The Glass and Glazing Federation has declared that the Green Deal which has been in place for over a year now is not working for the home improvement industry and this has been reported today in Glass and Glazing Products Magazine.
13 months on, only one window installation has been carried out under the Government Green Deal Scheme.
The Green Deal was launched softly by the Government as a scheme to assist homeowners with making energy-saving improvements to residential properties or businesses such as draught proofing, solar panels and of course double glazing.
The GGF Declaration follows the recent Green Building Council Conference held in January.
The conference held, called Towards the Green Deal 2.0 revealed that despite nearly 130000 Green Deal Assessments having been carried out only one window installation has actually been completed under the Government Scheme.
This is clearly shambolic and demonstrates that not only was the softly softly approach of the Green Deal Launch the wrong approach to launching what was in theory a good scheme, but that the home improvement sector clearly didn’t get behind it. One will recall the initial excitement by window firms about the Green Deal as an opportunity for the double glazing sector to carry out thousands upon thousands of new installations that they would otherwise not have carried out. With the vast majority of home improvements done outside of finance arrangements and paid for in full by consumers the Green Deal was seen as an opportunity to carry out work that people would not have done because they couldn’t afford to pay for it themselves.
What is not stated is how many of the other home improvements allowed under the Green Deal have been carried out.
It could well be that there has been a greater number of solar installations, draught proofing and heating carried out. Perhaps homeowners consider those improvements more important than replacing their windows?
Nonetheless, it is clear that homeowners have not embraced the Green Deal, it has not had the positive effect the door and window sector thought it would have and the administration involved is too complicated for window companies to embrace and become Registered Green Deal Installers.
This website knows and works with a great number of window companies and we know of none that have signed up to the Green Deal as a registered installer.
The Government effectively needs to start from scratch with the Green Deal and promote the positives of the scheme, help window installers take part in it and reverse this shocking statistic of just one window installation carried out under the scheme in the last 12 months.
The full GGP article can be read here.
The post Green Deal not working for the home improvement industry appeared first on Aluminium Trade Supply.
Related Posts
Understanding the Green Deal. Part 1.
The Green Deal is the UK coalition government’s flagship carbon emission reduction policy. You may well have seen the press releases which means that the January 2013 release date is upon us. The purpose of the Green Deal is to encourage as many people as possible to take measures to make their homes more energy […]