Warm Homes Scheme: Cooling Measures
Tuesday, 13 October 2026
Contributions
Olly Glover (Didcot and Wantage) (LD)Liberal Democrat
3. Whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of adopting cooling measures into the warm homes scheme.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Martin McCluskey)Labour
This summer we all felt the impact of climate change, whether in our homes, workplaces or schools. The warm homes plan will ensure that cooling measures, as well as heating measures, are available for the most vulnerable homes. Additionally, all eligible households in England and Wales can benefit from the expanded boiler upgrade scheme, which now includes air-to-air heat pumps, which are able to heat and cool homes.
The Government’s commitment to improving the energy efficiency of our homes is welcome and is a stark contrast to the Conservatives’ apparent embrace of a Fred Flintstone home standard. This year saw the hottest summer on record, and climate change science indicates that such temperatures are going to become the norm. Can the Minister assure the House that the standards that he mentions will take full account of those trends and the need to efficiently cool our buildings?
I can give the hon. Gentleman that assurance. He will know that we are currently reviewing part O of the Building Regulations on overheating in order to ensure that, in the future, buildings are well prepared for the temperatures that we may face and are able to adapt to climate change.
Alistair Strathern (Hitchin) (Lab)Labour
With this summer’s extreme heat showing that the effects of climate change are very much with us in the here and now, it is vital that we support households to adapt to the new reality, as well as tackling the effects of climate change at source. The inclusion of air-to-air heat pumps, which provide clean cooling, and heating tech in the boiler upgrade scheme is very welcome, but despite this announcement, the delays in accreditation mean that uptake has been incredibly slow. I convened more than 50 MPs over the summer to push the accreditors to get a move on and ensure that more homes can benefit from this. How are Ministers holding the accreditation agencies to account, to ensure that more households in my constituency can benefit from cooling tech?
I would like to praise my hon. Friend for the work he has been doing and for working collaboratively with us to put some gentle pressure on the accreditation bodies to ensure that we see progress. I will be meeting the relevant bodies soon, and we hope to be able to unlock this at pace.
Mr SpeakerSpeaker
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Pippa Heylings (South Cambridgeshire) (LD)Liberal Democrat
The new norms of extreme weather that we are now seeing, caused by climate change, mean that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover) has said, we have to think about not only warming our homes, but cooling them. Thousands of families are dipping into hard-earned savings to install heat pumps and to cut emissions. In my constituency of South Cambridgeshire, we are 25th in the country for heat pump uptake—I am really proud of that—as a result of heat pump subsidies, so I am really worried by rumours that the Government are considering deep cuts to the warm homes plan. Would the Minister agree with me that failing to electrify at scale keeps us needlessly chained to overseas gas and volatile petrostates, and that to rob energy security to fund defence is a fool’s errand?
We fully support the warm homes plan and the boiler upgrade scheme. We have had a record-breaking year on the boiler upgrade scheme, with over 8,000 applications in July, which is more than double what we saw in the previous year—not least because of homes that were off grid deciding to adopt a heat pump, and I am sure there are many in the hon. Lady’s constituency. We continue to support the boiler upgrade scheme, and I am sure we will see continued uptake of it over the coming months.
Source: UK Parliament Hansard API. Debate ID: 5415298.