Decarbonisation of Housing: Committee Report

In October last year (2022), CIOB was asked to give further evidence to the Senedd’s Environment, Climate Change, and Infrastructure Committee on the decarbonising the private housing sector following our written evidence submission. 

The Committee published its findings and recommendations in February 2023. We were pleased to see recommendations from our evidence were taken onboard, including a “Help To Fix” loan scheme, involving:

The provision of interest free loans by the Welsh Government directly to owner occupiers for a range of measures which, while predicated on improving energy efficiency, would also extend to other measures including loft conversions, extensions, annexes, and home improvements. 

We argued that a ‘Help to Fix’ loan scheme would leverage the already high demand for home improvements in the economy to improve the energy efficiency of Wales’s housing stock. Given that it is estimated that 90%of properties in Wales will still be in use by 2050, this loan scheme – by affording equitable access to retrofit technologies and Repair, Maintenance, and Improvement (RMI) works – will allow everyone to reap the benefits regardless of income. This will also ensure that Wales’s built environment can be decarbonised in line with Welsh Government targets. 

The decarbonisation of housing report also mentioned that fiscal – including tax-based – initiatives could have a valuable role to play in incentivising retrofit take up. CIOB has long been calling for the implementation of schemes like this. For instance, our report Flipping the green switch proposes using stamp duty – or in Wales, Land Transaction Tax (LTT) – to incentivise investors to retrofit properties before flipping them back on the market. The Committee does accept that this has yet to be tested in Wales, and that the Welsh Government ruled out the use of these kinds of incentives in the last Senedd term, though they would reconsider their position based on any evidence. We therefore welcome the Committee’s recommendation that Welsh Government should use existing evidence “as a starting point to consider whether variable LTT would be a viable option in Wales”. 

We also welcome the Committee’s acknowledgement that skills and supply chain issues need to be resolved before any decarbonisation programme can be successful. This highlights the importance of the construction sector to achieve these targets, and we hope that Welsh Government schemes – in particular, the recently announced Net Zero Skills Strategy – will work with industry and professional bodies to ensure the future-proofing of the construction sector in Wales.