“The Government needs to provide a driver for retrofitting for homeowners that complements the one-off grants for specific technologies” said Mr Adams. “Emissions from dwellings have been rising over the last 5 years as emissions fell in other sectors; effective, long-term structural incentives are needed in this Parliament. Short-term initiatives – such as the Green Homes Grant – have failed to deliver the kind of sustained take up necessary. Meanwhile the proposals in last week’s Heat and Building Strategy to fund the installation of heat pumps, whilst welcome, will fail to sufficiently reduce emissions if not accompanied by broader structural incentives for homeowners.”
A viable approach to stimulate and support owner occupiers to act at scale is a Green Stamp Duty Incentive. This is an effective intervention backed by groups ranging from consumer finance organisations to the Green Finance Institute and a wide range of industry groups. A Green Stamp Duty incentive will make energy efficient homes cheaper to buy and will remind those who are buying a lower performing home of the improvements that are likely to be necessary during their period of ownership. The incentive would also encourage people to start thinking about potential improvements to their homes at the time of purchase and plan ahead to realise the tax rebate.”
It is essential that a Green Stamp Duty Incentive is adopted rapidly to be fair to homeowners and to give the government the chance to reach its target of a 78% reduction of UK greenhouse emissions by 2035. The Chancellor must show his Government is serious about achieving lower emissions from housing in his Statement tomorrow by introducing a Green Stamp Duty Incentive.”
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