The Public Accounts Committee has published a damning report on the government’s “poorly designed” Green Homes Grant scheme, which it has branded “a terrible waste of money” and a “slam dunk fail”.
The PAC report said this scheme “underperformed badly” upgrading only about 47,500 homes — far short of the original 600,000 target. The project cost £134m, less than the original £1.5bn. However PAC pointed out that £50m of this was spent on administration, almost 40 per cent of the overall costs. PAC says this was equivalent to £1,000 being spent in admin costs for each home that took part in this energy efficiency initiative.
It also criticised the scheme for failing to deliver on both environmental promises and job creation, adding that it was not convinced that the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy had “fully acknowledged the scale of its failures with this scheme”.
This scheme was hailed as a key plank of the government’s plans to ‘build back better’ post-Covid, while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions and creating jobs. Homeowners in England were invited to apply for grants up to £10,000 to install insulation or low-carbon heating. But with more than half of these applications being rejected, and 46 per cent of installer applications failing, the scheme closed abruptly after just six months.
The PAC report says 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 on the government’s net zero commitments”.
Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, and Labour MP Dame Meg Hillier says: “It cost the taxpayer £50m just to administer the pointlessly rushed through Green Homes Grant scheme, which delivered a small fraction of its objectives, either in environmental benefit or promised new jobs.”
“We heard it can take four years to train the specialist 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.”
The Federation of Master Builders said the PAC was right to criticise this scheme which it branded a “disappointment”. It said the government must ensure future schemes designed to improve the energy efficiency of the UK’s housing stock work better, for both the industry and consumers.
The FMB chief executive Brian Berry says: “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.”
He adds: “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.”
