The recent announcements by Ed Milliband come from the long awaited Government report into the future energy saving measures the country needs from 2013 onwards to reduce carbon and hit our target obligations.

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The main thrust of the argument is that as cavity and loft fills are all going to be done by 2015 the emphasis should be on the 7.5 million homes that have solid walls and are known as ” hard to heat ” properties. The Government state that the average cost for a standard family home is around £10,000 for external wall insulation and that this considerable sum may lead to homeowners needing some kind of help up front to help pay for the costs.

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So far so good and the idea of help for homeowners has been adopted by a large number of our European counterparts with their Governments giving out grants of 4000 euros upwards to all homweowners undertaking solid wall insulation. UNFORTUNATELY, our Government has decided that the answer to the large capital cost is to encourage homeowners to take out a low interest loan /mortgage spread over 25 to 40 years and lodged against the property as security! This, at a time when we are being encouraged not to borrow and saddle ourselves with long term debts.

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When the house changes hands the new owners are expected to inherit the loan and continue making payments rregardless of whether they intend to keep the insulation or  perhaps extend the home around the original footprint. If the home is extended then the wall insulation with the loan attached is now redundant as it is on an internal wall !!

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For social housing and people on certain benefits the Energy Companies are expected to provide around two thirds of the costs in the form of a grant but again, the balance will be on a loan against the house. Also, rather optimistically the Government do not expect the Energy Companies to pas on their increased costs in the form of higher bills for us all. Considering we all pay a levy already for the far less expensive cavity and loft insulation grants this would seem to be highly unlikely.

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It is still early days yet as the changes are not scheduled to take place until 2013 but we believe that our Government has missed a great opportunity to boost the economy and UK job prospects by not putting up some serious money themselves in the forms of a universal grant to all homeowners . If they matched the German, Scandinavian and Irish Governments with grants of around 50% of the costs it would be of enormous benefit to everyone in our economy.

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It would be nice to hear your take on the recent announcements so please let me know your thoughts.

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