So Gordon Brown has decided that the best way to reduce energy bills is to provide free cavity wall and loft insulation to the poorest households. Discounts on household improvements are on offer to everyone else. Laudable as this is, the big question remains: will it work? The Government's record of running schemes to promote energy efficiency is not encouraging.
One of the central planks of Mr Brown's plans is to extend the existing Warm Front programme to an extra 40,000 households. This is supposed to provide pensioners and those on benefits with help to make heating and insulation improvements.
However, shoddy workmanship and poor management has left thousands of vulnerable individuals, who have already attempted to claim, out in the cold. Age Concern, the charity, says that it has come across many cases in which delays to work have left pensioners without heating. Others have had to pay to remedy poor workmanship.
Alternative schemes have also been plagued with problems. The offer of grants to help households to generate their own power had to be suspended because the Government underestimated its popularity. The fear is that the Prime Minister's latest plans will descend into similar chaos, meaning that it will be years before households receive help.
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