The government must complete this year its analysis into the botched Green Homes Grant (GHG) programme to ensure similar mistakes are not repeated in future home energy retrofit schemes, a House of Commons committee has recommended.
The Environmental Audit Committee’s report on green jobs and skills, which has been published today (18 October), said the flagship energy efficiency voucher scheme was designed to stimulate home retrofit jobs.
However, as result of the problems that bedevilled the scheme, which was cancelled in March when only a fraction of the cash earmarked for it had been spent, “may even have put people out of work.”
Overall, the report said the government must build on the emissions reduction ambitions, outlined in the Net Zero Strategy earlier this week, with a “detailed, actionable” plan for delivery.
An absence of this kind of understanding was apparent in the GHG scheme, where the committee said the government failed to engage with the sector to develop the skills required, resulting “perversely” in contractors making staff redundant as consumers awaited confirmation of vouchers.
“There is a need to rebuild trust with the retrofit sector. Lack of engagement with the industry over the design of the scheme led to it being suboptimal, resulting in a fragmented and actively disruptive approach to developing skills in a vital sector,” the report said.
The committee called for the government’s own analysis into the GHG voucher scheme to be completed before the end of this year to ensure that lessons learned can inform the design of future schemes while engaging with industry to rebuild trust.
The report said the fact there are millions of homes that require improved insulation and decarbonised heating means the industry requires “substantial upskilling” and an increase in its trained workforce across the UK.
It also said the government urgently needs to set out a retrofit skills strategy.
Philip Dunne MP, the committee’s chair, said: “The workforce of the future is being undermined by a lack of evidence-based government policies on how jobs will be filled in green sectors.
“Encouraging announcements of investment in green sectors of the economy are very welcome but the government admits that claims about green jobs lack explanation and data on how the targets will be achieved.”