7. Will the Cabinet Secretary outline what support is available to protect the most vulnerable households in Wales from fuel poverty this winter? (OAQ51209)

Thank you. Support is available through Welsh Government Warm Homes, which includes our Nest and Arbed schemes. Nest offers free impartial advice and support to help people reduce household energy bills and provides eligible households with free home energy efficiency measures to help them keep warm at a more affordable cost.

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary, and I was pleased to see in the Nest annual report that the installation of a Government-funded home energy efficiency improvement package will see, on average, an energy bill saving of £410 per household each year. These figures demonstrate clearly that the scheme is performing above expectations and is making a real difference to fuel-poor households. I just wanted to ask, though, about residential retrofit, because ensuring that existing homes in Wales are energy efficient has a key part to play in tackling fuel poverty. So, could I ask what plans you have to increase the Welsh Government’s activity in terms of residential retrofit??

Thank you. I am working very closely with my colleague Carl Sargeant, the Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children, in relation to retrofitting. I’ve also established a ministerial decarbonisation task and finish group with two others of my Cabinet Secretary colleagues, so that will really drive cross-Government action. I wanted to help bring forward proposals to meet our challenging carbon commitments also. So, whilst we will continue to look at the scale of our own energy efficiency programmes, we do need to look at our decarbonisation ambitions. They can’t be achieved through Government funding alone, so we are going to have to have a much more joined-up approach across Government and across all sectors, really, to help us deliver on this agenda.

Cabinet Secretary, I’m sure you’ll welcome the energy price cap announced last week, and also the continuing roll-out of smart meters. I think smart meters have a huge role to play in giving home owners more control over how much energy they use, and encouraging them also to switch between providers. However, there has been some reluctance amongst some home owners to have smart meters installed and I wonder what role the Welsh Government is playing to encourage the roll-out of smart meters to all households in Wales.

I think you’re right, there have been a few issues around smart meters, I think. Talking to a group of consumers as to why they wouldn’t want a smart meter, they put it down to, you know, their neighbours had had issues with it et cetera. So, I think we need to make sure that we work across all sectors to encourage people to have smart meters installed, and it is something that we work with the utility companies, for instance, to do.

When settling on a replacement for the Nest scheme, can you tell us whether you’d be prepared to look at eligibility rules around applying for some home energy efficiency improvements? I’m thinking Scotland’s corresponding energy assistance package has less stringent criteria, being available for those who are on a low income and pregnant, for example, or to some homes with children. In Wales, current rules exclude a lot of people in fuel poverty, particularly young people, so I’m wondering if, with the new scheme that will potentially, I hope, come into place after this current one comes to an end, you would consider changing that criteria.

Yes, certainly, that’s something we can look at. I think we are just about to go out to procurement, so clearly this is something we can look at as we do bring in the new scheme next year.