Number of completed Green Deals rises to 12

The are now 12 completed Green Deal plans, while the number of signed Green Deals has risen to 372, up from 132 last month, the latest official figures have revealed.

The latest Green Deal statistics, published by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) also showed that as of the end of August there were now 12 live Green Deal plans – meaning the measures have been installed in the property and the customer is now ready to pay back the cost of the loan through their energy bill.

In all there are now a further 293 Green Deal plans in the pipeline, bring the total number of Green Deal plans that have been prepared to 677 through to the end of August.

The figures also showed 13,086 assessments were conducted in August – slightly down on the 13,645 undertaken in July – bringing the total number of assessments undertaken since the launch of the scheme in January to 71,210.

DECC’s stats also showed a continued growth in the number of Green Deal providers (101 – up from 79 last month), installer organisations (1,662 – up from 1,457) and assessor organisations (269 – up from 248).

The figures also showed over £1.5m of the government’s £125m cash back scheme, designed to drive Green Deal take-up, has now been paid out with 5,733 vouchers issued at the end of July.

The vast majority (97%) of the cash-back vouchers went towards funding boiler replacements.

David Symons, director at design and environmental consultancy WSP, said the scheme had reached a “plateau” of around 13,000 homes entering the process each month in the form of assessments, “which isn’t anywhere near enough scale to make it the transformative programme that it could be”. 

“[Ministers] calls these figures ‘encouraging’ but we believe that actually it’s far from encouraging – at this rate it will still take 160 years to survey all homes in the UK. Government really needs to up the ante to make this scheme a success, something we all want to happen,” he said.

John Alker, director of policy and communication at the UK Green Building Council, welcomed the continued growth in the scheme, but called for additional financial incentives such as variable Stamp Duty and council tax to drive further uptake in the Green Deal.

He said: “Green Deal numbers are edging in the right direction but the scheme still needs a shot in the arm. If ever there was a time for Treasury to bring forward tax incentives to encourage energy efficiency, it is now.

“With winter approaching, and people beginning to switch on their heating, this is the ideal opportunity to help households protect themselves against rising fuel bills.”

Figures for the Green Deal’s sister scheme the Energy Company Obligation were also released showing that a total of 194,751 measures have been installed under the scheme through to the end of July.

The ECO scheme has remained focused on loft insulation which makes up 40% of measures installed to date, down from 45% at the end of June.

Cavity wall insulation made up 34% of installations, up slightly on 33% the previous month, and boiler replacements now total 21% of measures installed, up from 18% the previous month.