The Government is finally insulating needy homes

Finally, right? The Tory government has announced £1bn plans to insulate houses all over the country which, while on the the face of it is a good thing, has been heavily criticised by those in the Labour Party.

The announcement came courtesy of Grant Shapps, the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy of United Kingdom, as he said the Eco+ scheme is mainly aimed at middle earners who do not benefit from any other government support to upgrade their homes.

As mentioned, Labour aren’t impressed with the move and have said that it’s “far too little too late” and criticised the scheme as a "reheated announcement with no new resources".

The plan will run from Spring next year and could see hundreds of thousands of houses fitted with loft and wall cavity insulation, while a fifth of the budget will be spent on the most vulnerable housing in the country.

On top of all of this, a portion of the budget will be dedicated to setting up a public information campaign, which will offer advice on how to reduce energy usage in the home.

Grant Shapps told Sky News:

"This money is for people who have not been able to benefit from the previous schemes and will help hundreds of thousands of homes."

Speaking of the public advice, Shapps added:

"One of the tips, by the way, is something I've actually been able to use at home, which is called the boiler flow rate. And it's actually on your boiler where you can turn the temperature down, which is often set too high at 75 degrees, for example, 60 degrees. This is not your thermostat. This is in the boiler itself. And it can potentially save you a lot of money.

"So it's actually simple tips like that which we will be announcing and there's an £18m campaign to back that as well. So lots of practical help physically improving people's homes and also tips to make sure that people are able to save themselves money by being more efficient in their homes."

That’s all well and good, but the money that will be spent on this “public information” campaign is £18 million. That’s quite a lot of money to be spending on telling people to turn their boilers down or to switch their radiators off if no-one’s in that particular room. As a not very smart man, I feel like that’s the sort of advice I’d give someone if they called me up saying they were spending too much money on energy. I’m not a betting man, but I wager that one of the pieces of advice would be “wear a jumper when you’re indoors to keep warm”. I suppose only time will tell!