黑洞社区

Travis Perkins鈥� head of sustainability has said the firm is being preventing from offering its customers work under the Green Deal solely because of continued problems with the scheme鈥檚 IT systems to process orders.

Paul Joyner, director of sustainability at the construction merchant, said the firm had received a huge number of enquiries from consumers and businesses wanting to find out about the Green Deal or requesting an assessment of their property, but that the firm was currently having to turn them away.

Speaking at a roundtable event the Conservative party conference this week, hosted by the UK Green 黑洞社区 Council in partnership with 黑洞社区 and Ecobuild, Joyner said this was because without the IT systems, which were promised by the Green Deal Finance Company (GDFC) to process individual Green Deals, Travis Perkins was unable to process orders in a cost effective way.

He also said the scheme, the government鈥檚 flagship policy to encourage domestic green retrofits, was unlikely to work at the current rates of interest, of over 7%, charged by the GDFC on loans, and called on the government to 鈥渂ack the policy鈥�.

He said: 鈥淲e鈥檝e got a backlog of consumers and businesses who registered interest in the Green Deal or for an assessment, and were saying to them we鈥檇 love to do an assessment, but we can鈥檛 offer the finance because we can鈥檛 process the finance efficiently because we can鈥檛 integrate the systems because [the Department of Energy and Climate Change] and the GDFC haven鈥檛 built their systems yet.

鈥淲e鈥檝e built our infrastructure, we鈥檝e built our marketing, we鈥檝e built our product set, we鈥檝e built our installation base - the only thing that鈥檚 stopping us is that we can鈥檛 get the finance.鈥�

However, a spokesperson for the GDFC denied that there were IT issues preventing Green Deal accredited providers from being able to offer Green Deal finance.

He said: 鈥淭here were IT problems in the spring but any of those problems have now been ironed out. There are a number of companies we鈥檙e working with that are successfully offering finance. A huge simplification process is going on related to the IT, but there are no showstopper reasons preventing orders being processed.鈥�

The spokesperson added that an evaluation, conducted by consultant Capital Economics, had concluded that the rate of interest on Green Deal finance was very competitive against equivalent products in the market.

Joyner鈥檚 intervention follows severe criticism of the slow start to the policy, launched by the government in January, for which only 12 individual deals have so far been completed.

At last week鈥檚 Labour party conference Labour said it would replace the Green Deal with a new scheme, to be called Energy Save.

Joyner said Travis Perkins had relaunched its own Green Deal programme three times because of delays in the rolling out of the scheme.

He called for the government to back the scheme and improve the interest rate offered by the GDFC.

He said: 鈥淚t鈥檚 not a market mechanism that can live off the back of 7.1%.

鈥淚f we can get it at the right rate and the govt is prepared to stand behind the GDFC or any other finance provider [and] say we understand this market and we will support this market at a competitive rate then you will get a rapid take up.鈥�

Also speaking at the roundtable, Conservative party backbench MP Oliver Colvile, a member of the Westminster Sustainable Business Forum, admitted that the Treasury was blocking green policies because it wasn鈥檛 convinced they could harness economic growth.

He said: 鈥淭he question is then whether we can afford to deliver the green agenda in that environment.

鈥淭he Treasury is not convinced, I don鈥檛 think, about the whole business of the green agenda in the first place, and that鈥檚 not just ministers or George Osborne, that鈥檚 the civil servants who take a very jaundiced view on this.鈥�

DECC has been contacted for comment.