Britain needs faster fix to leaky homes to curb high energy bills

Bloomberg

The UK is failing to do enough to improve energy efficiency, which is needed to curb struggling households’ soaring bills, a parliamentary committee found.
Government ministers must prioritise upgrading the country’s leaky housing, the Environmental Audit Committee’s report said. That includes setting a goal of at least 1 million energy-saving improvements like insulation, solar panels or heat pumps a year by 2025 and 2.5 million a year by the end of the decade. It also advised that all properties should reach the top three — of seven — energy-efficiency tiers by 2035.
Those initiatives would help consumers spend less on energy bills, which have rocketed since Russia squeezed supplies to Europe. Longer term, it would also reduce the country’s reliance on imports of gas.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt pledged £6 billion to insulate homes and upgrade boilers in his budget last year. However, ministers have tried several energy-efficiency programs over the past decade that haven’t achieved mass roll-out. The report said one of the more recent ones, the Green Homes Grant, was “administered shambolically.”
Separately, data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed 3% to 4% of households in some London boroughs have no central heating. That means homes have to rely on more expensive ways to warm up, made worse by leaky housing.
Meanwhile, some of London’s boroughs are on a par with the most impoverished regions of the UK when it comes to household access to central heating, meaning they are forced to rely on more expensive methods to keep their homes warm.
Between three and 4% of households living in boroughs like Camden, Tower Hamlets, Southwark, and Westminster have no central heating in their homes, data from ONS show.