Grants Landscape

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In 2012, the government announced the launch of the ‘Green Deal’. This was to be a revolution in grants for the private domestic housing market in the UK and provide finance that would pay for a range of energy saving measures to improve a property. This would be repaid from the savings derived from the energy efficiency measure.

Additionally, The Green Deal and Energy Companies Obligation were going to create thousands of jobs through the creation of new accredited business that were going to be able to access these funds on the behalf of applicants and undertake the work.

The Green Deal was beset with problems and only now in 2015 is it now beginning to work in a cohesive manner. However there is much suspicion as businesses that were created in 2012 had to cease trading as the much needed stimulus from the grants were too erratic and unreliable.

ECO also proved to be unstable as the funding levels, eligibility criteria and measures were forever changing and again volatile at best. Below is an example of how some of the schemes has been behaved in the market place:

The Week that was Story......

"On Monday 21^st of July 2014 the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) announced that the Green Deal Home Improvement Fund (GDHIF), designed to primarily finance solid wall insulation and up to two further measures was to be amended at the end of that week.

It was muted that the GDHIF Vouchers worth up to £6000 was to be adjusted to £4000. Up until this point the fund was worth in total £50m of which approximately £12m had been drawn down since its launch on 1st of May 2014.

This announcement led to a surge in applications over the next two days across the UK. On the morning of Thursday 24^th July it was announced that the GDHIF would cease accepting applications at Midnight which was originally meant to be Midnight on Friday 25^th July.

This created a further surge and at 6.30pm on the 24^th July, the DECC website that was taking applications was closed down no longer accepting any further applications.

After the week that was DECC announced that the GDHIF was an overwhelming success with over £43m applied for in over three days. The reality was that a panic had been caused resulting in excessive applications over a short space of time meaning, a large number not being genuine. The outcome being that many thousands of bonafide applications missed out whilst thousands of vouchers remain unclaimed up to this day".