Report by Green Councillor Mike Croker.
After its short and ineffective life, the Green Homes Grant has joined many other half-baked, central government, consultant run, initiatives in the great policy graveyard in the sky. At a stroke, withdrawing this plan halves government support for carbon reduction in dwellings from £2.5bn to £1.3bn, with the only bright side being that the remaining money (up from £1bn previously) will be administered by local authorities focussing on low income households.
Is this a strategic move to ditch a widely criticised mess, so that the PM can introduce yet another “world beating path to the sunny uplands” closer to the COP26 date? Alok Sharma MP (President of the UN COP26) has a task on his hands to make this look like good governance.
One little irony here is that some of the 25 to 30 million UK dwellings that need Green Homes improvement would not have needed it if the same central government had not relaxed new building regulations in 2015 when they scrapped the Code for Sustainable Homes. That code proposed new builds from 2016 to be close to zero carbon ('Code 0'), but some of the big housebuilders (eg Persimmon) claimed it was too difficult/expensive... How much more expensive (to build)? About 8% more should get you a Passivhaus, which would be close to Code 0.
