Ministers are reassessing the viability of a flagship scheme to reduce the energy bills of thousands of homes after figures showed that it is progressing so slowly it will take up to 60 years to complete.
In its first eight months of operation, the £1 billion Great British Insulation Scheme (GBIS) has improved the energy efficiency of just 2,900 properties against a target of 300,000 over three years.
Most of these homes only had one energy efficiency measure installed while some parts of the country have seen as few as 100 homes benefit.
Overall it shows that the project, which is now a quarter of the way through, is meeting just 3 per cent of its target to insulate 100,000 homes a year.
Senior industry figures said that ministers were looking at the viability of the entire scheme amid fears that it could follow the same fate as the £1.5 billion Green Homes Grant which was scrapped just six months after its launch.
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“The government knows that the scheme isn’t working and isn’t going to work in its current form,” said one. “The question they still haven’t answered is what they’re going to do instead.”
The scheme was originally the brainchild of Boris Johnson and was designed to help lower-income household energy bills and to bring down carbon emissions.
Under the plan, families living in cheaper properties with poor energy efficiency ratings could apply via their energy company to install a number of different insulation measures.
However those involved said that it had become immensely bureaucratic, with less than half of those applying actually eligible while the limited range of measures involved made it less economic for suppliers to carry out the work.
“The basic problem is that there are not enough contractors who want to take on the work and those that do are charging premium prices,” said one of those involved in its implementation.
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Juliet Phillips, head of energy at the think tank E3G, said that the scheme involved “too much bureaucracy” and that it should be a “wake up call for ministers”.
“It is very easy for ministers to announce these grand schemes but what this shows is that it is much harder to design them so that they actually deliver what is promised,” she said.
“In this case the numbers speak for themselves and it should be a wake-up call to ministers to examine whether the scheme is ever going to achieve what was intended.”
Matt Copeland, of the group National Energy Action, said that many companies were reluctant to expand their operations because there was no long-term certainty about what types of scheme would be funded in the future.
“One of the problems is that there are now a lot of different and competing energy efficiency schemes which are stretching the supply chain,” he said.
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“Yet at the same time politicians are sending mixed messages about the future of all these schemes after the election which means that companies in the supply chain find it difficult to grow to meet demand.”
In the Commons, Paul Blomfield, Labour MP for Sheffield Central, said that the scheme “looks like another failure”.
“There are 1.4 million people living in South Yorkshire but just 137 of their homes have been upgraded under GBIS.
“My constituents want their bills cut, they want to reduce emissions, they want homes insulated – what’s standing in the way is government incompetence. When will the minister get a grip?”
Ed Miliband, Labour’s shadow energy secretary, described the scheme as a “fiasco”.
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“The Great British Insulation Scheme joins a long line of catastrophic incompetence in this area, leading to higher bills, fewer jobs and climate delay,” he said.
Amanda Solloway, the energy minister, insisted that the government was spending £6 billion in this Parliament making buildings, including private rented properties, cleaner and warmer.
“This is in addition to the estimated £5 billion for the Eco4 and the GBIS up to March 2026.”
A Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokesman said: “We expect the rate of installations under the Great British Installation Scheme to increase over the coming months, and estimate more than 300,000 of Britain’s least energy efficient homes will be improved up to 2026 — helping to heat homes and save families money on their bills.”
