In a new report the Public Accounts Committee says the Green Homes Grant Voucher Scheme “underperformed badly”, upgrading only about 47,500 homes out of the 600,000 originally envisaged and delivering a small fraction of the expected jobs.
The project accounted for just £314 million of its original £1.5 billion budget, and £50 million of that was administration costs - more than £1,000 per home upgraded.
The PAC is also “not convinced that BEIS has fully acknowledged the scale of its failures with this scheme”. The scheme’s failure “continues government’s troubled record of energy efficiency initiatives and risks damaging the Department’s future efforts to harness both consumer and industry action to deliver Government’s net zero commitments”.
The Scheme was implemented as an urgent response to the COVID-19 crisis, aiming to support jobs at a time of significant risk for the economy while also reducing carbon emissions from homes – but the 12-week timescale to implement it was unrealistic and BEIS proceeded with it despite its own Projects and Investment Committee rejecting its business case.
The result was “a scheme with poor design and troubled implementation”. By August 2021, 52% of homeowners’ voucher applications were rejected or withdrawn, and 46% of installer applications failed. The Scheme’s primary aim was to support jobs but its design and duration limited its impact on employment, and its abrupt closure may have in fact led to redundancies.
Dame Meg Hillier MP, Chair of the Public Accounts Committee said: “It cost the taxpayer £50 million just to administer the pointlessly rushed through Green Homes Grant scheme, which delivered a small fraction of its objectives, either in environmental benefits or the promised new jobs.
“We heard it can take 48 months - 4 years - to train the specialists required to implement key parts of a scheme that was dreamed up to be rolled out in 12 weeks. It was never going to work at this time, in this way, and that should have been blindingly obvious to the Department. That it was not is a serious worry.
“I am afraid there is no escaping the conclusion that this scheme was a slam dunk fail.
“We will need this massive, step change in the way our homes and public buildings are heated, but the way this was devised and run was just a terrible waste of money and opportunity at a time when we can least afford it.”
The failure of the Green Homes Grant Scheme was a disappointment and the Government must learn from these findings to ensure similar, future schemes work better for industry and consumers, says the Federation of Master Builders (FMB).
Brian Berry, Chief Executive of the FMB said: “It is not surprising to read the Public Accounts Committee’s damning assessment of last year’s Green Homes Grant Scheme. By the experience of our own members, the FMB echoes the Committee’s criticisms and know that the scheme was too short-term in outlook. Critically, it did not allow sufficient time for builders to upskill and gain the necessary accreditations. For those that did make the leap, they ended up spending large sums of money only to have the scheme pulled from under their feet.
“This stop-go green initiative undermined certainty for both the public and builders in trying to stimulate demand for energy efficient home improvements. The Government needs a National Retrofit Strategy which sets out a clear, long-term plan to upgrade our existing homes and would go some way to restore faith in green initiatives with the public and industry.”
