The Warm Homes Plan supports households across income groups and tenures, including £15 billion of government investment over the current Parliament to upgrade up to 5 million homes by 2030. Following the scrapping of ECO4, the Plan also brings much needed reassurance about future support for low income and fuel poor households, with £5 billion pledged to raise up to 1 million homes out of fuel poverty by 2030.
The plan focuses on electrification, via solar PV, batteries, heat pumps, heat networks, and smart appliances, complemented by insulation and passive cooling measures. The emphasis on providing grants for low income and fuel poor families to install such technologies is an important step forward and could help a much wider range of people benefit from lower bills and improved thermal comfort, partly through flexible operation of home energy assets, where this option suits both householder needs and digital infrastructure capabilities.
For homeowners and landlords, the Plan extends Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant funding to £2.7 billion until 2030, with £2 billion allocated for new low- and zero-interest consumer loans. UKERC research highlights that low- or zero-interest loans with long repayment periods (e.g. up to 10 years) can be attractive to homeowners with good credit, particularly for deeper, more expensive renovations, with positive case studies from Canada, Germany and Ireland. Further action to rebalance relative gas and electricity prices would make such loans more attractive to UK households by significantly reducing heat pump running costs.
Otherwise, there are strong implications for landlords, who are required to upgrade their properties by 2030 to continue letting them, alongside EPC reforms focusing on complete representations of building energy performance, including overheating risk. This is a welcome clarification and the transition arrangements are practical and flexible. However, there may be risks for the housing market. Despite financial support for landlords and protection from excessive rent increases by the Renters’ Rights Act, landlords may decide to sell properties without actioning improvements, and prospective landlords may be unmotivated to buy new properties in the face of additional building work to meet standards. This could reduce the availability of rental properties.
Although the Warm Homes Plan responds to the recent NAO report on the high degree of non-compliant solid wall insulations under the outgoing ECO scheme, it places far less attention on thermal fabric or insulation measures compared to electrification technologies. This is understandable in part, as many of the easiest loft and cavity wall measures have already been installed, however fabric measures also play an important role in reducing cold, damp or mouldy homes and reducing health inequalities must remain parallel to cutting costs. We support the National Retrofit Hub’s Health, Place and Retrofit report recommendations for property assessments which measure and evaluate success beyond assumed operational energy. This can include an evaluation of building fabric condition before and after retrofits, and impacts on health and quality of life that new home technologies can have on residents.
The Plan rightly includes measures to simplify the complex landscape of quality assurance and consumer protections. However, UK insulation and thermal fabric installers are not generally subject to minimum competency standards or licensing requirements, increasing the risk of low-quality renovations. Our Net Zero Skills report identified a need for training which moves beyond siloed trades to teach “whole house” understandings of buildings as an integrated system and customer care skills.
The Warm Homes Agency (WHA) will have a wide brief, supporting householders and the supply chain through online and telephone advice, acting as the national heat network zoning authority, and supporting place-based retrofit by enabling up-skilling, facilitating and coordinating local partnerships, and building greater capacity within local government. Citizens Advice have recently funded research into the quality of information and support householders receive on retrofit, which can inform this.
The Plan states that the WHA will learn from successful international examples of centralised, coordinated delivery models. UKERC research has identified several national ‘one stop shop’ (OSS) schemes which the WHA’s design could learn from, particularly on integrating support for households and supply chains. These include MaPrimeRénov’ in France, KfW in Germany and the Greener Homes Initiative in Canada, which combine householder advice, quality assurance, accredited installer requirements, grants and low-interest loans. The One Stop Shop service in Ireland, under the National Home Energy Upgrade Scheme, offers a network of 28 privately operated OSSs to manage and quality assure the customer retrofit journey from initial survey through to post-works assessment.
The Warm Homes Plan identifies that area-based coordination and place-based approaches will underpin delivery. Key changes include establishing the WHA and envisaging District Network Operators (DNOs) as key actors in coordinating local electrification initiatives. New opportunities exist for devolved and local government to develop local trusted supply chain networks, while ensuring retrofit funding is directed to properties and places most at risk in relation to health, energy costs and climate disruption.
Local Authorities and DNOs are already starting to work more closely together, partly through the development of Regional Energy Strategic Plans. But the role of DNOs in coordinating home heat decarbonisation is not yet clear. Are DNOs sufficiently equipped with the experience and capacity to lead as proactive intermediaries in the UK energy transition? How will they integrate with local authorities, who often already have detailed plans for local decarbonisation? How will landlords in the private rental sector be integrated into place-based plans?
Key questions also pertain to how the WHA will function and resourcing. Capacity building in local authorities is welcomed after decades of austerity measures. Ensuring transparency about how local authorities will be supported – financially and otherwise – to deliver place-based retrofit, and benefits to local people, will be imperative. However, there are broad assumptions that all local people necessarily trust their local authorities. The WHA should also support the integration of NGOs and ‘community gatekeepers’ into place-based delivery. Previous research has found that NGOs and community leaders have strong and trusted relationships with local people, can access hard-to-reach groups, and have vital experience in community engagement and information provision, including navigating changing policy settings, grant conditions and eligibility criteria. Additionally, UKERC research across a range of tenancy types indicates the importance of social relations in shaping engagement and provides priorities for integrating relational insights into policy.
Overall, there is lots to welcome in the emphasis on place-based delivery, but it remains too early to know whether changes will sufficiently ‘speed up’ and ‘scale up’ good quality retrofit delivery. Upcoming research may help answer these questions. Nesta is currently exploring the role DNOs could play in delivering low carbon futures. We are currently researching the wants, needs and experiences of actors engaged in delivering place-based retrofit, focusing both on project implementers and communities encapsulated in Net Zero Neighbourhood demonstrators. This forthcoming research will provide valuable insight as to where the WHA should concentrate its future support.