Grant Shapps’ travelling circus continues to tour and amuse with the announcement today (http://bit.ly/7WH2Bk) of a move to improve the home efficiency of 25 million homes with the view to provide consumers with the benefits of long term energy savings.
He will say he has agreements in place with Utility companies and high street retailers ( apparently Tesco and Marks and Spencer have already signed up ) who will arrange the so called re-fit of homes calculated at around £6,500 per property. Under the arrangement the consumer will be able to repay this loan over a 25 year period. The refit will include energy efficient lighting, modern boilers and cavity and loft insulation.
Shapps will add that the scheme would create 70,000 new jobs and a 2.5 billion marketplace. Unfortunately he does not mention the market and the people he intends to destroy in the making of this ill thought out scheme.
Apart from repeating he will be ‘scrapping’ the HIP (as if we do not already know this) there is no mention of the 13,000 domestic energy assessors and home inspectors, nor of how exactly the energy performance certificate fits in, though the detail will no doubt follow later.
More alarmingly the introduction of the energy retailers and the likes of Marks and Spencer must raise serious doubt as to whether responsibility for delivering EPCs will remain with the energy assessors. It seems logical that the delivery of the EPC will vest with the supplier of the ‘refit’ meaning that the DEA/HI once again with either find employment by one of these companies or be out of work.
It also suggests that if the scheme is successful the need and market place for future energy performance certificates will reduce.
Strange that in a time when we are all being encouraged to save and not borrow we have a Conservative Party pushing us all down the road of committing to the ‘never, never’. This just re-enforces my belief that this Party simply can not be trusted .
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