Retrofitting Buildings: National Strategy

Baroness Blackstone Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Blackstone]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have (1) to publish the lessons learned from the Green Homes Grant, and (2) to introduce a national strategy for retrofitting buildings.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

The government response to the Public Accounts Committee report on the green homes grant voucher scheme, published on 24 February 2022, discussed a number of lessons. IPSOS is also undertaking an independent evaluation, due for publication in autumn 2023. The heat and buildings strategy sets out the actions that we will be taking to reduce emissions from buildings and provides the long-term framework to enable industry to invest and deliver the transition to low-carbon heating.

[Baroness Blackstone (Ind Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her reply, but I am sure she will agree that the failure of the green homes grant, which was eventually scrapped, was largely due to the lack of skilled and trained workers in the construction industry to undertake the work needed. Should not the short-term measures that were involved in the green homes grant be replaced by a genuine long-term funded strategy that emphasises training and skilling? Does she agree that, without that, it is very likely that we will not achieve our decarbonisation targets, and fuel poverty will go on increasing?

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

I could not agree more with the thrust of the noble Baroness’s question. The heat and buildings strategy is designed to provide a long-term framework for these initiatives. We are investing £2.5 billion in a national skills fund to support the immediate economic recovery and the skills needed to deliver on our net-zero targets, and we invested £6.9 million alongside the green homes grant voucher scheme to deliver over 8,000 training opportunities. We are continuing to work with businesses and key industry bodies and have launched the Green Jobs Taskforce to produce an action plan for just this sort of initiative.