Together we can: partnership will deliver ‘Tomorrow’s Homes Today’
With a new government and new Parliament forming, Sarah Kostense-Winterton, Executive Director of the Mineral Wool Insulation Manufacturers Association, sets out how the new government and industry can work together to deliver warm, comfortable, low-carbon homes with permanently low bills
A general election focuses our future politicians on policies that the public will get behind and that make a real difference to their day-to-day quality of life. It also provides the opportunity for us, as an industry, to reflect on the dynamics of net-zero – specifically the public’s issues and questions, but most crucially to turn the mirror on ourselves to address these questions head-on and look at the hard reality.
Net-zero remains on the political campaigning agenda, albeit with less intensity, with “no surprises here” manifesto commitments from across the political parties. However, two big questions remain – the “how” and the “what”. How are we going to partner with the next government? What policies are going to give confidence to the British public and deliver real improvements to their homes, with lower bills to keep more money in their pockets?
MIMA, in partnership with the Energy Efficiency Infrastructure Group, has addressed the “what” in our manifesto, Tomorrow’s Homes Today, calling on Parliament to support the pledge to deliver warm, comfortable, low-carbon homes with permanently low bills in every constituency. The new MPs can get behind a 10 year package of policies and a plan from the businesses that are on the ground delivering these homes.
With ambition, but cognisant of government’s fiscal constraints, our plan focuses on delivering change with outcomes-driven policy and powerful incentives supported by enduring quality assurance and aspiring to help every type of household and building owner across the country.
We have also developed the “how” we can draw together the end-to-end industry with the new government. In coalescing a vast, multi-faceted industry, our approach must show discipline and structure while drawing our expertise to the fore and ensuring we are technology-agnostic to deliver the best outcomes for the British public.
Our manifesto is based around seven key pledges to scale up quality home upgrades:
1. Deliver warm and comfortable homes for all by empowering homeowners with incentives, such as an energy-saving stamp duty, to invest in energy efficiency improvements in their own homes.
2. Make fuel poverty a thing of the past through expansion and unification of existing effective retrofit schemes and high-impact tax incentives for private landlords to expedite action to improve their properties.
3. Unblock sector delivery by creating the right conditions for building renovation to deliver quality outcomes – with greater flexibility in both schemes eligibility requirements and for skilled building retrofit teams to deliver quality retrofits.
4. Boost consumer confidence in retrofit schemes with urgent energy price certificate reform to make them more accurate and reliable. Measuring the actual efficiency of homes will improve the overall retrofit experience.
5. Leverage local delivery by increasing practical and financial support for every local authority and create greater capacity for councils to deliver successful retrofit programmes.
6. Enable experts to help catalyse action, with a tailored national energy efficiency advice scheme and a country-wide network of local retrofit facilitation hubs to draw in expertise and support homeowners.
7. Lock in energy savings by setting and monitoring retrofit progress and, where necessary, bringing in minimum standards down the line.
Our manifesto supports the British public – from the fuel poor to private renters and homeowners – and develops a true partnership between business and government. It is a clear roadmap of public-private partnership to bolster investor confidence and unlock much-needed private investment.
This approach will sustain investment in jobs, communities, and businesses, building the public’s trust and confidence, protecting our energy security, and giving British business the crucial long-term certainty that it needs to invest and upscale with quality assurance at its heart.
The new government can improve lives by enabling the delivery of both low energy bills and low-carbon homes for all, by working in partnership with us. We stand ready to deliver both the “how” and the “what”; now we’re just waiting for the “when”.
This article was originally published in The Path To Net Zero supplement circulated alongside The House magazine. To find out more visit The Path To Net Zero hub.
