“All politics is local” is the title of a book by the long-serving Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Tip O’Neill. And when it comes to motivating politicians, nothing gets them more exercised than things happening in their constituencies. So, the announcement at the Labour Conference that the Warm Homes Plan was going to be more devolved than previously thought, will be of some interest.

Let me begin by saying from an EUA perspective, this is something one of our internal groups (Heat and Hot Water Policy) will be looking at, but I was struck by the public response from low carbon heating advocates. One of them, from NESTA, expressed his disquiet about any devolution of the current Boiler Upgrade Scheme. His justification was interesting, in that firstly what he argued was likely to happen but in doing so, it also questioned the very fairness of the BUS.

The argument made was that devolving the cash to local authorities or Combined Authority Mayors would mean subsidies being earmarked for areas with little or no demand for heat pumps, while at the same time reducing the amount available for areas where demand was high.

My interpretation of this would be less cash for the South-West and South-East but more for the inner cities such as Manchester and Birmingham. This would, according to their argument, reduce overall heat pump sales. I would tend to agree with his conclusion. But it does suggest that the BUS policy is skewed to relatively well-off areas, something that might make it vulnerable to greater scrutiny of Whitehall spending. That said, let’s get our members to have a good think about what the policy implications might be. After all, we are yet to hear the detail on how the Warm Homes Plan will work, let alone the revised devolution of resources.

PS I’ll end this with an aside, there is a great piece on the Sky News website about how the gas industry prepares for possible shortage of supply, well worth a watch. 

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