements by £2,000 to
£4,000, but the warning that
the scheme’s available budget
was being quickly eaten up
evidently sparked a surge in new
applications.
A spokeswoman for the
Department of Energy and
Climate Change (DECC) said
the government had received
around £70m of applications in
the past few days and as such the
responsible thing to do was to
close the scheme to ensure that

‘The sudden
and immediate
closure of this
fund is another
setback for
the energy
efficiency
industry’

everyone who had applied could
receive a voucher.
Official figures confirmed that in
thethree days prior to the closure,
the DECC received applications
from around 9,500 households,
taking the total value of voucher
applications to £118m, just shy of
the scheme’s £120m budget.
Unconfirmed reports have
suggested some companies may
have been applying for vouchers
on a speculative basis, in the hope
that they could then convince
households to make use of the
grants by undertaking Green Deal
improvements.
But the DECC spokeswoman
insisted that the early indications
were that the bulk of vouchers
that were applied for were being
used. “The trend to date is that
a large proportion of the people
applying do take and then use the
voucher,” she said. “We want to
make sure that for everyone who
has applied we can honour the
voucher.”
Parliamentary Under Secretary
of State for Energy and Climate
Change, Amber Rudd said the
surge in demand for the GDHIF
underlined the success of an
initiative that was designed to
drive interest in the Green Deal
energy efficiency financing
scheme.
“The Green Deal Home
Improvement Fund is a world
first and in a short space of time
it has proved extremely popular,”
she said in a statement. “We were
always clear there was a budget
which is why we encourag V@