£70m available in third round of Green Deal

The Government has announced the third round of its Green Deal Home Improvement Fund (GDHIF), with £70m being made available to help homeowners in England and Wales install energy-saving measures.


Individual households can apply for up to £5,600 from this newest release of funding from midday on 16 March. Domestic energy customers are able to receive up to £3750 for installing solid wall insulation – £250 less than was being offered in the last round of funding in December. But the money allocated for the deal’s two measures offer has been increased by an equivalent amount.

Homeowners can also apply for up to £1250, to install two measures from a list of approved measures including double glazing, boilers, cavity wall and floor insulation. Applicants can still receive up to £100 refunded for their Green Deal Assessment as required for funding approval, or up to £500 more if within 12 months of buying a new home.

This latest £70m of funding is part of the extra £100m for household energy efficiency announced in October 2014, in addition to the £450m already allocated by the Government to household efficiency between 2014-17.

Warmer homes

“This winter the government has helped people save money while keeping warm – taking an average of £50 off household bills and making it quicker and easier to switch supplier. But to cut bills every winter people need to use less energy.” Energy and climate change minister Amber Rudd said.

“We’ve already improved over one million homes to make them more energy efficient and we want to help more. Thanks to the Green Deal Home Improvement Fund thousands of families will enjoy lower bills and a warmer home for years to come.”

In providing a fund to householders, the Green Deal Home Improvement Fund has also created job opportunities for the energy efficiency sector as a whole. More than 1100 Green Deal authorised businesses are currently registered to provide work under the scheme.

Huge demand

Martin Lewis, founder and editor of MoneySavingExpert.com said “There’s nothing that generates action better than free cash – which is what effectively the Home Improvement Fund is. So yet again demand is likely to be huge – the first time it was done £120m went in six weeks, then £24m went within 48 hours, so this time I suspect £70m to last not much longer than a week.”

More than 25,000 households have already received a voucher for GDHIF since it launched in June 2014 to incentivise homeowners to implement energy efficiency. In August 2014, GDHIF was closed because funding allocated for the entire year had been spent in the first two months.

At the end of last year, DECC launched the second phase of its Green Deal with a £30m fund, £24m of which lasted just over 24 hours before being fully allocated thanks to a glut of applications.

Lucinda Dann

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