In my last rental home, there was a mysterious hole in the external wall of our living room. It was the size of a 50p coin, and you could see right through it to the pub opposite our house. No one knew how it got there, but it had its uses: I learned to gauge the outside temperature by holding my hand up to it. The hole soon symbolised the litany of problems our private landlord never cared to deal with, as well as our eye-watering energy bills. On cold mornings, I wondered if the seats in the Range Rover he drove were heated.
Policies for housing, renting and green renewal are interconnected. On average, heating homes that are drafty adds hundreds of pounds a year to people’s bills. It also causes tonnes of environmental pollution: in 2021, warming the UK’s 28m homes accounted for almost 20% of all its greenhouse gas emissions. Considering that 80% of buildings standing in 2050 have already been built and we have some of the oldest and leakiest housing stock in western Europe, these homes must be retrofitted and insulated.
Retrofitting is not a sexy policy by any means, but it is smart and cost-efficient, and can tackle three major issues: the cost of living, the green transition and housing rights. Boris Johnson’s green homes grant formed a key part of his “green industrial revolution”. However, when the scheme ended after only six months in 2021, it was deemed a failure, having only upgraded about 47,500 homes out of the 600,000 planned. The Tories also proposed improving the minimum energy efficiency required of new homes, yet this too was scrapped, and is nowhere to be found in their election manifesto.
What is being promised? The Greens have been the most ambitious, promising to invest £29bn over the next five years to insulate homes. The Lib Dems have promised a plan of free insulation and heat pumps for low-income households and incentives for everyone else, with a central role for local authorities. The Tories, meanwhile, pledge £6bn over the next three years to warm about a million homes, and want to introduce an energy efficiency voucher scheme to support the installation of energy efficiency measures. Given their shocking track record, even this meagre offer seems improbable.
Labour – the party most likely to win the election – offers only a fraction more for homeowners. The £6.6bn promise to retrofit 5m homes is only up to about 20% of what’s needed to get all homes to an even mildly energy-efficient level (a grade C on the energy efficiency rating scale, which ranges from A to F). The average home in the country, including mine, falls below the C standard.
In a positive development for renters, Labour has pledged to bring private rental homes up to standard by 2030. However, the lack of detailed plans on what that standard is, and Labour’s recent history of policy reversals, make it difficult to gauge the feasibility of this commitment. How would such changes play out for landlords, who have enjoyed considerable influence in previous governments? How would Labour also ensure that insulation costs are not passed on to renters in the form of increasing rents?
Tenants must be protected. In my new flat, the bad insulation means I’m not only dealing with the cold in the winter, but condensation and mould too. My energy costs now include the constant use of a dehumidifier. Complaining could result in a no-fault eviction or my rent being jacked up, which is why the next government should urgently end section 21 and enforce local rent caps. No wonder renters across Europe are disproportionately at risk of energy poverty.
It doesn’t have to be this way. A friend recently told me that in the Netherlands, where she lives, the majority of rental properties are scored on a national points-based system, which influences the maximum rental price of a home. If standards slip, tenants can legally reduce their rent. About 75% of the 3m rental homes in the Netherlands belong to housing associations, where leases are also terminated by mutual consent or court order, so tenants aren’t worried about eviction after complaining about problems with their accommodation.
After a calamitous 14 years of the Tories, the next government has much to fix. Yet retrofitting is not a “green luxury” policy to be switched on and off on a whim; it is essential for our wallets, public health, the economy – and, by no coincidence – the environment. We’ve already lost a vital decade on insulation, so the next government must go big and retrofit homes. After all, there are only so many jumpers you can layer.
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Diyora Shadijanova is a journalist and writer