Speaking at a Public Accounts Committee hearing this week, Slade said: “I think it is very useful that we have an interim to take us from the end of current Eco to the next one, I generally support the idea of focusing the money available towards the fuel poor.
“I have strong concerns, though, over how we are going to handle the able-to-pay market and complexity of measures that need to be delivered there to meet our interim targets but also the amount of work that needs to be done there.”
Slade told the committee that the funding of the measures also needed to be considered as “it’s very regressive and not right, I believe, that someone in fuel poverty is paying for these schemes.”
Eco is entering its transitional year before a replacement scheme is expected to be introduced in 2018. The industry has been calling for clarity on what the next measures will entail and, in January, Lord Bourne told MPs the new energy efficiency scheme will be “centric to fuel poverty” and cost around £640 million, but little else is currently known about the new scheme.