Charity Age UK said the £50 reduction confirmed by George Osborne today was welcomed, “a far better strategy would be to focus on improving energy efficiency”.
Charity director, Caroline Abrahams, said: “With excess winter deaths significantly up last year, in part due to cold homes, the Chancellor missed a major opportunity today to tackle the root cause of the problem – the UK’s poorly insulated housing stock.”
The UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) said Osborne’s statement “missed an open goal” in not recognizing the potential for construction to deliver green growth.
Paul King, chief executive of the UKGBC said: “Tax cuts for shale gas are a stark comparison to the butchering of the Energy Company Obligation (Eco) we’ve seen this week, a scheme which was helping many households with the cost of living crisis through lower energy bills.”
Energy supplier SSE called for the government to ensure the “massive investment in new infrastructure, which will impact on customers’ bills in the end” is paid for in the “right way”.
Alistair Phillips-Davies, chief executive at SSE, said: “Moving policy costs into taxation and off bills, as the government has done with the Warm Home Discount, is the right thing to do because it means the poorest will pay less.
“So let’s make the whole system fairer by moving Eco and other important, well-intentioned schemes into taxation.”
Consumer Futures also came out in support of the shift of costs from energy bills into general taxation, but Adam Scorer, director of Consumer Futures, said the £50 cut to bills “will not change the lives of the millions of people suffering fuel poverty”.
He added: “Government should seriously consider using some of the billions of pounds that consumers pay in carbon taxes such as the Carbon Price Floor, to fund a truly ambitious and strategic energy efficiency programme that reduces households’ energy costs, cuts carbon and provides economic growth.”
The CBI also expressed its disappointment that the Chancellor failed to address the Carbon Price Floor and its impact on the cost of energy, and the competitiveness of energy intensive firms.
Director-general John Cridland said: “Businesses will now be looking for government action in the Budget and this has to include looking at the impact of the Carbon Price Floor.”