Energy Company Obligation

Chris Leslie Excerpts

Tuesday 11th March 2014 Westminster Hall

[Lilian Greenwood]

Thank you, Ms Dorries for calling me to speak.

I was speaking about my constituent, Ilona. She lives on the Wollaton Park estate in one of the 500 “white bungalows”, or Crane Composite houses, that were built in the 1920s by the Nottingham Corporation as part of a bold experiment in new building techniques. The bungalows are specially constructed, with steel frames and pre-cast concrete walls. They are really distinctive and are now part of a conservation area. However, they are cold and hard to heat.

Ilona suffers from fibromyalgia and chronic sinusitis, and she desperately needs a warm house; what she has is a cold and damp house with terrible mould problems. Her landlord, Nottingham City Homes, says that the only way to make her house really warm is solid wall insulation. Since the changes to the energy company obligation, that possibility has become more distant.

Kate lives about a mile away from Ilona on the Lenton Abbey estate, which was built by the council in the late 1920s. The 900 houses on the estate are of conventional brick construction. However, as was normal practice at that time, they were built with solid walls, so there are no cavities that can be insulated. About 500 of the houses are now privately owned, with about one fifth rented out. Kate says that since NCH fitted new doors—front and back—to her house, it has been noticeably warmer. However, her house is still cold and difficult to heat, and she worries about her bills. Lenton Abbey is one of the neighbourhoods that NCH had prioritised for energy efficiency measures under its greener housing scheme. However, the changes to the ECO mean that acting on those plans may now be years away.

Ennis is in his 80s. He lives across the River Trent in Clifton. The local claim that the Clifton estate was once the largest council estate in the country may be open to question, but there is no doubt that Clifton is a large example of the post-war drive to build. It is said that the Wimpey “no-fines” construction method of concrete walls allowed for a construction rate of 30 homes per week. Unfortunately, despite the fact this design type was popular across the country, the resulting homes are poorly insulated. NCH manages more than 1,200 of these properties in Clifton, but there are more than 3,500 similar privately owned former council homes whose residents exercised their right to buy but now face the same problems as Ennis—cold, damp homes and high fuel bills.

Ennis has seen his neighbours on the Clifton estate benefit from solid wall insulation, thanks to Nottingham’s pilot greener housing scheme, which was launched in the north of the estate last September. He has heard what a difference insulation has made to his neighbours’ bills, and how warm and cosy their houses now feel. He has also seen how good the insulation looks, as hundreds of tenants and owner-occupiers alike have taken up the offer of solid wall insulation provided by the scheme during the past six months.

Sadly, for Ennis the future is uncertain, because he lives in the first street in the southern half of the Clifton estate. The scheme was due to launch there in January, until the changes to the ECO that were announced in December allowed the funder—British Gas—to pull out, leaving Ennis and thousands more Clifton South residents to look enviously at their neighbours’ homes when they walk down the street.

[Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

I commend my hon. Friend’s campaigning on this issue, which has clearly affected her constituents. My constituents in the Candle Meadow area have encountered similar stories, with some residents getting this insulation for free, but because of the Government’s changes, all of a sudden, other neighbours not getting it. This is incredible unfairness, which can be seen from house to house—those who have and have not benefited. I fully support my hon. Friend’s argument.

[Lilian Greenwood]

My hon. Friend is right. Clifton is the largest scheme in Nottingham, but Candle Meadow is equally important, albeit of a different property type.

Ilona, Kate and Ennis are just three of my constituents whose homes need to be made more energy efficient, but there are more than 20,000 solid wall, hard-to-treat properties in Nottingham and our city is not untypical of the position throughout the UK, which has more than 7.6 million uninsulated solid wall homes.

Nottingham council is committed to improving the quality of its housing stock and tackling the fuel poverty that affects more than one in seven households in our city. It has long understood that improving council homes has wider positive social impacts. I have spoken before in this Chamber about the council’s decent homes programme, known locally as Secure Warm Modern, which began in 2008 and which, when complete, will have delivered double-glazed windows, loft and cavity wall insulation and new boilers to more than 20,000 council properties.

A joint impact study by Nottingham City Homes and Nottingham Trent university’s business school found that improvements to the physical condition of properties led to improved outcomes for tenants and better security, health and comfort, and that it also impacted on the wider community, by reducing carbon emissions, providing employment opportunities and improving neighbourhoods. It was as a result of working with Nottingham City Homes to secure funding for the completion of decent homes that I began to understand the challenges involved in tackling our city’s hard-to-treat solid wall houses.

I first raised these issues with the Minister in July 2012, explaining that Nottingham City Homes could use the decent homes funding to lever in additional benefits from the green deal’s energy company obligation, if there was more certainty about funding.