As part of the Growth Plan 2022, the Chancellor announced the Great British Insulation Scheme on September 23, committing £1 billion to the initiative between April 2023 and March 2026.
The initiative, formerly known as ECO+, is now known as the Great British Insulation Scheme, but it adheres to the same guidelines as ECO+.
A primary objective of GBIS is to rapidly reach a large number of households and implement a large number of low cost energy efficiency measures.
GBIS will primarily provide residences with single, low-cost insulation measures, as opposed to multiple measures.
This will ensure that as many households as possible receive assistance through the programme as soon as possible.
GBIS Guide for Contractors
Households who do not qualify for assistance under other ECO programmes
This will include all properties in Council Tax categories A-D in England, A-E in Scotland, and A-C in Wales that have an EPC rating of D or less. The council tax classification is being used as a proxy for income, or other eligibility requirements are not applicable.
Low-income group households that meet the standard ECO4 eligibility requirements.
While the GBIS will prioritise homeowner-occupied dwellings, it will also support inefficient public housing and private rental housing, subject to certain restrictions.
GBIS adheres to the infill rules of ECO4, permitting adjacent properties to qualify at predetermined ratios.
Homes in Bands E, F, and G will only qualify for GBIS if the minimum ECO4 standard cannot be attained.
Low revenue bracket
Households with low-incomes, mirroring the eligibility requirements of ECO4.
The Government plans to allocate at least 20% of annual GBIS expenditures to the low-income eligibility group.
Low income households which are more likely to be at risk of struggling to pay their energy bills, but are ineligible for assistance under other programmes.
When a property in the low-income eligibility group has an initial EPC band of E, F, or G, it must be shown that it cannot meet the ECO4 minimum energy efficiency improvement requirement; this reduces competition with the delivery of ECO4.
Or that only one insulation measure and heating controls are eligible for the property.
Therefore, the preferable proposal is to utilise the same exemption criteria to demonstrate that a property cannot meet the ECO4 Minimum Requirement and to permit these properties to be treated under GBIS.
Flex for low-income households
Under LA and Supplier Flex, a local authority or participating supplier may refer private-tenure households that it deems to be in fuel poverty or to be on a low income and susceptible to the effects of living in a cold home.
Suppliers have the option of working independently from local authorities and referring households based solely on their own debt data, so long as each referred household falls into a proxy referral category, such as Council Tax reduction-eligible residences.
The government intends to increase the limit on LA and Supplier Flex delivery to up to 80% of the low-income minimum for a supplier.
For the general eligibility category, only higher-cost measures that are more likely to be delivered with a customer contribution from the landlord will be available to private renting households. Therefore, they will not be eligible for loft or cavity wall insulation, which are less likely to require a landlord contribution.
Privately rented homes will be eligible for all other insulation measures, including solid wall, pitched roof, flat roof, under floor, solid floor, park home, and room-in-roof insulation, excluding only those in EPC bands F and G.
Public property
To be eligible for GBIS, social housing in the general category must be a household in Council Tax bands A-D in England, A-E in Scotland, and A-C in Wales.
Only EPC categories E, F, and G will be eligible, while only Innovation Measures will be available to households in EPC band D.
As with owner-occupied residences, these Band E, F, and G properties will only qualify for GBIS if the minimum ECO4 requirement cannot be met.
Tenants of social housing are eligible for any single insulation measure but not heating controls. This is because social housing landlords are required to provide tenants with a functioning heating system and to avoid duplication with other support, such as the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund.
How GBIS complements existing programmes
Existing government programmes, such as ECO4, are multi-measure programmes that aim to treat a whole house in accordance with industry best practises and adequately prepare homes for low-carbon heating technologies.
All of them are also solely concentrated on those with low incomes, the less able to pay, and fuel poverty.
In contrast, GBIS is intended to be a predominantly single-measure scheme, with an emphasis on installing the most cost-effective measures in as many homes as feasible to achieve bill savings.
We anticipate the combining funding streams is going to be prohibitive under GBIS.
Both the general population and the low-income population will be eligible for the following insulation measures under the Great British Insulation Scheme:
Cavity wall insulation
External insulation of solid walls
Internal insulation of solid walls
Loft insulation
Insulating a pitched roof
Insulation for low-sloped roofs
Floor insulation
Room in roof insulation
If a household with a limited income requires multiple measures, we would expect it to receive assistance through ECO4 rather than GBIS.
GBIS will only provide heating controls to the low-income eligibility category as a secondary measure.
To avoid duplication with existing programmes and requirements for other tenancy categories, this will only be available to owner-occupied households.
GBIS will not provide supplementary heating controls such as Time and Temperature Zone Controls and Smart Heating Controls.
Alongside the retrofit advice mandated by the TrustMark Licence Plus standards, it is intended that the provision of smart metre advice become a mandatory requirement.
Client contributions
While both eligibility groups can choose to provide a customer contribution for a higher-cost measure, the government recognises that many low-income group households will be unable to do so, so loft or cavity insulation will be prioritised for this group.
As a result, we anticipate that the majority of higher-cost measures with a customer contribution will be administered to the general eligibility group, which comprises an estimated 8.3 million British households.
Scoring GBIS does not propose to establish minimum requirements for increasing a home’s EPC band.
With the emphasis on primarily singular, low-cost insulation measures (along with the option of heating controls as secondary measures for low-income households), it is less likely that a home will improve by a predetermined number of EPC bands.
As the goal of GBIS is to rapidly implement a large number of single measures, the government proposes to adopt the ECO4 scoring approach, with the exception that ECO+ eligible measures will receive ECO4 Partial Project Scores without the 20% deflator that would normally be applied.
Either a RdSAP (reduced data SAP) assessment or an EPC is required for a pre-retrofit evaluation of a building’s SAP band. A post-retrofit evaluation of GBIS is not required.
ECO4 annual bill savings are calculated by modelling each measure in isolation; however, there is an interaction between measure savings when they are installed as part of multi-measure initiatives; consequently, potential savings are overestimated.
To accommodate for this, Ofgem will apply a 10% score correction deflator to all Partial Project Scores, with the exception of instances where heating controls are applied.
There should not be a post-installation RdSAP assessment or EPC for GBIS, as minimum score improvement requirements are not required under this new scheme.
Retaining the 10% bonus that is applied to projects under Route 4 of the flexible eligibility mechanism for GBIS; this will only apply to measures delivered to low-income households.
Accreditations and certifications
The scheme will continue to require GBIS-backed guarantees.
It is intended that the existing certification with ECO be replicated for GBIS, meaning installers will need to be TrustMark-certified.
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