COVID-19: Minister rules out another lockdown as PM is urged to enforce 'Plan B' to avert winter crisis - Sky News

Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has insisted there will not be another national lockdown after an NHS leader warned the PM that 'Plan B' coronavirus restrictions must be enforced immediately to prevent the UK "stumbling into a winter crisis".

NHS Confederation chief executive Matthew Taylor has urged the government to bring back certain measures, including mandatory face coverings in public places, telling Sky News: "The overwhelming evidence is that we do need to act."

'Overwhelming evidence' UK needs to act as daily deaths rise to highest level since March

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Why are COVID cases rising in the UK?

His remarks came as the UK recorded 223 COVID-related deaths on Tuesday - the highest number of daily fatalities since 9 March.

But asked by Kay Burley on Sky News whether the UK could be facing another lockdown, Mr Kwarteng said: "I would rule that out."

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How would Plan B tackle rising coronavirus cases - and when could it come into force?

Speaking on Wednesday morning, the business secretary added: "I think the conversation about restrictions on travel, restrictions on more lockdowns is completely unhelpful."

Asked whether more travel restrictions could be brought back in, he told Burley: "No, I don't think so."

How and when can you get your COVID booster jab?

You will be offered a booster dose at least six months after you had your second dose.

The NHS will get in touch to let you know when it's your turn to have a booster dose. People have been asked not to contact the NHS for one before then.

Most will be invited to book an appointment at a larger vaccination centre, pharmacy, or local NHS service - such as a GP surgery.

Frontline health or social care workers can book a booster dose appointment online. These people don't need to wait to be contacted by the NHS.

For those who work for an NHS trust or a care home, they will usually get their booster vaccine through their employer.

For more information about the booster vaccine, there is a dedicated NHS page here.

Challenged on the fact that the government said similar last year before further measures were introduced, the business secretary said: "This time last year we didn't have the vaccine."

"We don't want to go back into lockdown and further restrictions," Mr Kwarteng said.

Responding to the business secretary's remarks, Mr Taylor warned stricter measures may need to be implemented in the future if "some inconveniences" are not brought back in now.

"We know that things are almost inevitably going to get worse," he told Sky News, adding that the government's failure to act is "frustrating".

Asked what 'Plan B' involves, Mr Taylor said it includes "requiring people to wear masks in crowded places, discouraging unnecessary indoor gatherings, working from home if you can".

He added: "I don't think the measures you've just described - closing schools or banning international travel - are necessary at this stage.

"And that is part of the argument - if we can do those things which are inconvenient but allow life to go on then we may not have to do things which will have a bigger impact."

Image: Asked if travel restrictions could be re-imposed, Mr Kwarteng said: 'No, I don't think so'

A further 43,738 coronavirus cases were also reported in the latest 24-hour period, and on Monday, the UK saw the highest number of new infections since mid-July.

Although Downing Street has said it is keeping a "very close eye" on rising case rates, a spokesperson warned the prime minister has "absolutely no plan to introduce Plan B".

If this strategy was enforced, people could be asked to work from home again and vaccine certificates would be required for nightclubs.

Last month, Health Secretary Sajid Javid also confirmed that lockdowns would be considered as a "last resort" if this plan did not work.

Mr Taylor said the NHS is now preparing for what could be "the most challenging winter on record", and encouraged Britons to support the health service by "behaving in ways that will keep themselves and others safe".

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Scientist's winter COVID warning

Warning that the nation's recovery from the pandemic could be put at risk if pre-emptive action is not taken, he added: "The government should not wait for COVID infections to rocket and for NHS pressures to be sky high before the panic alarm is sounded."

Boris Johnson's official spokesman has previously said that Plan B would only be activated if there was a "significant risk of the NHS being overwhelmed".

But No 10 says that the UK is not at this point, and the vaccine rollout means "the levels we are seeing in both patients admitted to hospital and deaths are far lower than what we saw in previous peaks".

Professor Neil Ferguson - a leading member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies - said yesterday that he thinks Plan B could be implemented in England this winter, but a return to the type of lockdown seen back in January is unlikely.

Back in January, the UK's chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance warned "the lesson is go earlier than you think you want to, go a bit harder than you think you want to, and go a bit broader than you think you want to in terms of applying restrictions".

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Why aren't more getting booster jabs?

The UK now has one of the highest weekly rates of new reported cases in the world, and vaccination rates have fallen behind other European countries.

Data shows that approximately 67% of the population has received two doses of a COVID-19 jab, compared with 75% in Denmark, 79% in Spain and 86% in Portugal.

While the weekly rate of new reported cases stands at 24 per 100,000 people in Spain and 48 per 100,000 people in France, this figure currently stands at 463 per 100,000 people in the UK.

Labour's Bridget Phillipson told Sky News the government should be stronger in its messaging on mask wearing in closed spaces.

"It would be better if we took early steps to stop things from escalating," the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury said.

In other developments, the government has said it is also keeping a "close eye" on a new mutation of the Delta variant, which has been called AY.4.2 by scientists.

The UK Health Security Agency warned this variant is now making up 6% of new cases and could be up to 10% more transmissible.

Adam Finn, a professor of paediatrics at the University of Bristol and a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), says the "very rapid rise" in the number of cases in the UK is a "reflection of how people are behaving".

He told Sky News "nobody" appears to be wearing masks inside anymore, adding he doubts people are doing lateral flow tests.

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Professor Finn said: "There's a general sense that life's gone back to normal and as a result the infection is being passed around."

He added that unless there is a "clear message put out that we've got more infection going on now than at any point in the pandemic", despite fewer hospitalisations, people are "not really going to take precaution".

Meanwhile, Health Secretary Sajid Javid said that the government is "ramping up" its vaccination programme in a bid to encourage eligible children to get jabbed.

He added children aged between 12 and 15 would be able to use the national booking service to secure their COVID-19 vaccines "to make the most of half-term next week".

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Sir David Amess replacement must be from area, insist Southend Tories - BBC News

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Conservatives have said the replacement for Sir David Amess as MP must be from Southend and that they would not "take any candidate shoved on to us".

Tories in the borough have stated they want someone familiar with local issues to represent the late MP's Southend West constituency.

They fear a politician from outside the area will be chosen by Conservative HQ to stand in a by-election.

The Conservative Party has been asked for comment.

The Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green parties have stated they will not be contesting the seat out of respect to Sir David, who was fatally stabbed in Leigh-on-Sea on Friday.

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John Lamb, chairman of the Southend West Conservative Association, said: "There will be people starting to apply but there are ways that we will have to say it will not be a choice for Parliament.

"It is us locally who will select a candidate when it is time. It will be the candidate that we want to represent the borough.

"Having had David for more than 20 years, a hard-working constituency MP, we are not going to take any candidate they want to shove on to us."

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Nigel Holdcroft, president of Southend West Conservatives, is also hoping the candidate will be from the borough.

He said: "Normally there would be short-listed candidates which would be reduced by the executive down to two then all members of the constituency party would vote to make a decision."

• Amess family visit church where he was killed
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• How a tragic day unfolded in Leigh-on-Sea

Mr Holdcroft said he was not "entirely sure" if the Conservative Party would be involved in the decision.

"It's difficult. I don't know if any locally based people who would be interested will come forward over the next week or so," he said.

"We had someone who lived in the community. Any candidate would have to commit to living here.

"The Conservative Party might want to offer a safe seat to a more well established candidate but that is not something the local party would support."

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2021-10-19 07:34:44Z
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Heat pump grants worth £5,000 to help replace gas boilers - BBC News

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Homeowners in England and Wales will be offered subsidies of £5,000 from next April to help them to replace old gas boilers with low carbon heat pumps.

The grants are part of the government's £3.9bn plan to reduce carbon emissions from heating homes and other buildings.

It is hoped no new gas boilers will be sold after 2035. The funding also aims to make social housing and public buildings more energy efficient.

Experts say the budget is too low and the strategy not ambitious enough.

Ministers say the subsidises will make heat pumps a comparable price to a new gas boiler. But the £450m being allocated for the subsidies over three years will cover a maximum of 90,000 pumps.

Mike Childs, Head of Science at Friends of the Earth, said number of heat pumps the grants would cover "just isn't very much", and meant the UK wouldn't meet its aim of installing 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2028.

"Investment will drive down the cost of heat pumps, and technical innovation plus skills training is a part of this, but so is scale. These grants will only incentivise the best-off households."

Greenpeace UK's climate campaigner, Caroline Jones, said the government needed to provide more money to speed up the switch from gas boilers to heat pumps.

"A clearer signal would have been a phaseout of new boilers before 2035," she added.

Jonny Marshall, senior economist the Resolution Foundation, a think tank focusing on poverty, said the plan meant the UK would struggle to meet its goal of cutting emissions from homes in half by 2035.

'Affordable choice'

Heating buildings is a large contributor to the UK's overall greenhouse gas emissions, representing over a fifth of overall emissions, so there is pressure on the Heat and Buildings Strategy to deliver effective reductions.

It comes as the government prepares to outline its overarching strategy for how the UK will reduce its dependency on fossil fuels and achieve sharp reductions in emissions over the next couple of decades.

Business and Energy Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said the grants to support the adoption of heat pumps, available from next April, would play a role in that, by helping to bring down the cost of the relatively new technology by 2030.

Currently an air source heat pump costs between £6,000 and £18,000, depending on the type installed and the size of a property.

"As the technology improves and costs plummet over the next decade, we expect low-carbon heating systems will become the obvious, affordable choice for consumers," Mr Kwarteng said.

"Through our new grant scheme, we will ensure people are able to choose a more efficient alternative in the meantime."

While homeowners will be encouraged to switch to a heat pump or other low-carbon technology when their current boiler needs replacing, there is no requirement to remove boilers that are still working, the government emphasised.

Writing in the Sun, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said "the Greenshirts of the Boiler Police are not going to kick in your door with their sandal-clad feet and seize, at carrot-point, your trusty old combi".

Mr Johnson also sought to reassure voters about the government's ambitions by stressing that the costs of low-carbon heating systems would go down over time while their introduction would help create thousands of new job opportunities.

What is a heat pump and how much will one cost me?

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Heat pumps extract warmth from the air, the ground, or water - a bit like a fridge operating in reverse.

They are powered by electricity, so if you have a low-carbon source of electricity they provide greener heating.

One energy firm, Octopus Energy, said it expected homeowners would initially contribute around £2,500 to the cost of installing a heat pump, roughly equivalent to the cost of a new gas boiler. The government subsidy would cover the rest of the cost.

But many houses will require an upgrade to their energy efficiency, including insulation, before installing one.

Read more: Should I get a heat pump and how much will it cost me?

The bulk of the £3.9bn funding spread will be invested in decarbonising public buildings, insulating and installing new heating systems in social housing and for those on low incomes, and helping to provide clean heating networks for homes that are not suitable for heat pumps.

As well as subsidies for low-carbon heating, it includes:

• £3.45bn to decarbonise buildings in England and Wales including social housing and district heating schemes

• £60m to drive technological innovation to develop clean heating systems that are smaller, easier to install and cheaper to run. This money will come from a previously announced innovation fund

Independent climate think tank E3G said that setting the phase-out date for new fossil fuel boilers was "a world-leading achievement" and the pledge to reduce heat pump costs by 2030 was to be welcomed.

However, the funding was insufficient to achieve the government's goals on reducing emissions, programme leader Pedro Guertler said.

"On energy efficiency alone, the public investment announced today falls £2bn short of what was pledged in the Conservative manifesto to 2025," he said.

In all, there would need to be a further £9.75bn invested over the next three years, he said, to meet ambitious commitments on reducing emissions.

"It's challenging, but necessary, achievable and a great investment for people, jobs, skills and manufacturing," he added.

Ed Miliband, the shadow business secretary, described the strategy as "meagre, unambitious and wholly inadequate", adding that Labour had pledged to spend £6bn a year on insulation and low carbon heating.

The Liberal Democrats described the heating plan as "a kick in the teeth for families across the country facing soaring energy bills this winter".

It's another piece in the Boris Johnson climate-calming jigsaw.

First, he slots in a world-leading policy halting the sale of petrol cars by 2030.

Now he lays down another piece - no new gas boilers after 2035. It's another trend-setting initiative that other nations will surely follow.

There's a problem, though. Because by that date in the middle of the next decade the PM has already pledged to cut emissions overall by 78% over 1990 levels.

Energy experts say that simply won't happen unless he provides much wider incentives for people to insulate their homes and to buy heat pumps to replace their gas boilers.

One group of researchers estimates that to meet his net zero targets he needs to invest nearly another £10bn over three years.

They hope the chancellor will fill that piece of the jigsaw in his spending review next week.

Industry sources welcomed the new strategy.

The Confederation of British Industry, representing larger UK businesses, said the strategy would help members prepare for the changes ahead.

Matthew Fell, CBI chief policy director, said it provided "a golden opportunity for both the public and private sector to pick up the pace of progress to net zero".

But he called for "a clear delivery plan for consumers, businesses and local authorities".

The chief executive of Scottish Power, Keith Anderson, said it would kick-start demand for electric heating, "allowing the industry to accelerate the delivery of electrification and quickly bring down upfront costs."

And Phil Hurley, who chairs the Heat Pump Association, said it would give the industry a confidence boost - allowing it to scale up and retrain in preparation for the "mass rollout of heat pumps".

However, Joanne Wade, from the Association for Decentralised Energy, said she was disappointed that there was "nothing about further supply chain support to build skills and de-risk market entry for smaller firms".

• THE MATING GAME: When the survival of the species depends on you...
• BREAKING DOWN BARRIERS AND LEADING THE WAY: The pioneers who became legends

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2021-10-19 07:13:42Z
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Ayr explosion LIVE updates four rushed to hospital after blast destroys home - Ayrshire Post

Emergency services are on the scene tonight of an explosion in Ayr.

At least one house has been destroyed in a blast in Gorse Park in the Kincaidstone area of the town.

The explosion happened just after 7pm.

It is understood that the sound from the blast could be heard up to three miles away, according to reports on social media.

The cause of the blast or whether anyone has been injured is not yet known.

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2021-10-19 06:25:00Z
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Ayr explosion today: What happened after Kincaidston blast destroyed home and residents evacuated - Daily Record

A huge explosion rocked Ayr tonight after a horror blast destroyed a house.

The explosion took place in Gorse Park in the Kincaidstone area of the town shortly after 7pm on Monday.

Mercy crews scrambled to the scene as they worked to evacuate nearby residents.

TAKEN WITH TWITTER - PERMISSION GIVEN TO DAILY RECORD ON TWITTER. SAID NO NEED TO CREDIT CAPTION: Explosion destroys house in Gorse Park, Ayr Link https://twitter.com/Little_Nicky8/status/1450175234636722188

Three people have since been taken to Crosshouse Hospital but their condition is unknown.

It is also unknown how many people have been injured in the blast.

Emergency services at the scene in Gorse Park (Image: Daily Record)

What happened?

Three specialist operations vehicles, 6 ambulances, and an air ambulance were dispatched to the scene after a large explosion in the town.

Mercy crews were in attendance in the residential street helping to evacuate people from neighbouring homes.

A house was completely destroyed in the explosion.

Witnesses to tonight's explosion in Ayr have described it as sounding like a bomb going off.

Others said the blast could be heard three miles away from the source of the explosion.

Emergency services at the scene

Where and when did the incident happen?

The incident took place in a residential street in Ayrshire at around 7pm tonight.

Multiple emergency service crews were called to the scene after the explosion was felt in the surrounding areas.

The cause of the explosion is unknown.

Police are asking people to stay away from the area as they continue to evacuate families in the area.

Has anyone been taken to hospital and where are people being evacuated?

Three people have been rushed to Crosshouse Hospital following an explosion in Ayr.

The Scottish Ambulance Service say 3 people were transported to the local hospital after the blast in the Kincaidston area of Ayr this evening.

It is unknown how many people have been injured tonight.

The community has banded together to offer shelter and support to those affected by evacuations tonight.

South Ayrshire council has put on a site for families to receive shelter and emergency care.

They said: "The Council has staff on site at Queen Margaret Academy where a rest centre has been established to support those directly affected by tonight’s incident."

"The Council also has teams on site supporting emergency repairs where possible for those affected. The Council works under the direction of emergency services in these circumstances and stands ready to support our communities in any way we can."

An Ayr-based spa have offered support to anyone affected by the blast.

Allure Spa posted on Facebook saying: "People of Kincadiston if you have to be evacuated and have no where to go we can open up our shop to you we have 10 cosy beds with covers and a kettle.

"If you're at a loss and have no where please get in touch we would be more than happy to help."

Kincaidston Community Centre has also opened their doors for people affected by the incident while residents have offered food, blankets and shelter.

Tempura restaurant is also opening its doors to anyone affected by the explosion.

They posted a message on social media saying: "If anyone effected by the explosion in Kincaidston tonight is stuck for somewhere to go please let us know and we would be happy to welcome you into tempura."

What was the cause of the explosion?

The cause of the explosion is still being investigated.

Waseem Hanif, spokesperson for gas distribution company SGN said: "At around 8pm tonight we received a request to assist the emergency services following the reports of a serious explosion in Gorse Park, Ayr.

"Our engineers are currently assisting the emergency services to ensure the immediate vicinity is made safe in our role as the gas emergency service."

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2021-10-18 21:56:41Z
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Boiler upgrade scheme: Households will be able to apply for £5,000 grant to replace gas boilers - Sky News

Households will be able to apply for a £5,000 grant to swap their gas boiler for a low-carbon heat pump, as part of government plans to cut emissions.

The government announced that the £450m Boiler Upgrade Scheme, which is part of the more than £3.9bn funding to cut carbon from heating and buildings, will be used to help it reach its target for all new heating system installations to be low carbon by 2035.

However, the government insisted families will not be forced to remove their existing fossil fuel boilers.

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Can Britain have zero carbon electricity?

Ministers said that switching to low carbon heating will cut emissions and reduce the UK's dependency on fossil fuels, as well as its exposure to global price spikes in gas. It will also support up to 240,000 jobs across the country by 2035, they added.

The scheme will encourage people to install low carbon heating systems such as heat pumps, which run on electricity and extract energy from the air or ground.

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The £3.9bn funding will be used to cut carbon from heating and buildings, including by making social housing more energy efficient and cosier, as well as reducing emissions from public buildings, over the next three years.

The £5,000 grants will be available from April and will mean people installing a heat pump will pay a similar amount to those installing traditional gas boilers, according to the plans.

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The grants for heat pumps will be available for households in England and Wales, as part of the UK-wide heat and buildings strategy.

Heat pumps currently cost an average £10,000 to install and do not necessarily deliver savings on running costs despite being much more efficient than gas, because green levies are higher on electricity than on gas.

The government said its plans would help people install low-carbon heating systems in a simple, fair and cheap way as they replace their old boilers over the next decade.

It said it would work with industry to make heat pumps the same cost to buy and run as fossil fuel units by 2030.

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Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: "As we clean up the way we heat our homes over the next decade, we are backing our brilliant innovators to make clean technology like heat pumps as cheap to buy and run as gas boilers - supporting thousands of green jobs.

"Our new grants will help homeowners make the switch sooner, without costing them extra, so that going green is the better choice when their boiler needs an upgrade."

Business and Energy Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng added: "Recent volatile global gas prices have highlighted the need to double down on our efforts to reduce Britain's reliance on fossil fuels and move away from gas boilers over the coming decade to protect consumers in long term.

"As the technology improves and costs plummet over the next decade, we expect low carbon heating systems will become the obvious, affordable choice for consumers."

Greg Jackson, chief executive and founder of Octopus Energy, said that when the grant scheme launches, his company will install heat pumps at about the same cost as gas boilers.

"Electric heat pumps are more efficient, safer and cleaner than gas boilers and can help make homes more comfortable with less energy," he said.

"Today we've crossed a massive milestone in our fight against climate change and to reduce Britain's reliance on expensive, dirty gas."

Labour's shadow business secretary, Ed Miliband, said: "As millions of families face an energy and cost of living crisis, this is a meagre, unambitious and wholly inadequate response.

"Families up and down the country desperately needed Labour's 10-year plan investing £6bn-a-year for home insulation and zero carbon heating to cut bills by £400 per-year, improve our energy security, create jobs and reduce carbon emissions.

"People can't warm their homes with yet more of Boris Johnson's hot air but that is all that is on offer."

Analysis by Tom Clarke, science and technology editor

A fair, affordable and deliverable plan to wean Britain’s homes off fossil fuels is one of the toughest parts of the government’s net-zero plans.

Levies on energy bills have been a fairly straightforward way of subsidising clean forms of generating electricity – the method used to phase out coal power and replace it with offshore wind for example.

But how do you go about performing a similar trick in persuading the owners of 29 million gas boilers to switch to something else?

Especially when that something else costs 10 times more to buy, and would currently cost significantly more to run?

That’s the challenge of moving away from gas and towards electric-powered heat pumps. And one the Heat and Buildings Strategy has tried to address.

The plan has been delayed by more than a year; partly because of the amount of wrangling between energy secretary Kwasi Kwarteng and Chancellor Rishi Sunak about how to make it work.

But the result, according to most experts I’ve spoken to, is not a bad start.

The plan has sufficient money to help homeowners purchase about 30,000 new air source heat pumps a year for three years.

Nowhere near enough to fix the climate crisis (we need more like 450,000 by 2025 according to the Committee on Climate Change), but it is seen by many as a good start.

It should help generate the economies of scale needed to drive down the costs of the devices to drive up demand.

The strategy also doesn’t ignore the basic physics of electric heat pumps compared to boilers.

Heat pumps are only affordable if they run at lower temperatures than gas boilers (50C vs 70C) and that means to warm a home with a heat pump you need a well-insulated, draft-free house.

The plan boosts funding for improving things like insulation in social housing and for those in fuel poverty.

Again, by nothing nearly enough to meet a net-zero target, but most experts say they couldn’t have expected much more given the current pressures on public spending.

But important details are missing. There’s little support at all for homeowners or private landlords to improve the homes’ energy efficiency.

And there’s not much evidence of support for local authorities who manage the bulk of social housing – much of which is in greatest need of improvement.

Another important, and much trailed element of the strategy is reform of electricity pricing to encourage homeowners to make the switch from gas to electric heat pumps.

Right now gas is significantly cheaper than electricity.

It was expected that the strategy would remove levies from electricity, to make things like heat pumps cheaper to run, and therefore more attractive.

Instead, the government has decided to consult on this with a decision next year.

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2021-10-18 21:01:31Z
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UK households to be offered £5000 grants to install heat pumps - Financial Times

The Treasury will provide £450m to encourage the installation of up to 90,000 electric heat pumps by homeowners over the next three years as part of Britain’s attempt to hit its 2050 net zero target.

The announcement of the £5,000-per-household grant is part of wider £3.9bn funding package designed to help decarbonise the UK’s housing stock as part of the government’s long-awaited “Heat and Buildings Strategy”.

UK homes account for more than a fifth of all carbon dioxide emissions, with gas heating systems a major contributor. Boris Johnson’s administration is determined to provide incentives for people to install low-carbon heating systems, which are more expensive than traditional gas boilers the UK prime minister wants to phase out over the medium term.

Ministers will set a 2035 “target” for all new heating systems installed in UK homes to either use low-carbon technologies or use low-carbon fuels such as hydrogen. But they will stop short of announcing an outright “ban” on gas boilers in 14 years time.

Environment groups said the strategy was “inadequate” to shift the public away from gas boilers, which heat more than 85 per cent of homes. Mike Childs, head of science at Friends of the Earth, said the grants would only provide 30,000 heat pumps a year — far below the government’s existing target of 600,000 a year by 2028.

Greenpeace UK’s climate campaigner, Caroline Jones, said ministers had “stopped short of what’s required to transform our housing into clean, affordable, energy-efficient homes”.

Ministers want to help the industry drive down the cost of electric heat pumps, which typically retail at about £10,000. Octopus, one of the UK’s six biggest energy companies, has said it intends to reduce the cost to around £5,500 within the next year and a half.

The government said the £5,000 grants would mean people installing a heat pump would pay a similar amount to a gas boiler. But the Energy Efficiency Infrastructure Group, a coalition of non-profit organisations and businesses — including WWF, the CBI and Eon UK — previously calculated a £6,000 grant per household would be needed to install a heat pump.

The government is also launching a £60m innovation fund to help make clean-heat systems smaller, easier to install and cheaper to run.

Kwasi Kwarteng, business secretary, said manufacturers were already making heat pumps more attractive to consumers and more affordable. “Through our new grant scheme we will ensure people are able to choose a more efficient alternative in the meantime.”

The government will also confirm it will looks at ways to shift various environment levies away from electricity bills and on to gas bills to encourage consumers to switch to electric heat pumps.

The overall £3.9bn package includes money for four existing programmes: £1.4bn for the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme; £950m for the Home Upgrade Grant scheme; £800m for the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund; and £338m for the Heat Network Transformation Programme.

The opposition Labour party said the funding fell short of the promise in the 2019 Conservative election manifesto to invest £9.2bn in energy efficiency for homes, schools and hospitals in this parliament.

The Conservative government has previously promised £3.8bn for the Social Housing Decarbonisation Scheme and £2.5bn for the Home Upgrade Grant over the course of this parliament.

The announcements comes ahead of the publication of a broader “Net Zero Strategy” on Tuesday setting out the government’s plan for hitting its stringent 2050 net zero carbon target. The announcement is expected to include new funding for carbon capture storage projects.

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2021-10-18 21:00:36Z
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