North Wales MS and Chair of the Senedd Cross-Party Group on Fuel Poverty and Energy Efficiency, Mark Isherwood, has spoken of the “urgent need to upgrade the energy efficiency of fuel-poor homes in Wales, including owner-occupied and private-rented sector homes, to make them much warmer, greener, healthier places to live, with energy bills that are permanently low”.
Speaking in yesterday’s Senedd Debate on the ‘Warm This Winter’ campaign, Mr Isherwood said that more than 80 per cent of fuel-poor households in Wales live in inefficient homes, higher than in any other UK nation, highlighting National Energy Action Cymru's concerns that current schemes are insufficient to deal with the scale of fuel poverty in Wales, and their call for guaranteed support for the ‘worst first’.
He said:
“There is an urgent need to upgrade the energy efficiency of fuel-poor homes in Wales, including owner-occupied and private rented sector homes, to make them much warmer, greener, healthier places to live, with energy bills that are permanently low.
“In a letter in response to me as Chair of the Cross-Party Group on Fuel Poverty and Energy Efficiency in April, the Minister for Climate Change stated that she expects to procure a new demand-led scheme to replace ‘Nest’ (Warm Homes Programme Scheme) by the end of the calendar year, adding this will enable the new scheme to be awarded late autumn and mobilised over the winter, with delivery expected from late winter. The Cross-Party Group believes it is imperative that the Welsh Government now implement the new Warm Homes Programme with urgency, ensuring that the replacement demand-led scheme for ‘Nest’ is operational this winter with eligibility and scale confirmed.
“The Senedd’s Equality and Social Justice Committee report on Fuel Poverty and the Warm Homes programme makes several welcome recommendations regarding the next iteration of the Warm Homes Programme, including for the Welsh Government to ensure the Programme embeds the ‘fabric and worst-first’ approach to retrofitting, targeting the poorest households in the least fuel-efficient homes; is bigger in scale, with smarter, less restrictive eligibility criteria, and greener in its interventions, looking to cover the cost of enabling works, removing the single application cap to help accommodate multiple measures, and designing a more intelligent means of limiting costs; and is backed by a robust data collection, monitoring and evaluation framework, with a fit-for-purpose quality assurance regime. This remains the best, lasting way of tackling fuel poverty, reducing the amount of energy fuel-poor households need to use to heat their homes in the first place and providing a permanent reduction in energy bills.
“In the years to come, the next Scheme and Programme will need to be backed by sufficient, increased funding if the Welsh Government is to meet its 2035 fuel poverty targets and contribute to efforts to reach Net Zero. And if the Welsh Government is issuing a Policy Statement on its Warm Homes programme today, it is imperative that the scheme is operational as soon as possible. Further, important detail, including eligibility and scale, must be confirmed.”