4. Statement by the Minister for Climate Change: The Warm Homes Programme

– in the Senedd at 3:45 pm on 12 March 2024.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Elin Jones Elin Jones Plaid Cymru 3:45, 12 March 2024

(Translated)

The next item will be a statement by the Minister for Climate Change on the Warm Homes programme. The Minister, Julie James, to make the statement. 

(Translated)

The Deputy Presiding Officer (David Rees) took the Chair.

Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 3:45, 12 March 2024

Diolch, Llywydd. This Senedd has rightly expressed a great deal of interest in the new Warm Homes programme. I'm pleased to confirm it will go live on 1 April with advice and referral services provided by Energy Savings Trust and installation services provided by British Gas to improve the fabric of homes across Wales, and assurance services are to be provided by Pennington Choices. 

The new programme will launch in a complex and challenging landscape. The cost-of-living crisis continues to have a detrimental effect on living standards across Wales. Having just seen the hottest global year on record in 2023 and amongst the wettest winters ever recorded in Wales, the climate emergency is moving from the inevitable future to inescapable present reality.

Many of our homes are amongst the oldest and least energy efficient in Europe. This means they take more expensive energy to keep warm in winter, driving up our carbon emissions. It means that, whilst the recent Ofgem announcement on the price cap reduction will bring welcome relief to some households, many in Wales continue to struggle with increased energy costs and are pushed into fuel poverty

In 2021 Welsh homes accounted for approximately 10 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions in Wales. Last summer I set out in a policy statement how the new Warm Homes programme will continue to act as Welsh Government’s primary mechanism to tackle fuel poverty, whilst at the same time playing its part in achieving a net-zero Wales by 2050. It will take a fabric, worst and low-carbon first approach to improve the long-term energy efficiency of the least thermally efficient low-income households in Wales. Our two-pronged approach will deliver a comprehensive energy advice service for everyone in Wales and physically improve the homes of the fuel poor. 

It builds on a strong legacy and complements our existing work in the social housing sector, where we have already made a significant difference in improving the thermal efficiency of homes in Wales. Up until the end of March 2023, more than £440 million has been invested to improve home energy efficiency through the Warm Homes programme, helping more than 77,000 lower income households in the owner-occupied and private rental sectors to reduce their emissions and their bills. We expect figures from this year to confirm that over 200,000 people have benefited from energy efficiency advice through the Warm Homes programme since its launch in 2011. In the social housing sector, around £260 million has been committed through the optimised retrofit programme over this term of government. 

Our continued investment in the Warm Homes and optimised retrofit programmes, or ORP, will drive further improvements for the least energy efficient homes in Wales. Channelling ORP investment through social landlords supports a testing and learning approach to decarbonise Welsh homes effectively and efficiently. 

Dirprwy Lywydd, yesterday I laid the regulations to enable the new Warm Homes programme, which will not only respond to the current cost-of-living crisis and tackle emissions from the owner-occupier and private rental sector, but will promote sustainable Welsh materials, support Welsh skills and jobs and learn from the lessons of the past. 

Welsh Government is leading by example in demonstrating a just transition, on which our consultation closed yesterday. With a £30 million budget allocation next year, we are supporting the vulnerable in society and moving homes to the clean heat of the future rather than propping up the fossil fuels of our past. Our approach will stimulate skills and supply chain development, and demonstrates our strong leadership on these important issues. 

Dirprwy Lywydd, I wish to draw attention to some of the key features and changes in the new scheme. Householders who meet the eligibility criteria will receive a tailored package of support specific to their needs and their home. Low-carbon technologies will be prioritised where it makes sense to do so. Measures such as heat pumps and/or solar panels with battery storage are preferred where possible, making households more resilient to rising energy prices in the future and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

To ensure we target the least well off, a low-income threshold is being introduced, rather than relying solely on means-tested benefits. A household with an income lower than 60 per cent of the median average is classed as lower income for this scheme and we will not count any disability-related payments or benefits as income.

We are also moving to take a more joined-up approach with complementary schemes to maximise the benefits of these to Welsh citizens. Our advice service will have an important role in understanding each individual’s circumstances and supporting them to access the most appropriate scheme for their needs. We are also working with the Welsh Local Government Association to encourage local authorities to grow the energy company obligation, ECO Flex scheme, in Wales. This will ensure broad access to the scheme for households across Wales and that Welsh householders get their fair share of this money from Westminster.

This new programme is part of our work to develop a more coherent approach across all tenures and income levels to drive decarbonisation. This decade must be a decade of action on climate. We've already published our consultation on the heat strategy, which sets out the vision and priority areas for action. The Welsh housing quality standard 2023 is bold and progressive in setting ambitious targets to address decarbonisation in the social housing stock. It is also making a difference to the overall quality of people’s lives by ensuring that their homes are affordable to heat. What we learn from upgrading our 230,000 social homes will drive how we tackle the decarbonisation of Wales’s 1.2 million privately owned homes and reduce bills for householders across all sectors.

Dirprwy Lywydd, Welsh Government is doing everything we can to support a fairer, greener future for all. But the UK Government has a role to play, and we've repeatedly called on them to make the required changes. We have asked, for instance, for a social tariff for energy, we have asked them to address the injustices of standing charges and prepayment meters, and, of course, we have asked them to support Welsh ambitions for a transformed energy grid. In the light of all that, I am proud to today reflect on the achievements of this Government in making us look to a cleaner, brighter future. Diolch.

Photo of Mark Isherwood Mark Isherwood Conservative 3:51, 12 March 2024

As you indicated, Wales has some of the oldest and least thermally efficient housing stock compared with the UK and Europe. The Welsh Government estimates there are 614,000 or 45 per cent of households in Wales in fuel poverty and states that the Warm Homes programme is its primary mechanism to tackle fuel poverty, which is primarily a social justice issue. The new scheme will be demand led and assist those who are least able to pay. However, despite assurances, the Welsh Government did not implement the programme prior to the winter of 2023. In fact, although the Welsh Government fuel poverty strategy stated that they would consult on revised arrangements for delivering measures for tackling fuel poverty beyond March 2023 between June and December 2021, the consultation was not launched until December 2021. The strategy also states that the Welsh Government will publish its response and implement its findings to start in April 2023, but didn't even respond until June 2023. Now we finally have a launch of the scheme, will the Minister state why there's been so much delay in getting to this point?

Now we know which bodies will be delivering the programme, who will be carrying out the monitoring and evaluation that will be key to the delivery of any programme?

Last week at National Energy Action's Wales fuel poverty conference, the director of Citizens Advice Cymru called for an awareness campaign for the new Warm Homes programme. We already know that take-up of certain Welsh Government grants and schemes isn't as high as it could be, so what plans do you have for an awareness campaign? How would it look in practical terms and how will you target the groups most at need, where, for example, the older people's commissioner's recent report 'Access Denied' reported that older people's rights to access information and services are being undermined by poor-quality or non-existent offline alternatives?

Care & Repair have stated they're grateful for the changes and updates that will be made to the Warm Homes programme, including eligibility based on low income, rather than means-tested benefits. However, they're concerned that homes in a poor state of disrepair will not benefit from the programme, as enabling works do not appear to be covered in the scheme, and many homes will not, therefore, benefit from works available through the new programme until the disrepair has been tackled. This means that older home owners, in particular on a low income, will continue to live in homes that are energy inefficient, cold and more expensive to heat, with significant ramifications for their health and well-being. How will you rectify this so the new programme is reaching as many people in need as possible?

The level of the budget threshold per property is still and will be a very important consideration. This will impact the scale and depth of support provided to each household. You state that eligibility will be based on a low-income threshold rather than relying solely on means-tested benefits. So, will the level of the low-income threshold take into account differences in household size and composition? Will it be after housing costs and how will it be allocated per property?

The Welsh Government has confirmed that the programme will have a budget of £35 million in 2024-25, the same as the previous year. The tender document published by the Welsh Government for the new programme outlined that a supplier would be expected to undertake work on 11,500 properties over seven years, equivalent to just over 1,600 properties each year. Based on these figures, it would take over 130 years to improve the energy efficiency of up to 217,700 lower income households currently estimated to be in fuel poverty in Wales, and many decades even with the programme's advice and referral services. How, therefore, do you respond to NEA Cymru's statement that, in future years, the programme's funding will need to significantly increase and that, quote, we have to spend to save, prioritising long-term investment to make fuel-poor homes much warmer, greener, healthier places to live, with energy bills that are permanently low?

Little is known about part 2 of the Warm Homes programme at this stage beyond that it will be an integrated approach across all tenures and income levels to drive decarbonisation. So, what detail can the Minister share with us on part 2 now?

Finally, I've previously called for the Welsh Government to set interim targets in their tackling fuel poverty 2021-25 plan, which does not yet meet the Welsh Government's statutory obligations to specify interim objectives to be achieved and target dates for achieving them. Citizens Advice Cymru states interim targets will ensure that the Welsh Government is accountable for progress, so what are your plans to introduce these targets now? Thank you.

Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 3:56, 12 March 2024

Thanks, Mark. So, I'm just turning to the first issue. I did say in my statement that we had three tranches in the new programme, so just to reiterate, we've got advice and referral services provided by the Energy Saving Trust, so that's how people will get to hear about advice and referral into the programme where appropriate. We also have a whole series of advice programmes that my colleague the Minister for Social Justice runs, where everyone will be enabled to refer people to the Warm Homes programme, and, indeed, the energy advisory service, so if you're not eligible for the programme itself, you'll still get the energy advisory services. Then, as I said, installation services will be provided by British Gas, having gone through the competitive procurement process, and then the assurance services you asked about would be provided by Pennington Choices. So, we've done a little bit of learning from the previous programmes in understanding that one size for the whole thing doesn't really work, so we've got them split out into tranches quite deliberately to be able to pick that up. So, we'll be getting feedback from Pennington Choices as the programme rolls out. So, I think that's a better position than we were in in the previous programme.

In terms of the amount of money, obviously I'm not going to rehearse today the position the Welsh Government's budget is in, but we've done extremely well, I think, to protect some of these budgets. We're also doing—. This is very much not a 'one size fits all', so just in terms of the remarks you made about the fabric of the home, the whole point is that you'd get a survey of the home and its needs, and then we make sure that we retrofit accordingly—there's no point in putting an air source heat pump into a house that leaks like a sieve; it wouldn't have any effect. So, we'll be looking at insulation measures and so on—what else is needed in the home.

One of the things that isn't in my statement, to be fair, but which I've said many times on the floor of the Senedd, is we've been working with local authorities to look at energy efficiency in their areas, and particularly for particular streets and neighbourhoods. And I've said a number of times, and I'll just reiterate it now: if you were to have, for example, a terrace of homes where 80 per cent of the people fit the 60 per cent of median income threshold but the others didn't, we would still consider a scheme that would upgrade the whole of that street, because sometimes a neighbourhood scheme makes more sense in terms of what can be installed in energy efficiency and decarbonisation terms than doing individual households. So, I was very keen to make sure—. And in the conversation we had in Cabinet about this, which my colleague Jane Hutt and myself led, we had a long discussion about the dichotomy, if that's the right word, between just getting out to as many people as possible with one single measure, which is what the old scheme was doing, and actually making sure that we properly retrofit fewer houses—that's true—but in a way that was much more resilient for futureproofing. So, that's the way we've gone.

And then the other thing is on the decarbonisation: we've said that basically, if you've got a gas boiler fitted and it's possible to repair that to give it a longer life and make it more efficient, that would be part of the thing that could happen under the scheme, but where the boiler was not economically viable, then it would not be replaced by a fossil fuel heating source.

So, I think we've looked very carefully at a range of things here that allow us to hit a decent place in this journey, and it is a journey, you're quite right. We've also, of course, been rolling out in the social homes sector some of the optimised retrofit programmes, which I know Members are very familiar with, where we've test trialled tech that works on particular sorts of housing, trying to learn the lessons that Siân Gwenllian and others have brought up in the Chamber around where, you know, cavity wall insulation was perfectly great for many hundreds of homes, but, for some homes, caused real problems. So, we've tried to learn the lesson of not having a one-size-fits-all approach.

And then, the last thing I would say, Mark, is that not all of the levers are in our hands, of course. We do need a better energy grid, we do need a decarbonised energy grid that has much more even distribution of the energy supply and actually to decarbonise its sources. And without trying to make too much of a political point about it, I'm desperately sad about the announcements from the UK Government about building more gas-fired power stations, given the state of the climate. I mean, I just—. I mean, frankly, it just puts you into a place where—. I'm just shaking my head with disbelief, really, that any Government thinks that that's the way forward for an energy grid that gives us either security or certainty or climate resilience. It just doesn't make any sense to me at all.

Photo of Mabon ap Gwynfor Mabon ap Gwynfor Plaid Cymru 4:01, 12 March 2024

(Translated)

It's extremely concerning that the Government failed to implement the Warm Homes programme before the end of November despite the pledges made, leaving many vulnerable households in the cold during a period of cold weather before the winter. I've noted the frightening statistics many times in the past, but almost 300 people die in Wales because of cold every year. This is shocking. Indeed, some 30 per cent of additional winter deaths are related to living in cold properties. Quite simply, cold homes kill, and those who have to live in cold homes have to suffer and cope with that cold.

Research by Public Health Wales shows that cold temperatures in the home are related to poor health outcomes, and living in temperatures below 18 degrees Celsius leads to damaging effects on people's health and is related to heart conditions and pulmonary conditions, sleeping disorders and poor health and physical performance generally. The impact on older people is particularly acute. Three quarters of additional winter deaths belong to that cohort of people over 75 years old.

Wales has the oldest and least energy-efficient housing stock in the UK and among the oldest in Europe. Indeed, my constituency of Dwyfor Meirionnydd has the oldest stock and is among the least energy-efficient in the whole of Wales.

Photo of Mabon ap Gwynfor Mabon ap Gwynfor Plaid Cymru 4:02, 12 March 2024

So, while the support offered by the Welsh Government has been a welcome lifeline, the current situation is utterly unsustainable. A report by Care and Repair Cymru revealed that 96 per cent of households accessing Care and Repair's energy advice service were identified as living in fuel poverty. While there has been an increase in the state pension in line with inflation, older citizens still face higher utility expenses. This places additional stress on already vulnerable households, raising concerns about escalating debts and the struggle to afford necessities. So, I'd like to ask the Minister: what discussions has the Government had with UK Government to improve the take-up of the benefits that these people deserve and are allowed to access?

It's disappointing that, despite allocated funds, the Welsh Government delayed action, leaving those in severe fuel poverty, particularly those in the least energy-efficient homes, without support. We in Plaid Cymru urged the Welsh Government back in November to swiftly implement the Warm Homes programme to aid low-income households in improving their energy efficiency for winter. This urgency was also emphasised by the Wales expert group on the cost-of-living crisis, stressing the importance of launching the scheme promptly. However, the Government rejected these calls, resulting in concerning statistics. Thirty-one per cent of people went without heating in their homes in the three months leading to January 2024, and Citizens Advice saw a record number of people seeking fuel vouchers. Additionally, nearly a quarter of children in Wales expressed worries about being cold. So, can the Minister give an assurance to us today that there will be no further delays and that we won't see any further delays leading up to next winter?

And this, of course, is the context in which people were facing a delay in the programme this year: cold and inefficient homes kill, and they will have killed over the last winter, and the Warm Homes programme must do more than its predecessors to ensure improvements are made to the Welsh housing stock to make them cheaper and more efficient to heat, while ensuring people are supported. We need a sufficiently funded area-based, targeted programme that gets to grips with the issues of cold homes.

While it's positive that the programme is now being rolled out to support those in fuel poverty, we maintain that this action should have been taken much earlier, rather than waiting until after another challenging winter. So, let's be clear, though: fuel poverty is a multifaceted issue. We can reduce it by improving the housing stock that exists through installing low-carbon technologies, retrofitting, and we need to increase the scale and pace of delivering low-carbon social housing. After all, it's the wider housing crisis that has put huge pressure on households, including those on low incomes, who, more often than not, have to pay a poverty premium for their energy while facing rising rents, which force them to choose between heating, eating and keeping a roof over their heads. So, can the Minister confirm that each household that reaches the eligibility criteria will receive the assistance required without being hampered by further tests or appeal procedures? Diolch yn fawr iawn.

Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 4:05, 12 March 2024

Yes, thanks, Mabon. I don't disagree at all with your analysis of what happens if you live in a cold home—obviously that's why we are putting the programme in place—and nor do I disagree with your analysis that many of our homes are the worst. In fact, I said so in my statement. I just want to say, though, at that point, in my original statement it said 'Welsh homes are'; it's 'many Welsh homes are', deliberately, because actually one of the things that we have done, and we've done it as part of the co-operation agreement, as you know, is that we've insisted that new-build homes in the social sector are low-carbon completely, but actually even in the private sector we've changed Part L of the building regulations to up the level of insulation and up the level of heat efficiency, and, actually, cooling efficiency, as it happens, so that new-build homes in Wales are much, much more efficient than they would have been otherwise—a measure that was wholeheartedly opposed by everybody on the opposite benches, because apparently cost is everything until you're in a debate of this sort. So, it is about getting the balance right so that we aren't storing up—I completely agree with you—that we aren't currently building, in my own famous phrase, the slums of the future, and that we are not giving a future Government in 10 years' time a retrofit nightmare the same as we currently have, because of the standards to which those homes were built—albeit many hundreds of years ago, in some cases. So, I accept all of that.

Just to say that we didn't have no programme running over the last winter, just to be clear. We did have Nest running, so actually a number of households did benefit from the Nest programme. Improvements in those households had an estimated average of £420 off their annual bill once those improvements had been put in. But if you think about the energy costs and the acceleration of energy costs over the last two years, people are facing thousands of pounds of costs, which we were not in a position to be able to mitigate. So, one of the big calls that we have from the UK Government, and I said it in my answer to Mark Isherwood, and actually even the Government has said it today in a statement, I saw, is that reform of the energy market would have a vast improvement on this, because actually being able to have affordable energy supplies, electricity supplies, in a decarbonised grid that was both efficient and effective, would make much more difference in your constituency, for example, than almost anything else that we can do. So, I just think it's important to keep the macro-level stuff in sight as well.

Having said that, I would have liked to have been able to roll this programme out quicker. It would take much longer than necessary to go through all of the procurement hurdles that we've had through the last several months, but anyway it's here now. It will start on 1 April. There will not be any further delays. It will then be rolled out and it will be well embedded before next winter. We have been quite lucky over this winter, because it's been one of the warmest on record. I'm really reluctant to say that, because that is not lucky; that is a measure of the climate change that we are facing. Each successive year over the last five has been warmer than the one before, and this has also been the wettest one, so we've had a whole series of other issues to look at.

In terms of eligibility, we want to make that as efficient as possible. That's why we've got the advisory services put into the procurement. It's deliberately there to assist people through. We don't want people put off. My colleague Jane Hutt and I have been working with the advice agencies to make sure that there's no wrong door for this, that everybody is referred into it. We've also been working with councils for quite a while now to make sure that people who are, for example, eligible for council tax rebates are automatically referred into the programme, as they're very likely to be the same cohort of people, but I'm very happy to accept any suggestions from Members of the Senedd about anything else we can do to make sure that people are referred in efficiently to the programme. We do know that it's difficult to get hold of people, especially in the older age groups, who are pretty proud and perhaps haven't accepted help before, and you need help to get them to understand that this is an entitlement and it will very much benefit their lives.

The last thing I wanted to say on this as well is just—. We put the heat strategy out—I can't quite remember, just before Christmas, I think it was, it went out for consultation. So, this is part of an overarching strategy, as I said in answer to Mark Isherwood. So, we are doing a whole series of other things here around energy efficiency for other tenures as well.

And then, on the private sector, the long-term rented sector in particular, we have been trying to work with the UK Government who randomly said that they were going to put an energy performance certificate E threshold, if you remember, on it, and then took that away again. Because what we need is a mechanism to allow private sector landlords to decarbonise their homes and make them more energy efficient, without driving the rents up so that they're unaffordable. So, we have been very much pushing the leasing scheme Wales plan for this, where, if you give your home over to us for five years minimum, but 10 years better, 15 years optimal, we would actually assist you to bring that home right up to the highest standard whilst you receive the local housing allowance as rent all the way through that period. That is proving more and more attractive to private sector landlords, and we've been proactively targeting those in inner-city areas with very large houses that have multi-generational families living in them. So, in my constituency, for example, a number of the private rented sector homes are multi-generational, large homes that would be quite expensive to retrofit without this kind of scheme.

So, we have been trying to get it out as much as possible, if I can say that to you, and I'm very pleased that we've done a lot of lessons-learned exercises for this so that we don’t repeat some of the scheme problems that we had with Arbed, for example, that Members will be familiar with.

Photo of Jenny Rathbone Jenny Rathbone Labour 4:11, 12 March 2024

There's a great deal to be applauded from your statement, Minister. I'm very pleased to see that there will be no wrong door, as you've just said, that we're going to use Welsh materials where they're available, and we're going to focus on the worst first.

We also, as you say, need to get local authorities on board. I was depressed to hear an officer responsible for our schools' premises say that solar tiles are untested technology, which, I'm afraid, indicates that they don't get out much talking to the industry.

I also applaud your three-pronged procurement, because I think that will give us a much better way of testing the quality of the advice, the quality of the installation, and also the assurance to be provided by this other agency.

I just wanted to ask about your preferred provider of British Gas, because, obviously, the name indicates that they know more about a fossil fuel. How did the Welsh Government satisfy itself that British Gas has the capacity and the capability to install the full range of low-carbon, renewable energy solutions to meet the particular needs of individual fuel-poor households, because I completely agree that this is absolutely crucial to making people far less vulnerable to the rise and rise in energy prices based on gas?

Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 4:13, 12 March 2024

Yes, that's an interesting point, isn't it? So, just to be clear, the procurement was very specific about installing the right tech in the right home, and you had to have capability to install the right tech in the right home, you had to understand and demonstrate your understanding of the tech results, if you like, that we have. We have plenty—. If you want to refer the officer of the local authority to me, Jenny, I can point them to plenty of evidence on the solar panel point. But not every home is okay for solar panels, particularly if you need battery technology, and it depends where you are in the world et cetera. It will work to some extent in most homes, but it is not the most efficient thing for some homes. Some homes would be far better off with air or ground-source heat pumps, for example, or better efficiency in a number of other areas. And even with solar panels, of course, some of them are water heating and some of them are battery sourced and so on. So, I can assure you that a vigorous assessment was done of being able to apply the right tech at the right time. In fact, actually, companies like British Gas, who also supply electricity—the name is misleading, shall we say, for that point—of course also need to retrofit their own skilled workforce because there will be less and less demand for gas fitters, and more and more demand for people who can fit other things. So, this also assists with us to reskill an existing workforce in Wales. So, I'm quite pleased with that, and a vigorous assessment of all of that was gone through, and that's partly why it's taken quite so long to get where we are.

But I am very pleased that we've split the contract out in the way that we have, not least because we wanted people to be able to receive impartial advice on what was suitable, not from the people who are fitting it, so that there's no assumption of an in-built bias for a particular type of tech, for example. So, I'm very pleased with that and I think we'll see a step change in the way that we do that. This new programme also allows more than one visit. So, with the old Nest programme, if you'd had a chance at Nest, then that was it, you were not able to retrofit again, if you like, so we've overcome that for this programme as well, and then I'm more particularly pleased with the neighbourhood approach that we have in some areas.

Photo of David Rees David Rees Labour 4:15, 12 March 2024

(Translated)

Finally, Sioned Williams.

Photo of Sioned Williams Sioned Williams Plaid Cymru

(Translated)

Thank you, Dirprwy Lywydd. Well, after very frustrating and very damaging delays for the 45 per cent of Welsh families in fuel poverty, here's confirmation that the Warm Homes programme will at last be operational, and that, of course, is to be welcomed. This is the Government's main mechanism to tackle fuel poverty. The aim of the Welsh Government's plan, 'Tackling fuel poverty 2021 to 2035', is to ensure that the number of households living in fuel poverty falls to 5 per cent, but the figures show that we are a long way from reaching that mark.

You have a statutory obligation to set interim targets in the scheme, but despite the many calls from Plaid Cymru, Senedd committees and Fuel Poverty Coalition Cymru, there have been no interim targets set. Minister, they're vital in order to review the effectiveness of the strategy and to map out vital progress towards the 2035 targets. So, once again, Minister, will you act on this, and support the obvious need to set interim targets in the tackling fuel poverty strategy, because without these milestones, we're unlikely to generate the ongoing actions needed to tackle our fuel poverty crisis?

Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 4:16, 12 March 2024

Thanks, Sioned. I don't want to just say 'no' to that, because I understand exactly where you're coming from, but I'm a little bit ambivalent about interim targets at this point in the programme, if I'm honest. So, what we'd very much like to see is the first year of action of the programme before we can really see—. I, for example, have absolutely no idea at all how many of the homes that will benefit would have an upgraded, more efficient, repairable gas boiler in them or need a more fundamental refit. I've already referenced a conversation we had in Cabinet about the difficult balance between just getting out to as many people as possible with a small intervention and actually making homes more resilient in the longer term. So, I don't quite know how I would set the interim targets; I don't quite know what we're looking at. So, we could probably come up with things that were indicative, but I'm not sure that they'd be particularly instructive in terms of how the programme's rolling out.

So, I would say that the best thing to do—and I'm very happy to promise this, and that might be for a successor Minister, given where we are in the Government cycle—but I'm very happy to look at that again after a year of the programme and then we'd have a much better database for what we're actually looking at. We've also got the social landlords doing a three-year housing stock survey, which will give us a much better idea on the social stock side, and we've also got the energy efficiency surveys rolling out across local authorities. So, we will then have much better data to be able to set smart targets, as they're called, so ones that are much more likely to be achievable and stretching, because at the moment it would be a little random. So, I don't want to say 'no' to what you're asking me, but at the same time, I don't want to say 'absolutely', because I'm not yet in a position to be able to do that, but I think, within a short period of time, we will be in a position to do that, and then I would be very happy to do so.