Gas boilers in new homes will be banned as soon as next year and they will be required to have heat pumps and solar panels under plans being spearheaded by Ed Miliband and Angela Rayner. The Telegraph has more.
The Energy and Housing Secretaries have joined forces on new rules for housebuilders, which will require newbuilds to have heat pumps and solar panels.
The Telegraph understands the new rules will be announced by Ms Rayner this summer, and are likely to be in force by next year.
The fight for Net Zero is at the heart of a growing row engulfing Labour, exposed this week by Sir Tony Blair who warned Sir Keir Starmer that his current green policies were “doomed to fail”.
Despite Labour MPs and unions urging Sir Keir to change course on Net Zero, Mr Miliband and Ms Rayner will drive their radical reforms forward this year.
The Cabinet Ministers have been working together on Net Zero requirements in the Future Homes Standard, a change to building regulations first proposed by the Conservatives in 2019.
Insiders said the pair had opted for the most “ambitious” version of the new rules, which would ban gas boilers as fast as possible in new homes by increasing the energy efficiency requirements on developers.
But housebuilders have warned that onerous new Net Zero requirements could increase costs, making it less likely that Ms Rayner will meet her target of building 1.5 million homes by the end of Labour’s first term.
Industry sources said the boiler ban had been expected to come into force in 2027, after a 12-month period for the legislation to take effect and a further year to implement the changes.
Government sources now say the rules could take effect as soon as early 2026, giving the industry as little as six months to prepare.
Mr Miliband and Ms Rayner’s new rules will also require solar panels on almost all newbuilds, adding up to £4,000 to the cost of the properties.
That plan, first floated in a Conservative-era public consultation, comes despite pressure from the housebuilding sector to make solar panels optional.
The latest report from Britain’s fiscal watchdog estimated that Labour will fall 200,000 homes short of its 1.5 million target, even without the changes to building regulations.
On Thursday, Downing Street insisted the changes would not make it harder to hit the target.
Worth reading in full.
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Thanks to Will Jones & the DS for that appalling news, and the photo that so perfectly illustrates the insanity behind it.
“A picture paints a thousand words”, as they say.
You are so f-ing right! Just look at what a career in politics does for you!
Apparently Rayner is so thick she has to employ dozens of assistants.
This comment was deleted
Stanley Unwin,
https://youtu.be/0UJZF5iRhNg?si=eP7JUoNw8UvQ69vU
Stammers Labour Party?
Good Old Stan 😇👍
Wow! How on earth did he remember all that? He’s amazing— thanks for the link.
If I see one more politician in high vis and hard hat…… or camouflage costume…. 🤢
I suppose that’s one way to get rid of illegals.. once they discover they can’t heat their free homes, maybe they will leave of their own accord.
LOL That is exactly what I thought. Other than that, a good way to make new houses unsaleable. I can see one problem and that is the local distribution network will lack the capability to meet the demand for electricity. Developments that have tried to go gas-free have had to admit defeat and connect them to the gas main.
This might be the thing that finally undoes the blithering idiot. Starmer is rumoured to be planning to reshuffle him out, but I guess we’ll wait and see..
But they are all in on it, not just the idiot Miliband. Even the Conservatives are phony planet savers, who would have done the very same thing, but just not quite so fast. The entire Political Class are in on the UN/WEF Eco scam and it is to be hoped that the recent local election surge by REFORM might be the start of getting rid of this disgusting Labour Party
They is the small issue of the fact that they don’t work very well. Hasn’t anyone told them?
On very well insulated new houses they work well. So this will increase the costs of building houses.
And when houses are that well insulated there is the issue of overheating and the need for aircon…
And the noise.
Insulation cuts down on heat loss to the exterior, it does not generate heat. For insulation to keep heat in, there has to be heat to keep in.
The efficiency of heat pumps (air/water) diminishes as outside temperature drops and humidity increases. This is particularly important at night in the winter months, and there is no way to “turn up” the heat pump, or get that magic insulation to provide heat.
Heat pumps have an output of 55C max, and work on the principle of gradual heat accumulation meaning they have to run more or less continuously controlled by thermostat rather than periodically controlled by a timer.
If they are to heat the hot water, a hot water tank and immersion heater will be required, since the water has to go above 60C to prevent bacteria growing in the tank. Thus requires more space to accommodate and will increase build cost, and/or reduce living space.
Heating systems give priority to water heating, so a heat pump will not heat the water to the central heating circuit fir lengthy periods whilst trying to heat a tank of water, particularly if hot water is constantly being drawn. People used to demand boilers won’t like this.
Summary: higher capital and operating cost input to get lower value output = inefficient = makes you poorer.
Madness.
I can only speak from personal experience. We built our house in a rural area, no gas mains. So it was either oil or electric.
Our house remains beautifully warm, with a nice even temperature. We have underfloor heating.
The heat generated by us and appliances retains in the house as it is so well insulated.
The main issue is that when the temperature outside goes above 24, the house gets too warm and also retains the heat.
My earlier reply was to the statement that ‘heat pumps don’t work’. And to be honest the noise is negligible.
So they do work, but insulation is key in making it work.
You built your own house, and probably did so carefully and thoughtfully.
Large estates of new builds don’t do this, they are thrown together and any new requirements will be done at absolute minimum cost without thought for the neighbourhood and indeed anything other than profit.
Why would they even care?
And which magical companies are going to build all these new houses and still make a profit! Answer, none!
There isn’t enough tradesmen/women in the country to achieve this nonsense and there certainly isn’t a a big enough profit margin for building companies!(43 years in the building trade speaking)
These fu#king quaterwits are delusional and should be tightly bound in straight jackets, not members of parliament!
God help the first time buyers!
Details, details – don’t quibble.
Net Zero eliminates: physics, economics, availability of resources… it’s magical, wishful, fanciful, expensive, maniacal.
Will Reforms wins in councils make all this net zero crap harder?
Hopefully Hester 🫰
They are saying that they will be aiming to prevent “renewable” development, I presume this means unreliable power generation etc.
No one will go along with it people will just do quiet deals. I don’t understand why you are talking about this nonsense it is a dead agenda and dead on several levels. You are filling yourself with fear for no reason. There are plenty of things in the world to be concerned about if you crave something to ruminate upon but this isn’t one of them.
Most on here fully understand your point, but Rayner no brainer and Milipede have no concept of reality, they don’t, and have never lived in the real world with the rest of us!
‘What reason weaves,by passion is undone!’
:Alexander Pope
fine for art, drama, photography etc, but science?..meh..not so much
I know but the point is that Starmer and Rayner and Milipede are already ghosts. Let the dead bury their dead.
Oh please 🙏
I will still be here in 2026, let’s talk again then. If new homes are still getting gas boilers at the start of 2027, I will buy you a box of Smarties/
Hey, I’ll say anything for a box of Smarties. Can it be one of those bottomless boxes which grows on Magic Smartie Trees, the type which exist in Miliwatt’s world?
Smartie People are Party People.
Milibrain is not going to get a box off me though.
You are wrong——–Reality might mean it gets watered down a bit but these imbeciles are totally onboard with impoverishing their own citizens under the guise of pretending to save the planet. But as George Carlin once pointed out “The planet is fine, it is the people that are f..ked”.——-And there is no one more f..ked up than Miliband
Whilst inevitably it will hit a wall, the concern is the considerable harm, damage and cost it will cause before it does.
There are some things that might never come back. If you eat a steak then you can fight all day and shag all night. This will not return in our lifetimes. But doors close and others open. If you are struggling with these times and have faith in chemical relief I would strongly recommend supplementaton of high doses of L-Arginine combined with Methylene Blue. Say what you like about the bosch but they were master die-makers. Methylene Blue is almost like a distillation of Germanic goodness. People have reported that it has reversed degenerative conditions and athletes and people striving for good health remark upon its benefits. It is well worth using I had one dose and my nervous system felt twenty years younger. I got a three percent solution on Ebay just to try it out. I would recommend it to everyone.
Link, please.
Just put the words in and you will find thousands of articles of corroboration. The first step is to accept that you are sick. If you are not sick then you don’t need any healing. Just learn to acknowledge when you are sick.
I remember methylene blue was used to treat some illnesses in the tropical fish I had when I was younger.
Is this the “free market” I keep reading about that we’re apparently living in?
The one where the government tells you how you are to heat your home, the one in which you can only rent your home to someone else if you fulfil a set of arbitrary requirements that apparently will “save the planet” and get a certificate for it. The free market which doesn’t allow you to build a home or make any significant improvements or changes to it without asking first for permission from a bureaucrat.
I wonder whether the definition of free market has changed to a market in which you are free to do as you’re told or you can opt to do nothing and rot.
There has not been a free market in energy since 2008 (Climate Change Act Miliband) Government have interfered in it ever since. They are following the UN Sustainable Development Agenda to the letter. They are poisoned with contempt for their own citizens.
Marxist-Socialist Labour and Conservative it seems = command and control economy.
We haven’t had a free market since the idiot electorate voted in Marxist-Socialist Labour in 1945 and subsequent Conservative Governments became “Me too” – we give lots of free stuff paid for by others.
The cost of our “free stuff” currently running at £2.8 million – but people still want “free stuff”.
I honestly don’t understand why people are afraid of this Labour lot. There is nothing there. They have a couple of months left at best. Yes they are scary monsters but they don’t have long left. I don’t know where they came from honestly. That Rayner woman is like the skaghead women I used to meet in nightclubs. Starmer is from an even darker reality. Yes they are scary like monsters but they are just making a lot of noise on the way out.
Sorry but Labour are not going anywhere for the next 4 years. They have a majority that’s how it works.
Unless there are 170 or do by elections in the next “couple of months” its no change
The image of two Kommissars grinning like apes and pretending to be “working people” is suitably symbolic of the cold living rooms, fetid air and rampant smart meters of the small fraction of 1.5 million shoeboxes the current mis-government will ever jerry-build.
What a pair of absolute zeros. The Kommissars Must Fall.
Yes, like Smarmy Sunak when he donned a hard hat and went for a photo op to “help” brickies build a wall, to show he was a man of the people, despite calling himself “The Maharajah of the Dales”. The brickies looked none too pleased.
And what about house plans with existing planning permission that won’t work well under such a policy? There are quite a few new houses that do have solar panels built into roofs, in lieu of conventional tiles (e.g. 51°36’41.1″N 1°47’23.7″W), but they need optimal orientation to make the best of it. Who wants to buy that faces the wrong way, compared with another one nearby, when they are not just an add-on?
Or like the homeowner nearby who put solar panels on his roof, then his neighbour planted a horrible Leylandii that grew into a giant, towering over the neighbourhood and plunging the solar panels into shadow for most of the day, rendering them useless.
What about new homes in the North of Scotland? I’ve stayed in off grid accommodation on cloudy days in November and the south facing solar panels just about produced enough power to run 3 very low watt LED lights. At this rate the panels would need replacing long before the savings equalled the cost of installation.
Electoral kryptonite.
F’kin’ imbeciles.
I thought that there weren’t enough installers in the first place. Will that mean new homes with no working heating?
WHY?————–Because they are totally in the pocket of the UN and WEF pretend to save the plant people who use irrational fear of a climate crisis to get complete control over everything people do. There is no reason on earth to be rushing this nonsense through at breakneck speed and even Tony Blair, whose government gave us the Climate Change Act in 2008 has slammed this absurdity. —-Why is it always the UK that has to be “world leaders” in every Progressive piece of crap? We are governed by a shower of Busybodies that interfere in every single thing people do. ———–VOTE REFORM o be rid of these charlatans that don’t actually work for you. They work for the UN and WEF.
So that’ll push up the prices of New Builds even further …. whilst the people supposed to buy them are having their incomes reduced or jobs destroyed by the brain-dead Socialists.
Perhaps they’re planning for “the Government” to buy them to house the criminal migrants they’re shipping in as fast as they possibly can?
If it is true that the Spainand Portugal power outage was due to a drop in renewables and inability of the grid to react through lack of fossil fuel capacity to fill the gap, then what happens in a serious cold snap here? The power goes off, the heat pumps stop working. As individuals we have no backup to recharge our cars (if foolish enough to have an all electric), to use our computers or digital network phones, but more importantly to cook and wash. Milimadness.
Most houses with heat pumps currently have a fireplace of some kind, these won’t have any thing
So much for affordable housing.
As most new houses will be required for illegal immigrats I’m sure the ECHR will declare them unsuitable for human habitation.
And where will all these new heat pumps and solar panels be manufactured? In the UK to provide “high paying green jobs” or in China or elsewhere where they will need to be shipped here in diesel-powered ships and trucks, thus adding to the pollution they are supposed to be preventing?
Do they know that heat pumps use more than ten times as much electricity as gas boilers? Is the grid ready for this??
But what is a new build in 2026. Is it when foundations are dug or the heating system installed. What is a house is started but delays prevent it being completed on time – will the builder have to strip out and re-fit the peat pump conduits instead?
Government spin and even announcements of legislation never make clear just what it means.
So we can look forward to new houses having heat pumps and solar panels ripped out and replaced once Reform UK takes over and repeals the Net Zero nonsense.
Solar panels – like all “renewables” – are only economically visible by transferring money from the pockets of taxpayers and consumers into the pockets of the operators whether commercial or domestic, of “renewables”
As for new builds, it will require substantial upgrade to the low voltage, area power equipment and cables – who will pay?