The new £2 billion Green Homes Grant scheme announced by the government earlier this month (July 2020), provides an opportunity to tackle hard to treat homes which require more expensive insulation measures. This is according to Neil Marshall, an independent consultant.
“For the past 20 years, the Energy Company Obligation scheme, which is an obligation placed on energy suppliers by government to reduce customers energy bills, has focussed on delivering the cheapest measures,” said Neil. “This has resulted in millions of homes receiving basic cavity wall and loft insulation – typically mineral wool or EPS Beads.”
Neil continued: “As a result, harder to treat homes, which require more costly measures such as external wall insulation, internal wall insulation and spray foam cavity wall insulation have been largely ignored. This is a real issue as over half of all fuel poor households have solid walls, and there are a huge number of empty cavity walls that are in wind driven rain and flood risk areas which need sprayfoam insulation and not mineral fibre.
“The government now has the opportunity to tackle these hard to treat homes by ensuring a focus on solid wall insulation and sprayfoam cavity wall insulation with grants that will ensure the work is carried out.”
