Just 20 GHG measures paid for last month

Alan Whitehead has slammed the Green Homes Grant (GHG) as a “catastrophic failure” after highlighting figures that show just 20 applications for vouchers last month have been paid out.

During Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) minister’s questions on Tuesday (23 March), the shadow energy minister cited figures in the government’s own latest monthly progress report on the GHG.

He said that of the 18,526 vouchers applied for in February, 1,186 have been issued. These applications have only led to 99 measures installed and 20 paid for.

Branding the GHG a “catastrophic failure of a scheme”, Whitehead asked his government opposite number Anne-Marie Trevelyan whether she will extend the programme and roll the funding over into the next financial year.

Labour has recently criticised the government  for only rolling over £320 million of the £1.5 billion originally allocated for the scheme last summer into the next financial year, even though only £142 million worth of vouchers have so far been paid out.

But the scheme has made “significant strides” since its launch in September 2020, Trevelyan said: “We recognise that the scheme has faced a number of delivery challenges, as many new mechanisms do, which has meant it has not delivered at the rate or the scale that we had originally hoped it would. However, we are working with the scheme administrator to process the backlog of voucher applications, streamlining the voucher issuance and redemption process as a top priority. Some delays in voucher processing are due to our robust fraud and gaming checks, which we have implemented by learning from previous schemes.”

The minister of state for energy said that 33,000 GHG vouchers have been issued since the scheme’s launch last year.

She also highlighted the £500 million, the distribution of which had been announced earlier that day, to the GHG local authority delivery scheme  for improving the energy efficiency of low-income households.

Kwasi Kwarteng, secretary of state for BEIS, told MPs that the government’s hydrogen strategy would be published in the “next couple of months”.

He also said Wylfa, the site in Anglesey which Hitachi has recently pulled out of, is still a “prime candidate” for new nuclear power.