Landlords will have a problem with lettings too

The recent meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Intelligent Energy, chaired by Colin Challen MP, questioned whether or not the Great British Refurb was a winning policy?

The keynote paper by James Higgins, Policy Adviser with JDS Consultants, underlined some of the industry’s scepticism surrounding Ed Miliband’s February announcement of the latest heat and energy strategy.

In his paper, Higgins said: “Add together the current economic climate and the sheer scale of ambition, it would have been tempting to file the policy under ‘forget it – too ambitious’.

“But just because it will be does not mean we should abandon the ambition. In fact, the scale of the ambition lends the policy credibility. Gone are the patchwork of policies hoping to achieve limited objectives and in its place a systematic giant leap forward to upgrade entire communities.

“The Great British Refurb could be the defining policy in transforming the UK’s awareness of climate change into substantial action in tackling it!”

Indeed, it was not only Higgin’s conclusion but the consensus of the meeting too, that the ‘moral and environmental imperative’ is now so strong that the Great British Refurb will have to be successful in reducing domestic CO2. Also, it was crucial that a solution was needed to the ‘finance question’ which would enable householders to access the benefits of energy saving at a reduced upfront cost.

One controversial point introduced into the discussion was from Colin Butfield, Head of Campaigns at WWF, who said, “There must come a time when, unless your house is up to a specific energy efficiency standard then it would not be able to put it on the market! Likewise, for landlords they would not be able to let a property unless it also reached the same level of energy efficiency.”

More information: www.sourcewatch.org/