BBC reports that fewer than 200 home owners had signed up to the Green Deal scheme and the slow start to the scheme has been blamed for a 97 per cent drop in cavity wall insulation installations. The insulation industry has reported that over 5,000 jobs have already been lost.
Industry giant Knauf Insulation is warning that the latest Green Deal statistics, released by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), show that it will take more than 200 years to reach the government’s target of tackling 14 million homes, if the current rate of assessment continues.
The figures reveal that only 2,031 more Green Deal assessments took place in April than in March, indicating that the level of interest is already starting to plateau.
John Sinfield, managing director of Knauf Insulation, northern Europe, said: “These figures confirm the industry’s worst fears – that the Green Deal has been strangled at birth by the complete lack of any real incentive to encourage uptake amongst householders. If this rate of activity evens out at 10,000 assessments a month it will take 116 years to reach the original DECC aspiration of tackling 14 million homes.”
Mr Sinfield went on to say: “The Green Deal must be made attractive to ALL householders if it is to stand any chance of success. Cashback should be broadened from just Green Deal to all boiler and insulation retrofits.”
