The Lead Untangles: Will the Warm Homes Plan help you?
Could it bring your energy bills down? Plus: A Reform Watch Special Edition with a spotlight on Matt Goodwin.
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At a glance facts
The government’s Warm Homes Plan, published last week, slipped largely under the radar of national media outlets. This is despite the fact that it is one of the most ambitious and optimistic policy announcements of recent years. By investing £15 billion to upgrade five million homes by 2030, the Warm Homes Plan won’t just be a lifeline for households dealing with fuel poverty, it will also serve the country’s larger aims of gaining energy independence and meeting climate targets.
So, what’s in the plan, what does it mean for the country and – vitally – what does it mean for you?
What will the Warm Homes Plan actually do?
With £15 billion earmarked to help households improve energy efficiency and adopt cleaner, cheaper heating technologies, the long-awaited Warm Homes Plan is the biggest home energy initiative in UK history.
Under the scheme, the government is promising grants and zero and low-interest loans for clean energy upgrades in homes – for things like heat pumps, batteries and insulation upgrades – including low-interest loans for solar panels, which will be available to everyone regardless of income. It also includes big insulation improvements, including loft, cavity wall, and external wall insulation, with the aim of bringing properties up to an EPC rating of C.
As part of the plan, the government is extending and expanding the Boiler Upgrade Scheme – which offers grants of up to £7,500 to cover part of the cost of replacing fossil fuel heating systems with a heat pump or biomass boiler. Support will now be broadened to include new technologies like air-to-air heat pumps that can also cool homes in summer. It will also ease planning restrictions on heat pumps, such as increasing the allowed heat pump size for a home from 0.6m3 to 1.5m3. Homeowners will be able to choose which energy sources they want and when, to make sure the scheme works for the consumer.
The plan will particularly target low income families, with schemes like the Warm Homes: Local Grant and the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund, allowing low income families and social housing tenants to receive fully funded upgrades such as insulation, windows, heat pumps and solar panels. On top of that, the plan introduces – for the first time – measures requiring private landlords to progressively improve their properties’ energy efficiency.
All of this will be streamlined via the creation of a Warm Homes Agency and greater coordination with local authorities.
What are the benefits?
As Ed Miliband, the secretary of state of energy and net zero, said: “The warm homes plan [will]…cut bills, tackle fuel poverty, create good jobs and get us off the rollercoaster of international fossil fuel markets.”
Energy bills have soared in recent years, pushing millions further into poverty, largely caused by the war in Ukraine. The government says clean energy upgrades offered in the Warm Homes Plan will save families hundreds per year, and estimates that some measures – especially for private renters – will help lift half a million families out of fuel poverty by 2030. The protections for renters also aims to address the fact that 1.6 million children live in private accommodation suffering from cold, damp or mould.
The plans could also reduce cold and heat related deaths. Around 4,000 people in the UK die from cold homes every year, while excess deaths relating to heatwaves are on the rise and predicted to skyrocket. Insulation and other clean energy measures can help not just to warm homes in winter, but keep them cool in summer. In theory, such measures will also reduce pressure on the health service.
In terms of security, Britain will be less reliant on imported fossil fuels, meaning there will be less risk of alarming price shocks. With more energy independence, the UK will be better insulated from geopolitical instability.
Finally, the plan puts the UK on track for meeting its net zero targets. Buildings are the second-largest source of emissions in the UK, after transport. This is largely due to the gas boilers that keep around 85 per cent of UK homes warm. Retrofitting homes with low-carbon, green technologies will help cut these emissions massively, with the government implementing the goal of upgrading 5 million homes by 2030.
What doesn’t the Warm Homes Plan do?
While this policy announcement is certainly something to be optimistic about, it does have some limits. For example, the government has been criticised for not placing a ban on new gas boilers – a policy that would have been torn to shreds by opposition parties. There are also fears the plan will prioritise new technologies like solar and heat pumps over foundational measures such as deep insulation, which is essential for maximising energy savings, echoing prior botched schemes such as the Tories’ energy company obligation [Eco] insulation programme.
Delivery challenges further limit immediate impact: there are skills shortages in retrofitting and heating technologies, combined with technical barriers in rural and remote areas. While the government is pledging some funding for retraining, and £90m to encourage manufacturers to build up their heat pump-making businesses here, there are still some 120,000 domestic gas engineers and plumbers wedded to the status quo.
Meanwhile, Scotland’s housing secretary Màiri McAllan has criticised the plan for failing to address the high cost of electricity, which is a huge barrier to the uptake of clean heating technologies.
What are people saying?
Garry Felgate, CEO of the MCS Foundation, which campaigns for a carbon-free future, said: “The government must now commit to a 2035 phaseout date for fossil fuel boilers, meaning no new gas or oil boilers can be installed after that date. Without such a policy, boilers will continue to burn fossil fuels long after 2050, undermining our legally binding climate targets.”
Martin Lewis, Founder of Money Saving Expert, said: “Improving housing stock through energy efficiency, done right, is a good long-term way to cut energy bills. Yet it’s staggering how many times governments have badly cocked up ‘available to everyone’ schemes over the past decade or so – from the ‘Green Deal’ to the ‘Green Homes Grant’. They were overly complex, poorly designed, and as user-friendly as a self-assembly wardrobe with no instructions.
“Simple interest-free loans (or very low interest) are an easier concept. It means those who don’t have lump sums, but can make savings from these measures, can get on with it.”
Millie Brown, Deputy Director for Homes at the Centre for Ageing Better, said: “There is a lot riding on getting this right. The Warm Homes Plan needs to undo decades of underinvestment in our nation’s housing stock which has left us with some of the leakiest and draughtiest homes in Europe. Cold homes that lead to serious illness and untimely deaths. Older people are more likely to live in an energy inefficient home and make up the large majority of the 4,000 people in the UK who die from cold homes every year. They can wait no longer for the right support to come.
“The Warm Homes Plan also needs to regain the lost trust from the poorly executed home energy efficiency schemes of the past which have failed to deliver and help those who needed help the most.”
Camilla Born, head of the campaign group Electrify Britain, said: Yesterday was a good day for 5 million homes who will have their bills cut for good.
“It’s a good step towards backing electrification as the future of Britain but it must go hand in hand with bringing down the costs of electricity.”
What happens next?
The initial publication of the Warm Homes Plan is only a starting point. The Warm Homes Agency will take over the coordination of the plan and new standards for rental properties’ energy performance and minimum efficiency requirements will phase in over the coming years. Full specifications for the Future Homes and Buildings Standards and associated regulations are expected within the next two months and more details on low-income eligibility and new area-based schemes are expected by spring 2026.■
About the author: Ella Glover is the audience engagement editor at The Lead. She is also a freelance journalist specialising in workers’ rights, housing, health, harm reduction and lifestyle. You can find her work in Prospect Magazine, Dazed, Observer Magazine and Women’s Health.
About The Lead Untangles: In an era where misinformation is actively and deliberately used by elected politicians and where advocates and opposers of beliefs state their point of view as fact, sometimes the most useful tool reporters have is to help readers make sense of the world. If there is something you’d like us to untangle, email ella@thelead.uk.
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Really solid breakdown of this policy. The fuel poverty impact is huge but I keep thinking abot those 120,000 gas engineers trained for the old system. When I worked on a retrofit poject last year the biggest barrier wasn't funding it was finding trained installers. The coordination piece with local authorities could be key tho.
Interesting to read, "one of the most ambitious and optimistic policy announcements of recent years"
Optimism is the key to good policy formulation and implementation.