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Green Homes Grant failure down to outsourcing logistics to US - claim

A logistics software company with clients across the property spectrum has become the latest critic of the government’s axing of the Green Homes Grant.

The government yesterday closed the £1.5 billion GHG programme, which was for landlords and owner occupiers. After launching last September, by the end of February there were over 123,000 applications for the grants but just 28,000 vouchers had been issued and only 5,800 energy-efficient installations made. An estimated 19m homes in the UK require energy efficiency improvements and the government has a target to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Ben Dyer, chief executive ofd software firm Powered Now, says: ”During the Green Homes Grant, we were regularly hearing from or clients a tale of two stories; they were either inundated with jobs, or had zero pick up”

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He says the problems lie in outsourcing the logistics of the scheme to a US-based business, neglecting the resources that existed in the UK.

“In this country we have a wealth of trusted comparison sites for tradespeople, and by getting any of them on board to help with the administration would have led to everyone being a winner" he says.

“The other issue was that the government did not approach this with the simplicity they did for schemes such as furlough. Simplicity frankly should have been the watchword for the entire scheme, but with varying definitions of what people could apply for, and ambiguities of what bad players in the market were charging customers, this was often lost in translation. If schemes are not straightforward, people wont use it.”

Dyer adds that the scheme also suffered from its short term outlook, given that the GFG - even if it had run its full course - would have ended in March 2022. 

“If green homes are top of the agenda for battling climate change and reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050, what hope have we if the scheme ends 28 years before that date?” he asks.

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  • George Dawes

    Zero emissions while China keeps pumping out gases from its factories

    Like most government initiatives utterly useless and a waste of money

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