Domestic Heat Pumps: Budget Underspend

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I draw my noble friend’s attention to the Swaffham Prior Heat Network—

[Noble Lords]

This side!

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I gave way last time.

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, one of the reasons for the so far disappointing uptake of the welcome boiler upgrade scheme is the lack of consumer awareness. Even the Minister’s own figures from what was BEIS said that 80% of people have little or no awareness of heat pumps. He mentioned that there will be further marketing: my understanding is that this will be ads on search engines and social media. Does he really believe that £300,000 spent is sufficient for the scale of the challenge and to make this welcome scheme work?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

It is certainly a good start. I was talking to officials about it earlier today. It started only in the middle of January and has already driven about a 62% increase in traffic to the GOV.UK website that provides information about heat pump offers. As the scheme moves into its second year, we will move into what further marketing activity we can do.

I will go back to the question from my noble friend, who I believe was going to ask me about the Swaffham Prior scheme. For those in the House who are not aware, Swaffham Prior is a village in Cambridgeshire. I suspect that it was in his constituency—

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

No.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

Anyway, I have visited it, and it is a great example of a community coming together to install heat pumps and a domestic heat network, supported by government funding. It is an excellent project and is going extremely well. I give my congratulations to Cambridgeshire County Council and Swaffham Prior on implementing it.