§ Mr. Nicholas Wintertonasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he has any plans to extend the Homes Insulation Act to provide higher individual grants for higher standards of insulation to meet the needs of the future; and if he will ensure that schemes made under the Act do not discriminate on a regional basis, and that existing schemes shall be amended to remove the regional bias.
§ Mr. Geoffrey FinsbergNo. As funds are inevitably limited, it makes sense to concentrate grants on the most cost-effective measures, including insulation of lofts to the standards specified in354W DOE circular 3/80 and lagging of hot and cold water tanks and pipes in the loft space. There is nothing to prevent a grant applicant installing insulation to a higher standard but any insulation beyond the prescribed standards must be at his own expense.
To avoid bias, allocation of finance to regions for grants under the homes insulation scheme has been on the basis of the percentage of private sector dwellings in each region as a proportion of the total number of such dwellings in the country as a whole.