I have already noted this morning the cuts that Johnson is planning to announce to the school renovation programme. The FT has noted another planned cut. As they report:
Boris Johnson has been urged to fulfil his manifesto promise to spend £9bn on a huge household insulation programme as his chief adviser tries to shift the spending on to other priorities.
The UK prime minister delighted green groups in November when he committed the Conservative party to “invest £9.2bn in the energy efficiency of homes, schools and hospitals”.
But the policy has been snarled up in a Whitehall turf war after Downing Street chief adviser Dominic Cummings sought to water down the policy.
Three things. First, £9 billion is not huge: it is just a blip in the £100 billion that is required to be spent each year to deliver the Green New Deal, and leaves the vast majority of houses thermally inefficient still.
Second, this is not an 'either/or': both new housing and insulation is required. That there is even a discussion shows that the Treasury mindset is to prevail and we are heading for austerity and even deeper recession that is now already inevitable.
Third, heaven help the supposed plan to tackle the climate crisis if something as modest as this cannot be delivered. We are, quite literally, all doomed.
This is deeply depressing. We need to spend £100 billion a year and they're backtracking on £9 billion over a parliament.
And, I would add, the funding for this work could be readily available.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
My ALMO is still going ahead with lots of green improvements – we are already putting in electrical spurs so that car-charging ports can be retrofitted onto our properties and increasing the lagging in our walls and floors. All new properties are fitted with solar panels and we are retrofitting all our properties with these on a separate programme. Our next tranche of of new properties will have air and ground source heat pumps and built to Passivhaus standards such as air tightness standards (but not certified). This is part of an investment programme to replace RTB losses and is mostly self funded.
The only things that will stop this is that the Treasury might screw around with our internal rate of interest again (despite telling us that HRA funds are now apparently ours!), mess around with our rent increases (they did this in 2015) or if next year’s austerity is so bad that they have to make me and my team redundant (quite possible).
Good luck
Well thank you, but for the record, no matter how badly or lukewarm to social housing this Government has been since 2010, there are still local housing organisations and members of Homes England still trying to make things work despite this hostility and non-commitment – that was my point.
This report, launched today by Finance Secretary Kate Forbes, has some good points. It would be a lot better if she had left out the last 4 words in this line – “adopt new fiscal rules which prioritise economic stimulus over deficit reduction in times of crisis”.
https://www.gov.scot/news/blueprint-for-economic-recovery/
The report proposes “A UK-wide £80 billion stimulus package should be created to regenerate the economy and reduce inequalities following the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic”, not far off your £100 billion. Not clear on timescales, but she does say “Economic stimulus must be prioritised over deficit reduction until the recovery has fully taken hold”.
The link to the full report is at https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-uk-fiscal-path-new-approach/
If that’s the total for the UK she’s a long way off what is required.
I am talking about a need for £100bn pa for a decade to address the fall out of what is happening and the Green New Deal
Indeed, but the full report also makes it clear that UK Government fiscal targets should be suspended till the economy has recovered.
Apart from that however, you will find there is a lot of neoliberal bull**** in the report, no doubt written by Scottish Government officials.
Bear in mind that this is in the context of an appeal for the UK Government to do something to prevent the Scottish economy (and the UK economy) from disaster – in which you have no choice but to use their bull**** terminology.
How the hell do you define thermally inefficient? All houses are thermally inefficient if they leak heat. Insulation is incremental. If your first go at it reduces heat loss by 20%, your second go at 20% reduces the remaining 80% by 20%. 16% of your original heat budget. You cannot get to zero & each iteration costs you more, because you did the most cost efficient one first.
Many houses will be at or near their economic thermal efficiency already
You have just defined thermally inefficient
And experts tell me that incrementally we have a very long way to go
Heat pumps are virtually non existent