Monday 14 November 2016

They own land: give them money!

You may have been irritated recently by answering the telephone only to receive a pre-recorded message that starts, "This is an urgent message for people on benefits regarding your oil or LPG boiler...."

These people are cashing in on energy companies' Home Heating Cost Reduction Obligation (HHCRO), which is part of the governments' Energy Company Obligation (ECO)scheme.

Under HHCRO, obligated suppliers must promote measures which improve the ability of low income and vulnerable households (the ‘affordable warmth group’) to heat their homes. This includes actions that result in heating savings, such as the replacement or repair of a boiler.

So, if you are on benefits, you can get a new boiler in your home under this scheme, but your home does not have to belong to you, thus making the ultimate beneficiary of this government largesse not the poor person on benefits, but their much richer landlord, who gets a new boiler in his property free of charge.

10 comments:

Mark Wadsworth said...

"You may have been irritated recently by answering the telephone..."

Yes.

Lola said...

FFS is the only comment one can reasonably make.

benj said...

Not new. Landlords have been giving their tenants "incentives" to apply for such schemes for decades :)

I think the last one was called Warm Front.

Rich Tee said...

I used to get them for solar panels, they seem to have stopped now that the government has threatened the company directors, I wonder why...

Bayard said...

"Not new."

I would have been surprised if it was, it's all part of "Big Green" and that's been going full bore for a decade now.

ThomasBHall said...

Can the tenants not keep it and sell it/take it with them when they go and put the old one back in?

Bayard said...

TBH, there'd be little point apart from sheer spite, as they would be entitled to another free boiler at their next abode, assuming that it doesn't have a new boiler already. As for selling it, I doubt it belongs to them.

Robin Smith said...

Do the tenants not benefit from better heating and lower energy bills?

Bayard said...

RS, yes, and the lower energy bills mean that they can afford to pay more rent.

Robin Smith said...

B, so they can afford more location value then - they do benefit too you see. And they might also spend it on more drugs, cigarettes, beer, prostitutes and religoius books.