In one of the few key Budget moves directly affecting the construction sector, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves announced that the Energy Company Obligation (ECO) scheme, which has seen energy companies forced to upgrade housing’s energy would be axed, in order to cut household energy bills.
Reeves said this was part of the means to achieve an average £150 cut in homes’s energy bills from April, alongside the removal of other “legacy costs” in bills. Her announcement followed a damning National Audit Office report in October on poor installation of retrofit schemes under the ECO4 initiative.
Reeves said in Parliament that the ECO scheme, launched by the Conservatives when in government, was “presented as a plan to tackle fuel poverty, but costs households £1.7bn a year on their bills and for 97% of families in fuel poverty, the scheme has cost them more than it has saved. It is a failed scheme.”
However, given the Government’s recent focus on housebuilding as a key driver for its growth plans, there was a surprising lack of content on housebuilding, apart from a £48m “new investment” in increasing capacity in the planning system, and a confirmation that the landfill tax would be dropped.