Over the weekend, and just six months after its launch, the government decided to ditch its flagship green homes grant scheme. The £1.5bn scheme was set up to offer grants to households of up to £10,000 to install insulation or low-carbon heating. Although applications in progress will be completed, no new applications will be taken after the end of March.

The scrapping of the green grant means that the tens of thousands of jobs it was expected to generate will no longer happen. In fact, there are reports that building companies have actually laid off staff due to the problems that were encountered when dealing with the red-tape of applications and installations.

The demise of the scheme comes six years after the ditching of the ‘green deal loan scheme’, that was supposed to be a ‘transformational’ change and the ‘biggest home improvement programme since the second world war’.

At the end of February 2021, there were over 123,000 applications for the grants but just 28,000 vouchers were issues and only 5,800 energy efficient installations made.

The Environmental Audit Committee of MPs last week declared that the implementation of the scheme had been ‘botched’ and the administration of it ‘seems nothing short of disastrous’.