Labour will announce today its “Warm Homes for All” – the largest scale upgrade of UK housing since post-war reconstruction.
The party is pledging to create 450,000 jobs by 2030, installing energy saving measures such as loft insulation and double glazing, renewable and low carbon technologies in almost all of the UK’s 27 million homes.
Labour’s Green Industrial Revolution will be a central motor of the party’s plans to transform our country and economy, using public investment to create good, clean jobs, tackle the climate emergency and rebuild held back towns, cities and communities.
By 2030, Labour’s plans to cut carbon emissions by 10%, the equivalent of 72% of the emissions of all the cars in the UK and prevent 1,500 deaths from cold and up to 560,000 cases of asthma due to reduced damp.
The scheme will bring the energy bills of 9.6 million low income households down by an average of £417 per year and eradicate the vast majority of fuel poverty by the mid-2020s, benefiting the 1.14 million elderly people and one quarter of single parents currently living in fuel poverty.
Labour estimates that it will create 250,000 skilled jobs in the construction industry like insulation specialists, plasterers, carpenters, electricians, gas engineers, builders and window fitters – with the quality of work and rights at work guaranteed.
The investment will generate another 200,000 jobs across the economy.
The UK’s housing stock is among the worst insulated in Europe. Electricity and heat use in buildings is the biggest source of emissions in the UK today – 56% of the total. It also costs households billions over the odds in heating bills and pushes 3.5 million households into fuel poverty.
According to National Energy Action, last year around 10,000 winter deaths were caused by ill health linked to cold homes. According to Age UK, most avoidable deaths were people aged 75 and over.
Upgrades to low income households will be grant funded. These households will pay no upfront costs and will see their bills fall immediately after the work is done. They will keep most of the savings on their bills, with the rest used to pay off part of the cost of the work.
Wealthier households will be offered interest free loans to improve their homes and lower their energy bills. Landlords will be regulated to ensure their properties are warm and energy efficient.
Rebecca Long Bailey MP, Labour’s Shadow Business and Energy Secretary said:
“Warm Homes for All is one of the greatest investment projects since we rebuilt Britain’s housing after the Second World War.
“Labour will offer every household in the UK the chance to bring the future into their homes – upgrading the fabric of their homes with insulation and cutting edge heating systems – tackling both climate change and extortionate bills.
“This project will also create hundreds of thousands of good unionised construction jobs, bringing good work back to areas of the UK the Tories abandoned long ago.”
