The Insulated Render and Cladding Association (INCA) is calling on Government to act quickly and reopen the Green Deal Home Improvement Fund (GDHIF) to help households living in solid wall properties to install solid wall insulation (SWI) and reduce their energy bills.
GDHIF was designed to support the development of the SWI supply chain following the reduction in the target for SWI under the Energy Company Obligation (ECO), which was announced in December 2013.
However, after changes to GDHIF were announced last month, there was a huge surge in applications for funding and the budget limit for the scheme was reached resulting in its closure after just six weeks. This has left households, many of whom have already paid out for Green Deal Advice Reports (GDARs), stranded in cold, leaky solid wall properties and unable to obtain funding for installing SWI.
GDHIF was closed in the same week that Government published its response to the Future of ECO consultation confirming that energy companies would make additional savings as a result of the changes to ECO, including the 75% reduction in the SWI target.
Analysis undertaken by AgilityEco on behalf of INCA, as part of its response to the consultation, predicted that the actual savings to the 'big six' as a result of the ECO changes would go far beyond the £35 they had committed to give back to customers, representing a £1-2 billion windfall to energy suppliers over the next three years. The Government response states that energy suppliers are expected to ‘ensure that consumers benefit from this further reduction in delivery costs...and [it] invites them to set out publicly how they propose to do this’.
However, INCA believes that the higher savings should be used to increase the target for SWI under ECO. In its consultation response , INCA showed how a proportion of the savings could be used to double the SWI minimum to 200,000 installations over the next three years without incremental cost to consumers.
Instead, the reduced target means the industry is facing 20,000 job losses as predicted by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) in a report published in April. It also leaves eight million households, including almost half of the country’s ‘fuel poor’, suffering from the highest energy bills.
INCA Chairman Pádraig Barry said: “The double whammy of no change to the SWI minimum under ECO and the sudden closure of GDHIF has left the SWI industry reeling. This is despite previous commitments from Government to work with us to avoid another ‘boom and bust’ cycle.
"INCA is now working with DECC to establish the likelihood of GDHIF vouchers not being redeemed so that the scheme can be reopened quickly and make sure the money available is actually spent. We are also committed to ensuring the rules are tightened up going forward to prevent another raft of phantom vouchers.”