Little more than a quarter of vouchers sought by householders have been issued over the past six months, official data shows
The embattled Green Homes Grant Scheme is still facing major administrative problems, with the latest official figures showing little more a quarter of vouchers sought by householders to help towards the costs of energy efficiency upgrades have been issued since the programme was launched last year.
Data published by the government yesterday shows in the six months since the green home upgrade programme was launched last September, households have lodged 123,500 vouchers applications, yet just under 28,300 vouchers have been issued to date.
All in all, just over 5,800 green homes upgrades - such as the installation of cavity wall insulation or low carbon heating measures - have been carried out, the data shows.
That comes despite the government's initial ambition for the flagship scheme to support the upgrades to around 600,000 UK homes by the end of March 2021, while supporting around 100,000 green jobs in construction and energy efficiency upgrades.
The government has previously blamed low uptake from households for the lack of vouchers issued through the scheme, which offers up to £5,000 off the costs of energy efficiency measures, or up to £10,000 for low income households. And while the Scheme was initially given a £1.5bn budget, the Treasury subsequently responded to the slow rate of voucher issuance by first extending the deadline for the scheme to March 2022 and then slashing the budget to just £320m for the 2021/22 financial year. Reports have also suggested that Ministers are considering an early close to the scheme.
But despite the government's repeated claims that the scheme has been hampered by low levels of demand from households that are reluctant to undertake upgrade work during lockdown, the latest data indicates there has been strong interest from householders in securing green homes vouchers throughout the winter months and in the midst of strict Covid-19 lockdown measures. Advocates of the scheme maintain that if administrative challenges and delays to issuing vouchers were addressed then hundreds of households would undertake upgrades through the scheme, delivering the emissions savings and green jobs that were originally envisaged.
Jess Ralston, analyst at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) think tank, said the figures demonstrated "continued high public interest for plugging leaky homes", and reiterated claims - widely supported by industry groups - that administrative problems were to blame for the scheme's failures.
She therefore urged the government to bring in a long-term replacement programme to help finance green home upgrades and tackle the UK's notoriously draughty housing stock.
"Despite making the Green Homes Grant unnecessarily difficult to access and imposing unmanageable deadlines, there remains immense backing for measures to curb energy waste from Britain's homes," said Ralston. "As the government weighs up options for next steps, it would be wise to learn from mistakes made in the Green Homes Grant and deliver a package to make a real dent in emissions from our homes."
Buildings are estimated to account for roughly 40 per cent of the UK's carbon emissions, with homes - the overwhelming majority of which are heated by fossil fuels and poorly insulated - responsible for 14 per cent.
"Without meaningful plans and policies to decarbonise the nation's homes, the government will continue struggling to build back credibility on net zero," added Ralston. "Emissions from homes have not fallen for several years and will not do so without actions that make it easier for families to cut carbon and stop wasting energy."
Recent reports suggest the government is mulling a potential replacement retrofit programme to help accelerate the decarbonisation of UK homes, but Number 10 and the Treasury are said to be at loggerheads over how to fund and deliver a new scheme.
Meanwhile, there are growing concerns about other elements of the government's green buildings agenda as it faces pressure to draw up a coherent overarching strategy for achieving its 2050 net zero emissions target ahead of COP26, the crucial global climate summit it is hosting in Glasgow in November.
Writing exclusively for BusinessGreen yesterday, Labour's Shadow Energy Minister Alan Whitehead claimed plans to tighten up rules requiring landlords of private rental properties to invest in green retrofit measures are now in danger of being watered down after lobbying from landlord groups and some MPs.
The government has set a target for all private rental homes to be upgraded to energy efficiency band C by 2028, with a proposal to raise the cap on the amount landlords must spend to deliver these upgrades to £10,000.
However, Whitehead wrote that "my spies inform me" that it is now "likely the government will back down and substitute [the policy with] a voluntary energy improvement measure - or even none at all".
The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) was considering a request for comment at the time of going to press.