10
AUGUST 2014 PRO INSTALLER
PRO NEWS
www.proinstaller.co.uk
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 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 encouraged people to
act quickly. As a result, thousands
more families will now benefit
from government help to have
warmer homes which use less
energy.”
On 24 July, the Green Deal Finance Company confirmed that it
has seen a significant increase in
demand in recent weeks and was
now awarding over £1m worth of
financing plans a week.
But the sudden closure of the
scheme deals another blow to an
energy efficiency sector already
reeling from last year’s watering
down of the Energy Company
Obligation (ECO) scheme and
the initial failure of the Green
Deal to drive anticipated levels of
demand.
“The sudden and immediate
closure of this fund is another
setback for the energy efficiency
industry because companies have
specifically geared up to market
and deliver through this scheme,”
said Richard Twinn, Policy and
Public Affairs Officer at the UK
Green Building Council. “These
constant changes are not helpful
to industry.”
‘constant changes
are not helpful’
The government said it would
monitor the level of voucher redemption rates and decide whether there is budget remaining to
launch a further offer in the coming months. The DECC spokeswoman said that as households
are likely to redeem the vouchers
in the coming months the scheme
will result in a pipeline of work
for energy efficiency firms.
The surge in applications, however, will raise questions over the
government’s initial decision to
offer up to £7,500 to households
- an offer ministers themselves
admitted was generous.
Twinn said ministers now had to
clarify whether they would bring
forward more money to “ensure
continuity of Green Deal work” or
risk applications to the financing
scheme slowing down once again.
“This does demonstrate that we
need long-term drivers, not shortterm pots of cash to avoid this
continual cycle of boom and bust,”
he said.
Labour Shadow Energy Minister
Jonathan Reynolds said the shock
closure of the fund was a direct
result of “incompetence by government ministers”.
“A fund that was supposed to last
the year, and compensate for the
cuts to energy efficiency measures
announced last December, has run
out after just six weeks,” he said.
“It will leave many customers who
have paid £100 for a Green Deal
assessment out of pocket, with
little prospect of them having the
work they were promised done,
and an insulation industry in
despair at the stop-start nature of
this Government’s policy.”
He added that he would now be
writing to the Chair of the Public
Accounts Committee to ask her to
investigate the management of the
fund.
Synseal’s Pizza-Style Boxes Deliver The Savings!
Synseal’s fabricator partners are being presented with “pizzastyle” sample boxes and literature in a new campaign designed
to promote the advantages of using recycled plastic thermal
reinforcements (PTRs) to replace traditional steel.
The “Switch and Save”,
the eye-catching boxes are
colour-coded for Legend,
SynerJy and Shield window
systems and contain handy
samples of PTRs fitted into
the most popular profiles
together with a standard
150mm Envirosill, featuring
flawless virgin PVC-U on
visible outer faces and a
recycled core.
Made from 100% recycled PVC-U,
Synseal’s PTRs deliver enhanced
thermal performance, enabling high
energy ratings or low U-values to be
achieved. Less expensive and lighter than steel and avoiding potential
corrosion problems, PTRs ensure
that installed PVC-U frames become
100% recyclable and are easier and
faster to cut and insert during fabrication, with additional installation
benefits of making windows lighter
thu 2V6