I am grateful to my hon. Friend for highlighting that, because it is a cause of real concern that the energy efficiency programmes that were in place have come to an end, and as a result of the introduction of the new ones—the green deal and the energy company obligation programme—the level of activity on energy efficiency retrofitting has plummeted.
I talked to a housing association, active in my constituency, that has done a magnificent retrofit of about 1,000 properties in Charlton. That has hugely improved the comfort of its tenants, who can now keep warm at much less cost. It has improved the appearance of the estate and has won plaudits from everyone, and it was done with a work force that included a number of young unemployed people from the area, who were trained specifically to be able to take up the advantages of employment as part of the scheme. It was an admirable
scheme. When I was congratulating the housing association on it, the one and only disappointment came when it told me “Well of course this was funded under the old community energy saving programme—CESP—which made it possible and has now ended. We would probably not be able to do this again if we were starting from scratch today.” That is an obvious problem.