Budget Announcements

[Ted]

Chancellor Darling has announced a few new initiatives:

- £160m investment in low-carbon and renewable projects
- £200m extra investment for Warm Front insulation scheme, helping 65,000 households
- Boiler scrappage scheme for 125,000 households
- Electric cars to be exempt from company car tax for five years
- FITs income will be tax free

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8403593.stm

Full document http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/news/nol/shared/spl/hi/uk_politics/09/budget/09_12_09budget_document.pdf

[Ivan]

£160million doesn't sound a lot of money for renewables investment - 0.016% of what we gave the banks in the last year.
At least the FITs will be tax-free. That's encouraging.

From April, people with a home wind turbine or solar panels who plug their excess power into the national grid will receive on average £900 a year," Mr Darling said

................so he's assuming the AVERAGE solar PV installation will be around 2.5kW. How many kWh/year does your 6kW proven produce, Ted. Is Mr. Darling being over-optimistic on the average wind turbine size, too?

[dhaslam]

Irish budget today much as expected.   
€15  per tonne carbon tax.  It has been suggested  that it may  apply to wind generated electricity as well.   €50 million to be applied to  helping  energy saving measures for people on low incomes.  €130 million towards retrofitting early houses, with an aim to improve the insulation of one million homes over a period.
Car scrappage arrangement will only  benefit  ordinary  cars because electric cars will have VRT exemption anyway  for two years.
Efficiency of local authorities to be audited.  They will now be able to charge for water on top of the enormous planning charges for water connections and there will be  property tax introduced based on valuations.
VAT only reduced by .5%  from January something that will be a big relief to Northern Ireland retailers and a continuing enormous loss of employment in border areas.   
Still big  problems with business taxes.   Self employed persons pay tax and PRSI on incomes  below social welfare rates of income and in many cases pay VAT as well.
Apart from high salary earners and self employed persons, income tax is negligible.  50% of all income tax is paid by 4% of the workforce.
Although public service pay is cut by rates between  5% and 15%.  It ignores the fact that  some salaries were made of more than 50% overtime and extras and expenses  which have largely been totally eliminated in some cases.     
All in all another daft budget with only small redeeming features.
           

[Greenbeast]

do i wait for boiler scrappage or not?

i was thinking of replacing mine in jan/feb/mar

do you think i'm going to have to jump through hoops to get the money?

[martin]

far be it from me to be cynical, but I do suspect hoops whereby you have to pay through the nose to one of Tony's cronies' companies to do the job, which if the usual debacle is anything to go by will double/triple the price!
I did listen to the discussion on yesterday's money programme on Radio 4 - they briefly mentioned the boiler scheme and apparently it has to be the lowest-rated ("g?") to qualify..................

[Ted]

Yes, only homes with the lowest SEDBUK G-rated boilers need apply.  (Are there even 125,000 of these in the country?)

The full list of boilers is available here: http://www.ofgem.gov.uk/Sustainability/Environment/EnergyEff/InfProjMngrs/Documents1/SEDBUK%20G%20Rated%20Boilers%20List.xls

I believe Justme has a tale to tell about previous schemes.

[Justme]

I do in deed.

We qualified for the full grant to get a broke oil burner changed. The grant was £3k. They wanted nearly £1k extra from us. The boiler was available retail for about £800. As it was a boiler swap not much work would have been needed. If we had got the £1k they wanted we would have had the job done by a small local company. In the end they told us that everyone got charged the same no matter how easy the job under the scheme.

But the best bit was when I was draining the fuel tank (selling the house & the buyers did not want the oil) I found that the primary filter was clogged & that the boiler worked properly once it was cleaned. We had had 3 companies round to check it over plus the grant company. None of them found the fault & one tested the flow.

Justme

[desperate]

Ted said
Yes, only homes with the lowest SEDBUK G-rated boilers need apply.  (Are there even 125,000 of these in the country?)


I havn't seen  G boiler for some time, most oldies are D or possibly E, oh well I wont hold my breath for the phone to ring.

Desperate

[crispy]

I just junked an Ideal Mexico cf65, 65%, G rated. I got £5 scrap for it. Would have been nice to get a handout for replacing it but I suspect I would have lost all benefit by needing to go through some super expensive installer scheme 

[Ivan]

My sister had a replacement boiler under the 'Warmfront' scheme. They were also going to connect up two radiators in unheated rooms. As it turned out, they did not do the radiators 'ran out of money', and the installation consisted of a £700 wall mounted boiler in the airing cupboard, less than a metre away from the cylinder and central heating connections. Was easily completed in a day and came to a round £3000 (the maximum grant).

[Ted]

There is a big scandal here all right.

Many MPs have known that this is happening (following complaints from their constituents) and they don't seem able to do anything about it.

3rd March 2008 - Hansard report of House of Commons debate on Warm Front:
 
Phil Woolas (cough) was the then minister responsible at DEFRA. He said:

I am aware of the concern about the prices charged for Warm Front heating installations that has been expressed here this evening and elsewhere, and it is right that there should be an interest in seeing that we make the best use of the funding available to us in
order to protect taxpayers’ money and, of course, help as many households as possible. Let me explain the pricing system.

The prices charged for Warm Front heating measures have been set on a regional basis, following an open and fully competitive procurement process. Installers in each region supplied tenders, outlining for how much they could perform each aspect of the installation work. Of those, the strongest tenders were chosen and they were used to set the prices for the scheme.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmhansrd/cm080303/debtext/80303-0021.htm#0803048001101

The rest (2 pages all together) is well worth reading.

[martin]

I have the answer! Set the fragrant Joanna Lumley on 'em!

[Ted]

More Warm Front rip offs - http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=479520

Something smells - and I don't think it is a gas leak.

Joan Ruddock (minister at DECC) says Warm Front budget for 2010-11 is £195 million.

http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200809/cmhansrd/cm090709/debtext/90709-0001.htm

[Greenbeast]

my boiler is 37 years old, i would hope it would qualify

however i don't think i'll be waiting for this scheme

[Ivan]

Looks like my sister got off lightly, reading the thread that Ted posted. She says she should be grateful that she had a free new boiler fitted to her house when her old one broke during the winter, but they weren't exactly quick about it - took about three weeks (just as well she had a woodstove!). But I hate to see taxpayers money squandered like that - £2000 for a day's work is a bit steep. Incidentally, they fitted the cheapest, lowest installation-effort controls they possible could.