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I love insulation. In my own home I have 500mm-thick loft insulation. The current regulations state 270mm is sufficient, but I believe in topping up – a bit like doubling up your duvet on a cold winter’s night.
But despite the double-glazing, efficient boiler, programmable heating control and extra loft insulation, my Victorian home still has a leaky energy efficiency grade “E”.
I was therefore excited in March 2023 when the Government announced the Great British Insulation Scheme, an energy-efficiency scheme administered by Ofgem. Scheduled to run until March 2026, £1bn had been ear-marked to help around 300,000 households to install new home insulation.
Finally, I smiled to myself, the Government has understood we need to insulate first, then worry about the heat source later. I say this, because as a landlord, I’ve been experimenting with various measures over the years – especially internal wall insulation – to try and make the rental properties not only more economic to run, but more comfortable to live in.
It has not been a cheap task.
In fact, on account of the huge investment some of these measures require, I sold off many properties which were economically unviable. The bottom line: I could not afford to solve all of the energy-efficiency problems of all of the properties.
The Great British Insulation Scheme targeted both “general” people (those with properties rated D-G) and low-income households (including those in receipt of benefits). It wasn’t really clear as a “general” person what sort of contribution you had to pay, but I figured I’d tackle the cost, once I knew the savings on offer.
Either way, given this was a scheme where your energy supplier arranged a visit by a surveyor to conduct a retrofit assessment and advise how you could make changes to the property to cut energy use and reduce carbon emissions – I was all in.
In fact, I was so behind this scheme I sent the weblink to every tenant, letting agent, friend and family member, encouraging them to sign up. “It takes just two minutes”, was my sales cry. “You could save a huge amount – sign up today!”.
The scheme is designed to complement the Energy Company Obligation (EC04) scheme, so I thought support on different levels was available. The possible insulation measures were enticing:
- Cavity wall (including party wall)
- Loft
- Solid wall
- Pitched roof
- Flat roof
- Under-floor
- Solid floor
- Park home
- Room-in-roof.
As somebody who’s been studying retro-fit installation, I was in my element. I couldn’t wait to hear what an adviser would suggest.
The problem: I have never spoken to anyone.
Nor has anyone else who I encouraged to sign up for this potentially life changing experience. Apart from the initial acknowledgement email thanking them for showing interest, not one person I know has ever had a follow-up, or a visit from the hallowed surveyor, let alone any work executed.
It’s little surprise, then, to read the latest statistics from the Great British Insulation Scheme which show since it was launched there have provisionally been 4,011 measures in 3,284 households up to the end of December 2023.
Over nine months only 3,284 households have been helped. If you assume it started on April 1 2023, that is a rate of just 84 households per week.
At this rate, insulating the target of 300,000 homes will take 3,571 weeks – or rather more than 68 years.
Did I mention the scheme is scheduled to run until March 2026?
Perhaps what is most frustrating is the regional variation, which suggests some suppliers are more on the ball than others. Yorkshire and The Humber tops the chart with 16pc of all measures being installed, but the likes of Wales, East Midlands and Scotland are the worst (5pc and 4pc respectively). London comes in at just 6pc.
At a time of energy crisis and promises of net zero, it’s not only frustrating to see this scheme floundering – it is scandalous.
The scandal of the Great British Insulation Scheme
Despite costly eco upgrades, properties risk remaining stuck with dismal EPC ratings