After a 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 it also reduces government support to carbon reduction in dwellings from £2.5bn to £1.3bn, with the only bright side being that the latter (up from £1bn previously) will be administered by local authorities focussing on low income households.
One little irony here is that some of the 25 to 30 million dwellings that need improvement would not have needed it if the same central government had not scrapped the Code for Sustainable Homes in 2015. That would have required 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.
Jolly glad that I'm not in Alok Sharma's shoes (President of the UN COP26), or is this a strategic move to ditch a widely criticised mess, in order that the PM can introduce another world beating path to the sunny uplands closer to the COP26 date? (Me, cynical?!?)
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