Recommendation 6

The Department has persistently failed to learn lessons from previous energy efficiency schemes. The Committee has seen a number of domestic energy efficiency schemes which have failed to achieve their ambitions, including the Green Deal and the Renewable Heat Incentive. These both featured poor uptake by consumers due to their complex scheme design, and the Green Deal scheme also carried a disproportionately high administrative cost per home upgraded. The Department stated that the design of the Green Homes Grant Voucher Scheme did reflect lessons from previous schemes, particularly in its attempt to ensure value for money in delivering carbon impacts whilst minimising poor quality workmanship and fraud. Nonetheless, we are concerned that despite the Department retaining personnel with experience of previous initiatives, the Green Homes Grant Voucher Scheme suffered from many of the same issues that we have seen before. This calls into question how the Department maintains and uses its corporate memory, and whether it is truly learning lessons from the delivery of these schemes. Recommendation: The Department should set out in its Treasury Minute response how it is embedding lessons learned from this scheme and previous schemes, and how it will ensure these are applied to future energy efficiency initiatives. Green Homes Grant Voucher Scheme 9 1 Scheme design and performance