The Green Deal is coming back.

The Government will offer an extra £100m in subsidies for those who want to insulate their property or make other improvements that will improve energy efficiency and reduce their bills, the energy secretary has announced.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/energy-bills/11145427/Green-Deal-7000-home-improvement-scheme-could-make-a-comeback.html

Is it really worth doing this when you might have the rug pulled from under you again?

In reality, the scheme can only be used for a subset of measures anyway. There are a number of caveats not generally mentioned:

- You must choose exactly two measures. Just one measure required? Nah, sorry!
- Replacement external doors - you have to have at least two! Just one need doing? Tough!
- CWI. Just got a couple of walls to do? If you have less than 50% of the surface area it won't be funded
- Secondary glazing - only over single glazing!

All this suggests government are simply not interested in carbon reduction, at least as it pertains to domestic properties.

Maybe the Government should have restart the scheme selling rolls of loft insulation for £1. The insulation can't be used for much else and you don't have to have an assessment to buy it and most people are capable of fitting it.

I have been plagued for months by recorded telephone calls urging me to take advantage of the government scheme to get free energy blah blah and press 2 to get called back.
On one occasion (having pressed 2) I managed to get the person on the phone to acknowledge that she worked for British Gas - "but it is the green deal". On another occasion when I persisted in asking which company they worked for, the phone was put down.
Recently I pressed 2 (again) and got called back. I told the young woman that I wanted the calls to stop and that yes they could send a 'surveyor' to my house. She assured me that having pressed 2 there would be no more calls.

The 'surveyor' visited a few days later, and during the visit I got a call, and pressed 2 to get called back.
I asked the surveyor if the 'solar panels' were PV or thermal. he looked a bit confused, but quickly recovered and announced that he did not know technical details - "but I can find out for you".
I then asked about this loan... - "Oh, it is not a loan, not really". "Anyway" I said, "what is the APR", he got confused again and eventually said "it is about 6%, I think"!!
I did not agree to pay £270 and get a proper survey.

They did not call back, but I continue to get nuisance calls. So the situation is that that they will not speak to me, but they insist on continuing to plague me with unwanted phone calls.

I am signed up to the TPS and the online one.

I received the distinct impression that BG were very keen to sell me a boiler, but they did not particularly want me to have 'solar panels' - am I being paranoid?

Is this scandalous?

This company has been given the franchise in the North East for rolling out the UK government's domestic energy efficiency initiative. They sell gas for a business, how can they be expected to do a good job?

Well, thanks for listening, I feel marginally better. Must go, there is an automated phone call coming in ...

Peter

The words 'Green Deal' seem to represent scams and cons. Just a trawl of google using the words puts hundreds of adverts all using words like 'free' and 'pay for itself' in the same sentence. The government has really got it wrong with the Green Deal. From something that could push a positive contribution towards reducing energy consumption and creating a sustainable housing stock; we've move into something that just generates sales leads with the inevitable up-selling and contracts with very very small print.

Ed
You have two problems, same as me. Firstly you don't use much. Bet some of your neighbours use double what you do.
Secondly, energy prices are low at about 5% of household income.

Being a bit cynical, and I try not to be, was the Green Deal a bad attempt to get some housing out of fuel poverty.
By reducing the amount of fuel people use, it could be argued that they are no longer in fuel poverty, even though they pay the same. It is just split between loan and fuel now.

Hi Mr Tea, this is true about being a lower energy user, but I think it applies even if you're an average energy user. The report gives your expected savings for each improvement measure as well as the savings for an average energy user. Even the latter wouldn't pay for themselves out of reduced bills, apart from the loft insulation.

I've looked up the average gas usage per meter in the area and it is about 13500 kWh/yeah. The housing is mainly two and three bedroom semi detached houses built for the council from the 1930s to 1950s. I would think a D rating. And house of 82 square metres would be fairly average.

So without extra money, which fortunately is on offer here, I don't think it's going to make much sense. The main exceptions I can think of are homes without mains gas or for the elderly/those in poor health who are at home most of the time and need higher temperatures.

Ed

Posted By: DarylPatomicbisf,

That was the original 'target audience', old solid-walled off gas properties...
Shame it didn't work out...http:///forum114/extensions/Vanillacons/smilies/standard/cry.gif" alt="" title="" >

Cheershttp:///forum114/extensions/Vanillacons/smilies/standard/smile.gif" alt="" title="" >

Fortunately Bath and North East Somerset council have got some ECO funding from the government to provide as a top up to the Green Deal - up to £7000 for wall insulation or £3000 for other upgrades. This should still make it worthwhile, but without I don't think it will work for most people.

Ed

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/green-deal-home-improvement-fund-details-announced

Just as Byzantine as before.

They're journalists, do you expect them to actually research what happened or something???

Posted By: Peter Clark
(having pressed 2)

Recently I pressed 2 (again)

pressed 2 to get called back.

That' why they keep bothering you. Their system will be dialling numbers from a big list, if you respond it will log you as a "live one" and the value of your phone number will go up substantially. They'll then sell it on to others. Same principle as never replying to email spam.

TPS is pretty useless for these kind of folks, by all means report them but your best bet is to not respond.

Posted By: joe90Despite all the comments above, my new house is steel and concrete construction with zero insulation value and the render in bad condition. Surely its worth getting the 67% contribution towards insulation and decent render finish? Lots of houses on this estate had this work done last time around and tell me they are pleased with the result, their houses certainly look better for it. If nothing else it will make the house look better for selling in the future.

I think so, but you'll probably have to jump through a lot of hoops to get it. They are certainly making my boiler replacement a palaver under the Green Deal. Had an initial assessment which seemed pretty good and thorough, taking about three hours and the assessor seemed to know what he was doing rather than just ticking boxes.

Then I had what I was expecting to be a visit for a quote for the actual work, only for the provider to have to do the whole thing again (but not as well) as he said they couldn't use the original assessment as it was not compatible with their system. Another three hours or so. Not a good use of public money either as the initial assessment was normally £150 but was paid for by the council as we're in a CSCO area, which seemed to have been almost completely pointless.

Ed

Got this today in an email if it's of any interest.

One of the possible reasons that vouchers haven't been claimed may be that the contractors over-reached themselves in signing people up and never had the resources to get through the work in the remaining 6 months. We are running (in my opinion) horribly close to the deadline bearing in mind the Christmas holidays and the weather. Now, phoning GDHIF help line, we find that there's no extension facility to the expiry date even if the contractor has started the work. This would mean that voucher holders could end up in the situation where the work has been completed and they are liable for the WHOLE sum of the cost of the project with no help from GDHIF. In our situation, it would be a non-starter trying to find the whole sum, made even worse by the fact that it's an inflated value anyway and the job can't really be worth 50% of the total cost.
I hope to be able to post that we've had a completed installation in the next 5 weeks otherwise I'll be asking for help on contract law and the small claims court.

Something worth knowing - I changed my originally chosen installer prior to them starting and received a new voucher with a new deadline..........just over 2 months extension.