The Green Deal was introduced in the Queen’s Speech back in May 2010 with the aim of making UK properties more energy efficient at no upfront cost to landlords or tenants. But what does it mean for professionals working in the housing sector?
There are still clearly more questions than answers, yet all LAs & landlords are potentially faced with interpreting the complexities of the GD individually as details continue to emerge. As the Energy Bill concludes its journey through Parliament, and the 50+ pieces of secondary legislation to enact it are also debated and agreed, if we are to make a success of the Green Deal as a sector, meet UK national policy ambitions and become a catalyst for mindset shift and economic growth there will be a need to pick up the pace and use the next year to prepare.
Organisations across the sector have already worked on answers, yet we are not currently making the best collective use of that knowledge and expertise. It’s scattered all over the place in different silos. We need a more formalised structure for information sharing and more cross sectoral working, along with that all important desire from organisations to want to work together and recognise how effective this approach can be.
Currently there is no coordinated approach across the whole housing sector to collate information and Green Deal Gold, extract learning and make sense of all the issues and activity without substantial repetition, delays and wasted effort. Much of the current activity and thinking is at risk of being lost to those who really need it most. Ideally we need a single national organisation able to collate, filter and signpost learning, so that networks of organisations such as Efficiency North can all make sense of it and use it to build the foundations for action.
As leaders within the sector we have an important task to make our voices heard during the upcoming consultation that will be published in October, and then to do our best to make the legislation work. Also to work together across industry to protect consumers, make efficiencies (so the Golden Rule works as best it can), build industry and consumer confidence, sell the concepts, and gain the buy in. It will be hard to do this if we don’t believe that we will get significant buy in and take up from individual householders that will drive the demand.
It does appear a lot of professionals in the sector who have reasonable insight into the GD are not that positive at the moment about whether the Deal will actually live up to the policy ambition of transforming existing housing on a voluntary basis. However, what is crystal clear is that the UK is crying out for economic growth. With depression looming, and with every pound spent on Green Deal being new investment in regional economies with real potential for creating new jobs and growth, can we afford to miss the opportunity of being a catalyst for action both for our local economies, within our communities and for the wellbeing of our tenants and the planet? I think not.
