Tory plan to cut energy efficiency rule for builders will cost new home owners £1,000 a year, says thinktank – UK politics live | Politics

Tory plan to cut energy efficiency rule for builders will cost new home owners £1,000 a year, says thinktank

The Tory proposal to get rid of the Future Homes Standard (see 8.51am and 3.33pm) has been described as the equivalent of a £1,000-a-year “new homes tax” for homeowners.

E3G, a climate change thinktank, has made the argument on the basis that, without the rule, which requires new homes to have low-carbon heating, owners will pay at least £25,000 more in running costs over 25 years.

Commenting on Tory plan to get rid of Future Homes Standard Photograph: E3G

In a post on LinkedIn, James Dyson, a researcher at E3G, said:

The UK’s shadow chancellor will announce today that the Conservative party would axe the Future Homes Standard if elected. This policy cuts energy bills and emissions in new build homes by requiring builders to fit new homes with heat pumps and solar panels instead of gas boilers. Heat pumps and solar panels offer dramatically lower running costs than homes fitted just with gas boilers, to the tune of around £1,000 a year in a 3-bed house.

The small additional upfront cost is quickly recovered by homeowners and protects them from price shocks on the volatile fossil fuel market. If the government builds all its promised 1.5 million new build homes to the Future Homes Standard, this will save bill payers around £35bn on their energy bills over 25 years, and stops 41m tonnes of dangerous carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere.

Cutting this policy would be a disaster for first time buyers and businesses working in one of the fastest growing sectors in the UK economy.

Key events

Prospect, a union representing many of the workers at the the Environment Agency and Natural England, has criticised the Tory proposal to scrap both quangos. Mike Clancy, its general secretary, said:

It is ridiculous for the Conservatives to blame environmental regulators for the housing crisis, especially when its own MPs are often among the most vociferous opponents of new housing developments.

The reality is that Conservative budget cuts have left these regulators struggling to perform their vital functions with “lack of resources” the most common reason for planning delays. The solution is to restore their funding to adequate levels, not scrap vital safeguards, as both the Corry and Fingleton reviews recommended.

This announcement is further proof that the politics of deregulation are a dead end, offering no solution to the challenges this country faces while putting safety and the environment at risk.

Tory chair Kevin Hollinrake says voters trust Badenoch, ‘but they don’t trust us’

Rowena Mason

Rowena Mason is the Guardian’s Whitehall editor.

Shadow cabinet ministers have been told by polling expert Luke Tryl that Kemi Badenoch has broken through but the Conservative party as a whole has not.

He said people who seen clips of Badenoch in PMQs have a 20-points higher opinion of her than those who have not, and that the Conservatives were doing a lot better with women than men.

However he said the conundrum for the Tories was how to convert voters who like Badenoch into Conservatives backers – as only a third of those who like her would support the Tories at the moment.

Tryl also described a demographic split for the Tories, saying they “held the M&S vote” but had “lost the Waitrose vote” to more liberal-left parties.

Listening to the challenging news at the More in Common fringe at Conservative party conference were shadow cabinet ministers Chris Philp, Nick Timothy, and Victoria Atkins.

Kevin Hollinrake, the party chairman, acknowledged the Tories had lost trust and said he does not believe Andy Burnham will call an election soon when it “doesn’t look winnable”.

“People do trust Kemi but they don’t trust us,” he said.

But he said he took cheer from the fact the Tories were “the least hated political party in the country”, which could be good for tactical voting.

Philp, the shadow home secretary, said Burnham was impressive on one level but disappointing on another as he was “not addressing problems today” and had “retreated to his comfort zone” on the EU and electoral reform.

Ruth Davidson, the former Scottish Tory leader, said one of the best things about Badenoch was that she had rejected the idea of “uniting the right” and there was a dividend to be won from tactical voters on the right and left who might support the Tories to keep another party out.

The Campaign to Protect Rural England has also criticised the Tory plans to scrap many building regulations. (See 8.08am.)

In a statement, Roger Mortlock, its chief executive, said:

Although the shadow chancellor is right that new homes can cost too much and take too long to build, his plans put at risk important protections for the countryside that we know the public value.

Scrapping the Future Homes Standard means more solar panels on green fields, not on new roofs. It isn’t ‘anti-aspirational’ to want homes that are warm, cheap to run and built in the right places, and decades of experience show big developers won’t deliver them without government intervention.

We welcome a simpler infrastructure levy that gives local communities real power over where the money goes. But cutting red tape is no silver bullet. If it were, the new 800,000 homes that already have planning permission would already be housing young families.