DANNY WILLIAMS ‘COLD CALLING’

Each month our special correspondent Danny Williams* replies to a reader’s letter...

“I cannot understand why the government is apparently putting all its emphasis on heat pumps when so few houses are suitable. I wonder if a government minister’s sister owns a manufacturer of such devices. What do you think?” AR (Installer, Cheshire)

Assuming that you are a regular reader AR, I must first thank you for your esteemed loyalty. And, assuming that you read my latest DannyRant on electric vehicles (Glass News, July), you will understand when I say I put air source heat pumps - but more particularly the government’s mind-bogglingly stupid support for them - in the same category…. utterly ridiculous.

Context: air source heat pumps and their even more expensive and specialist alternative, the ground source versions, undoubtedly have their place. But for the British government to go hell for leather into subsiding their installation as the primary energy saving initiative for UK home owners, makes no sense at all.

According to Daily Mail spinoff website This is Money (https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/ money/bills/article-11972529/Thousandshomes-missing-government-heat-pumpsubsidies-worth-6-000.html) the subsidies for heat pumps, which may be worth £5,000 for air source types and £6,000 for ground source, are a ‘cash bung for the rich’. The piece goes on to say that the scheme is being massively underused, ‘with just 8,584 heat pumps and 106 biomass boilers fitted between May 2022 and March 2023 - not even a third of its target’. In addition to the grants, heat pumps fitted under the scheme escape VAT.

So wide of the mark is the scheme to promote heat pumps that I have to wonder if it was deliberately pitched to keep handouts to a minimum and whether our political leaders really have genuine commitment to reaching Net Zero; the hot air being emitted from Westminster is hardly helping…

The reality of fitting heat pumps is that in order for a property to be suitable, it has to have the highest levels of insulation in addition to central heating systems that are either heavily revised or replaced completely. And even then, many users complain that the heat generated is simply not enough to keep them warm, resulting in the use of additional fan heaters and the like, to bring the property up to acceptable levels.

The cost of upgrading an average three or four bedroom property to become suitable for an effective heat pump installation, may be as high as £30,000, with the government chucking in a measly £5k. A friend of mine who needed to replace her ageing gas boiler, after considering all of the options, opted for a new, efficient, gas boiler, saying that the £20,000 plus that she saved, would pay for a lot of gas.

What planet are the people that make these decisions on? The last effort, the Green Deal, was also a monumental failure, with the parliamentary Energy and Climate Change Committee saying that the Green Deal had “failed to live up to expectations” and that its implementation had been poor stating “Rather than facilitating access to energy efficiency measures and creating momentum in the market, the Green Deal has caused frustration and confusion for both consumers and the supply chain’.

The answer to reducing the energy consumption of our homes is and always has been better insulation…walls, lofts, windows and draught proofing. When subsidies were directed at encouraging wall and loft insulation especially, it was simple and easy to understand, to apply for and was affordable for many. Even a reduction in VAT for any and all of these measures, will enable so many homeowners to upgrade their properties.

As far as replacement windows are concerned however, according to Chris Beedel, the man tasked to deal with the government on behalf of the Glass & Glazing Federation in an interview published in this magazine (May issue), ‘double glazing’ was the last thing to be mentioned in the government’s Energy Company Obligation Scheme (ECO) and generally excluded for support by anyone in Whitehall because someone there once read that ‘86%’ of houses in the UK had double glazing fitted’. Job done then, right? Presumably these are the same halfwits that decided upon the need for trickle vents based upon ‘research’ carried out by a trickle vent manufacturer more than a decade ago.

As an example of how to make things needlessly complex and unworkable, the ECO has now been replaced with The Great British Insulation Project’ (nope, nor me). But from what I can see, this puts the onus on the energy companies to roll out insulation schemes to a wider bunch of homeowners, especially poorer households, still with no interest on replacement windows and doors.

Even when the heat pump debacle is exposed as the useless waste of time and money that it is, we in the window and door industry cannot expect any sort of help in the way of subsidies or at the least, a reduction in VAT. Good job then that research sponsored by my mate Rob McGlennon of Deceuninck found that ‘…energy-efficient windows and doors topped the list of home energy efficiency measures’ with Solar panels coming in second.

We have a long and proud tradition in this industry of doing things by and for ourselves – just as well really as the government remains utterly clueless about such things. If only Rishi’s missus owned a double glazing company…

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