The Construction Products Association (CPA) welcomes the government’s Warm Homes Plan and its renewed focus on incentivising the uptake of renewable energy products such as heat pumps and solar, but we do not welcome its move away from a ‘fabric first’ approach and proper insulation. Indeed, the government has decided to generate more energy rather conserve it. With millions of households facing persistently high energy bills, and homes being responsible for around 20% of the UK’s carbon emissions the need for a large-scale, long-term retrofit programme has never been clearer. If delivered effectively, the Warm Homes Plan has the potential to support households, stimulate construction activity, and accelerate progress towards net zero. However, experience suggests that ambition alone is not enough.
At its core, the Warm Homes Plan recognises a fundamental truth: the UK has some of the oldest and least energy-efficient housing stock in Europe, so improving the performance of existing homes is one of the fastest and most cost-effective ways to improve comfort and health outcomes for residents, cut energy bills and reduce emissions. A win-win-win scenario. However, years of stop-start policy, short-lived schemes, and shifting delivery mechanisms have made it difficult for industry to invest in skills, manufacturing capacity, and supply chains at the scale required.
The commitment to a £15 billion programme over the life of the Parliament is therefore a significant and welcome step forward. It signals a move away from fragmented funding pots towards a more strategic approach. But the success of the Warm Homes Plan will ultimately be judged not by its headline funding, but by whether that funding is translated into sustained, high-quality delivery on the ground — something previous retrofit programmes have consistently struggled to achieve.
From an industry perspective, long-term certainty is critical. Manufacturers, installers, and builders need confidence that demand will be stable over many years if they are to invest in new factories, product lines, training programmes, and apprenticeships. Previous schemes, including earlier versions of the Energy Company Obligation (ECO), have too often been characterised by short-term funding cycles, late policy changes, and complex administrative requirements. These have limited take-up, driven up costs, and discouraged firms — particularly SMEs — from entering or remaining in the retrofit market.
The CPA therefore supports the government’s stated ambition to simplify delivery mechanisms and provide a clearer pipeline of work. A stable, predictable framework would help build a skilled workforce capable of delivering retrofit at scale, while also encouraging innovation in products and systems that improve performance, durability, and ease of installation. But this will require more than policy intent. It will require early clarity on programme design, realistic timetables, and procurement approaches that genuinely support supply chain investment rather than transferring risk downwards.
There are also significant practical challenges that must be addressed if the Warm Homes Plan is to deliver at the pace and scale required. Skills shortages across construction remain acute. Delivering millions of home upgrades will require tens of thousands of additional trained workers, including retrofit coordinators, installers, assessors, and supervisors. While recent commitments to construction skills funding are welcome, there remains a shortage of all these trades, alongside persistently high dropout rates in apprenticeships. Without a workforce strategy that is clearly aligned to retrofit demand, delivery risks being constrained by labour availability rather than funding.
Clarity on standards, performance outcomes, and compliance requirements will also be essential. High-quality retrofit is critical to ensuring that energy savings are realised in practice and that unintended consequences — such as damp, overheating, or poor ventilation — are avoided. The CPA supports the continued development of whole-house approaches and robust frameworks such as PAS 2035. However, these must be underpinned by proportionate and workable compliance regimes that protect consumers without creating unnecessary cost, delay, or administrative burden for delivery partners.
Consumer confidence remains another major barrier. Many households remain cautious about retrofit due to concerns over disruption, workmanship, and value for money, often shaped by poor past experiences. A successful Warm Homes Plan must therefore combine funding with trusted delivery routes, clear communication, and strong consumer protections. This will be particularly important if the programme is to move beyond fuel-poor households and into the owner-occupier and private rented sectors, where much of the remaining decarbonisation challenge lies.
The Warm Homes Plan should also be understood not just as a policy to improve comfort and affordability for households, or to reduce the UK’s dependence on imported energy, or to decrease carbon emissions, but as a test of whether government can finally deliver a credible long-term strategy for retrofit. In theory, a well-designed programme could support thousands of skilled jobs, strengthen domestic manufacturing capacity, and drive regional growth — particularly in areas with older, less efficient housing stock. In practice, however, these benefits will only materialise if policy stability replaces the stop-start approach that has characterised retrofit for more than a decade and gives manufacturers, builders, and installers the confidence to invest.
In conclusion, the CPA recognises the Warm Homes Plan as a potentially useful opportunity for the UK’s housing stock and for households facing high energy bills. But ambition alone will not deliver outcomes. Without sustained funding certainty, a pivot to a fabric first approach, rapid and effective mobilisation, and a realistic workforce strategy, there is a real risk that the Plan joins a long list of well-intentioned programmes that under-deliver against their objectives. If government makes some changes as we suggest and gets the delivery framework right, however, the Warm Homes Plan could finally provide the scale, confidence, and consistency the sector has long needed.