Who's paying for all this eco work?

[BeLoftyTurtle]

I live in Leicester and heaps of houses are having eco work done, expensive wall insulation and solar panels etc.

You need to be on benefits to receive funding.

I know one local one got solar panels after age extended her house upwards by one level. Massive in investment! She said shes in receipt of UC so can get it.

I don't understand where tens of thousands of pounds to reduce carbon from private homes is coming from and how all the houses which are £350k+ in value are eligible for benefits?

Sorry I didn't proof read (I was having a convo with inlaws).

Basically a neighbour has added a level to her bungalow, which would cost a lot of money. She's saved for the works and she's also in receipt of UC which is why she's recently got solar panels.

I think if 1 in 2 cars were taken of the road that would be much better for my house than next doors gas boiler, but what do I know...

Anyway just annoyed as parents can't get funding and neither can I
.

How do you know all this? Equally to extend a bungalow upwards from savings would take you over the UC savings threshold so no, she wouldn't have had this work done and paid for it herself and claimed at the same time without a lot of fraud going on.

I think if 1 in 2 cars were taken of the road that would be much better for my house than next doors gas boiler, but what do I know...

Do you understand the point of green energy and better insulated houses? The two are entirely separate points and you seem to be conflating the two.
Either way it’s not something that’s supposed to have an effect, positive or negative, on you as a neighbour.

So, instead, you propose a reduction in 50% of personal vehicles? How would that work then? How much would it cost in compensation and public transport investment? I'll take your quick napkin calculations

As a side note, I just assume anyone having external insulation put on a period property is a moron.
It’s largely ineffective and is going to cause a huge damp crisis in a decade.

She told me.

So she was saying she got the panels done via eco and telling us all about the scheme. She also said she could have got the wall insulation done... Which I assume she's been claiming benefits as well as building - because it's not like she's depleted her funds.

She's mistaken as she would have been able to get wall insulation, it's only fitted retrospectively and she wouldnt be able to get planning without correct insulation.

Panels obviously on after the house was built upwards

Obviously her own business and I'm only go by what she says.

I go out and breathe car fumes every day. Disgusting. Live next to a main road. It's horrible, caused the death of a that kid a while ago

A lot of energy saving funding comes from energy companies through the Energy Company Obligation. They have to pay into a fund that local councils use to help people pay for energy saving and therefore money saving things.

We are on no benefits but we’ve had loft and cavity wall insulation paid for through the council. They have targets to meet in terms of spending so they are often desperate to get people to take them up on it.

Another two neighbours have gone it done, one was 15 years ago and she said her house has been fine. Not sure how it's ineffective,,,?

Or if you have certain health conditions that are exacerbated by cold. These require a sign off by the GP.
if it will cheer you up a lot of the companies have had their funding capped and stopped by the new labour government.

I do too. A lot of the insulation solutions are just damp waiting to happen (I have a large north facing wall which gets VERY cold, lovely in the summer horrible in the winter) all the wall based solutions seem like they will cause more problems than they'll solve.

You don't necessarily need to be on benefits to get this funded work done though. We recently had energy efficiency works done through a grant. I was eligible for health reasons alone, nothing to do with benefits or income - and I believe a significant number of other people would be similarly eligible on that basis.

These works have significant benefit in terms of energy efficiency, reduction in fuel etc but also for the health and wellbeing of people living in very poorly insulated and energy inefficient homes.

The energy companies will do loft insulation at £500 (approx). Obviously alot cheaper to do it yourself. Also can't get external wall for solid walls as none of the providers seem to do it.

Because if the walls are north facing they're prone to condensation build up. If you trap the condensation between two layers you have a huge mold issue.

Yes due to health issues or benefits.

Sorry I forgot to include those with chronic illness that are eligible. For you I think it's 100% worth it because your health is helped by a warm home and those on benefits are supposed to be in fuel poverty

How can condensation get in if the wall is blocked?

I have no idea whether eco measures are being gamed by benefit claimants - although it would seem fair that OAPs get something to offset Labour’s fuel allowance cut.

But I do predict that most of these green ‘innovations’ will be ripped out in 15 years time and will prove to be costly mistakes. We’ll be burning coal and gas again.

I suspect that ‘leccy cars will fade and die too. Petrol will be here for a very long time.

It’s not through the energy companies, it’s through the council but paid for by the ECO. We had big-ish house done for free. Same for cavity wall.

Why should those pensioners who.have a healthy pension from a private fund get extra money?

The loft and wall insulation for those not eligible for Eco4 is via the GBIS and it's loft and wall insulation. Customer contributes alot more than it costs them for loft insulation and only cavity walls are viable due to lack of available fitters for solid

I can only talk about present schemes

The government Eco4 scheme pays for people in receipt of certain benefits to have eco measures in their homes.

That helps.

The LEZ schemes and grants for, say, EV chargers also help with car pollution.

They're two separate prongs of attacking the same problem; conflating the two doesn't really make sense.

Cold bridging for one, the huge issues which arise from putting a non breathable surface on a house where the fabric was designed to be breathable for another.

They probably shouldn’t get anything. I’m not against that particular cut in welfare payments. And there will be other even more savage benefit cuts under this government that we should take a sensible view about.

But all governments sweeten the pill in some way. So it wouldn’t surprise me if numb-fingered, stooping, shivering pensioners get some solar panels on the cheap off Mr Miliband.

There was some scheme which the Tories brought out in conjunction with the energy companies where you could have subsidised insulation if your house was energy rating D or less. Ours is probably D but we haven't got an EPC and I wouldn't want my walls filled with stuff anyway, my house was built to breathe

It's called GBIS