HL Deb 29 June 1993 vol 547 cc27-8WA
Lord Brabazon of Tara

asked Her Majesty's Government:

What progress they have made in preparing the guidance for local authorities on energy efficiency in council housing which last year was promised by the then departmental Under-Secretary of State for Housing in another place.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of the Environment (Lord Strathclyde)

I am pleased to inform the House that I have today published guidance to local authorities on energy efficiency in council housing. A copy of the guidance, titledEnergy Efficiency in Council Housing, has been placed in the Library.

Improving energy efficiency in council housing brings benefits to tenants, landlords and the environment. Tenants benefit from warmer, healthier homes which are cheaper to heat. Landlords gain from lower maintenance and management costs, saving as much as one pound for every pound tenants save in fuel. In addition, the environment benefits from reductions in CO2 emissions, the biggest contributor to global warming.

The guidance is based on the experience of the Green House Programme, launched by the Department in 1990 to demonstrate the scope for cost effective energy efficiency improvements in council housing. The results to date are very encouraging: schemes show potential for achieving energy savings of up to 40 per cent. and CO2 reductions of up to 50 per cent.

To build on this success, the Government have made clear that from this year onwards they will expect local authorities to take fuller account of energy efficiency considerations in preparing their housing strategies and annual housing investment programme submissions. The guidance will help them do so by providing practical assistance on how to go about developing effective energy efficiency policies and programmes, including advice on setting aims, objectives and targets, who needs to be involved, how to engage tenants in the process, how to develop energy efficiency profiles of the stock, how to implement programmes cost effectively and how to monitor and evaluate performance.

Local authorities already spend significant sums annually on energy related works to their housing stocks. We believe that, if all authorities were to adopt Green House Programme principles, they could use these resources even more cost effectively.

We plan to produce an updated and consolidated version of the guidance, including more technical advice, for the start of the 1994 housing investment programme round.