Calls for improvements to schemes to help make homes more energy efficiency have been made by a Liverpool councillor to a Parliamentary Committee.
Councillor Tim Moore, cabinet member for transport and climate change and a member of the Local Government Association’s Environment and Housing Board, was invited to address the House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee as an expert witness in a national review of the Green Deal.
The Green Deal is designed to help people make energy efficiency improvements to buildings by allowing them to pay the costs through their energy bills rather than upfront. It operates alongside the Energy Company obligations (ECO) which places obligations on the larger energy suppliers to deliver energy efficiency measure to domestic energy users.
Councillor Moore (pictured) told the committee that the city council and other local authorities “stand ready and willing” to make Green Deal and Eco work. However he added; “What we need are the powers, the flexibility and, of course, the resources to help make that happen because we are facing many challenges elsewhere in our organisations.”
He said there were major concerns both with the current system and with the proposed changes to ECO. The changes will mean that in exchange for an annual bill saving of about £35 per household thousands of local households will be denied the opportunity to benefit from funded energy effic
iency works that would have saved them far more.
Councillor Moore pointed to the work of the Liverpool Healthy Homes team in proactively seeking to help those most in need and expressed his disappointment that the city council was being held back from achieving ambitions because of the projected changes.
He also called for the whole of the national funding system to be simplified and for local councils to have a far greater say in how the ECO money was administered and spent and the ability to coordinate whole area improvements with the local registered housing providers.
