3. Statement by the Deputy Minister for Climate Change: Climate Change

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:27 pm on 16 June 2021.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Jenny Rathbone Jenny Rathbone Labour 2:27, 16 June 2021

I just want to come back to what you said earlier about how the Government can't do it on its own and it's down to every organisation and every individual. I want to home in on something that Mike Hedges asked, which is around new-build housing, but, first of all, I just wanted to understand why we're delaying challenging social landlords to meet energy performance certificate rating A in their retrofitting of social housing, not starting until January next year. I had assumed that the announcement that was made in April 2021 about new buildings also applied to existing buildings. So, that would be a useful clarification.

On top of that, I'm also a bit frustrated that we still haven't amended Part L of the building regulations, which continues to allow private house builders to build homes that are simply not fit for purpose—that do not have solar panels on their south-facing roofs and that do not have ground-source heat pumps fitted, in new homes. There's an abysmal level of fitting of that, even in areas where there is no mains gas and, therefore, ground-source heat pumps must be the most economical thing we can be doing. You don't appear to want to mandate any change from private house builders until 2024-25, based on the statement that you put out around the response to the Climate Change Committee, so it'd be really useful to understand why we're not stepping up the pace on this, given that we have an emergency on our hands and we're not going fast enough.