16th September 2009 – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Most householders won’t upgrade their homes to make them greener and more energy efficient unless there is a financial incentive, warns the Federation of Master Builders (FMB).
Speaking at the Westminster Energy, Environment & Transport Forum today (16th September), Richard Diment, Director-General of the FMB said:
“The Government’s aim to retrofit every single home in the UK by 2030 as part of its heat and energy saving strategy to cut carbon emissions won’t succeed unless it provides a range of financial incentives to encourage householders to do so. The fact is that householders are simply too worried about job security and paying their bills to bother about whether their home is carbon friendly.”
Diment continued:
“We all know that that the existing housing stock needs to be improved to make it more energy efficient and greener but simply hoping by some miracle that householders will respond to this challenge fails to understand the bigger concerns of most people in this country. Cutting VAT to make homes more energy efficient, introducing council tax rebates to help householder who want to upgrade their homes, and changes to stamp duty are practical measures that the Government should be introducing if it serious about underpinning its green rhetoric to help create greener homes.”
Diment concluded:
“At at time when unemployment is continuing to rise and over 300,000 jobs are expected to be lost in the construction industry, a comprehensive package to retrofit our existing homes would not only help achieve the UK’s cut in carbon emissions but more importantly create much needed jobs in the construction sector and secure our skills base for when we do eventually come out of the recession.”
