Green Homes Grant Voucher Scheme

The Department should:
a) set out by the end of 2021 how its various home energy efficiency schemes fit with its overall plans for decarbonisation, setting out timescales in a more detailed and longer-term plan. This will help to promote interest in future schemes from consumers and installers.

For future energy schemes the Department should:
b) ensure the different policy objectives of a scheme are reconciled and translated into clear targets as part of the scheme design, with an agreed understanding of which objectives should be prioritised should trade-offs need to be made; and

c) engage with the installer market on the proposed design of any future scheme and base its planning on a realistic assessment of how long it will take the different segments of the market to mobilise the skills and capacity to meet demand across all parts of the country.

d) In designing a scheme, the Department should:
• test from the start what is being expected of householders and installers. The aim should be to simplify processes, enabling all parties to complete stages right first time as far as possible; and
• consider what risk appetite is appropriate to balance making the scheme accessible and efficient with managing the risk of poor quality workmanship and fraud.

e) take a staged approach to launch to ensure the processes and systems are working efficiently and effectively and can scale up.

f) ensure that the Department deploys, alongside policy makers, people with technical, delivery and commercial experience to provide input at the earliest stages in the conception of new schemes.