Priority Places for Insulation Index: Mapping the UK’s Home Insulation Needs

We have developed the Priority Places for Insulation Index to show the relative circumstances of different local areas regarding the need for insulation of domestic homes. The index is constructed using data on local housing stocks and socio-economic and health data for local populations. It can be used to identify areas where there is most need for insulation and where different policy interventions can be targeted. 

The accompanying policy research report below summarises our analysis of the index, examples of its policy applications, and our findings on the supply of insulation installation firms.

Executive summary

Home energy efficiency has become a critical matter for governments and households in recent years as high energy prices and the imperative to progress towards net zero have focussed attention on the state of the UK’s housing stock, which is among the oldest and ‘leakiest’ in Europe. 

However, there are variances in housing stock quality and household circumstances between places in the UK, which means there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach and careful targeting of policy interventions are needed. Governments and policymakers need relevant data to understand the differences between these places so they can provide appropriate support and services where people need them most.

To address this issue, Which? has developed the Priority Places for Insulation Index to identify the relative circumstances of different local areas with regard to the need for insulation of the housing stock. The index draws together local data on housing stock, socioeconomic, and health indicators. We define priority places as places in the worst 20% of the index (9th and 10th decile). We find that these priority places are often concentrated in coastal communities, former coalfield areas and secondary or ‘other cities’. Meanwhile, a ‘doughnut effect’ is observed in ‘core cities’ [1] in the North of England and the Midlands, where the city centres are of lowest priority but are surrounded by outlying areas which are priority places.

The index’s underlying data can be used in various ways to answer different policy questions. For example, we can use it to identify the local areas most likely to need public funding to insulate the housing stock or those that may need to rely primarily on self-funding and where information, advice and guidance remedies may need to be targeted. 

Beyond being able to identify areas with a need for insulation, the availability of reliable and qualified installers is a critical factor in improving the insulation of UK homes. Therefore, to complement the Priority Places for Insulation Index we have created a dataset of the location of installers across the UK. We find that the level of supply varies across the different levels of need, and we find a number of places, especially in rural areas, where there is both high need and low supply.

We hope the Priority Places for Insulation Index, and the data on suppliers, will prove to be a valuable tool for central and local governments and others trying to support consumers to improve the energy efficiency of their homes.

You can access our complete library of data to understand the challenges facing consumers from our consumer data hub.

1. Introduction

High energy prices and the urgent need to take action on climate change have made home energy efficiency a critical issue for governments and householders [2]. 

The UK housing stock is amongst the oldest and ‘leakiest’ in Europe [3] and it is estimated that 13.3 million households need loft insulation, 5.9 million need cavity wall insulation and 7.4 million need solid wall insulation [4]. Poorly insulated homes have a particularly damaging impact on low income households unable to afford to heat their homes properly, and on older households and those with health conditions that are worsened by the cold.

There is therefore a national challenge to improve the UK’s housing stock, but it is a challenge that will be tackled home by home and street by street. The number of homes with inefficient walls, lofts and floors varies significantly between places [5] and there are differences in local household circumstances such as socioeconomic factors, health and the age of residents. Understanding these differences is crucial for the UK, national, and local governments to aid decision-making on targeting support and services to the people who need it most. 

In recognition of this, Which? has produced an index and mapping tool, the Priority Places for Insulation Index, to show the relative circumstances of different local areas with regard to the need for insulation of the housing stock [6]. The index is constructed using data on local housing stocks and socio-economic and health data for local populations. By drawing together these elements, it is possible to identify areas where there is most need for insulation (ie ‘priority places’) and where different policy interventions can be applied. For example, the index can be used to identify local areas most in need of government funding like the Energy Company Obligation (ECO) scheme [7] and those where more people will be expected to self-fund insulation work and so there may be greater need for information, advice and guidance.

In addition to understanding local needs for interventions to improve housing insulation, it is also necessary to consider the local supply of installation services. The availability of reliable and qualified installers is key to improving the insulation in people’s homes, but the sector is currently suffering from a national skills shortage [8]. To get a better understanding of the supply side in local markets we have collated data on installation firms across the UK, and  we analyse this alongside the index to identify areas with a need for insulation that also suffer from a lack of installer availability.  

The report is organised as follows:

• Section 2 details the methodology used to construct the index and the level of insulation installers
• Section 3 presents findings on the priority places, including the regional variation and different types of priority places
• Section 4 details different policy applications of the index
• Section 5 reports on the availability of insulation installers and analysis of this data complementing the Index
• Section 6 concludes the report

2. Methodology

The Priority Places for Insulation Index is a composite index, constructed using data from eight different indicators and each has specific metrics of measurement.

Five of these indicators focus on the quality of housing stock and are created using data from Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs). These are the average level of all types of wall, loft/roof and floor insulation, average age of local properties and the proportion of properties that are flats. We include age of property in addition to levels of insulation since older properties are likely to be harder to retrofit, while property type matters because flats and apartments need fewer measures to be adequately insulated. 

The three remaining indicators cover household characteristics and comprise socio-demographic and health circumstances of households in a local area. We include incidence of fuel poverty in local areas (or income levels where fuel poverty is not available) as households in fuel poverty will benefit more from having their property insulated. We include the proportion of households aged over 65 because the elderly face worse health consequences from living in a cold home, and similarly we include the incidence of health conditions such as cardiovascular and respiratory diseases as these are worsened by living in a cold home.

Not all of these indicators will be relevant to all possible policy objectives, as we discuss in Section 4, but they are all factors that will determine the underlying level of household need for a better insulated home. More details on the indicators can be found in Table 1.

The index is constructed individually for each of the four UK nations (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) and on three geographical levels:

• Lower Super Output Areas (LSOAs) in England and Wales, Data Zones in Scotland, and Super Output Areas in Northern Ireland. These will be referred to as local areas [9]
• Westminster Parliamentary Constituencies and specifically, Scottish Parliamentary Constituencies for Scotland
• Local Authorities

Direct comparisons cannot be made between areas in different nations as not all the same data is available for each nation.

The maps for LSOAs/Data Zones/Super Output Areas, Constituencies and Local Authorities can be found in the link below. 

Priority Places for Insulation

The index gives insight into the need for insulation across local areas, but it is also important to understand the supply side of the market. So, in addition to the creation of the index, we have scraped data from the internet to create a unique dataset of insulation installers across the UK. This dataset can be used to identify places where installers are likely to be scarce. We also categorise the installers by whether they belong to a certification or endorsement scheme which offers suitable consumer protections [10]. Comparing this data on supply with the index allows us to identify areas that have a high need for insulation but lack availability to insulation installers.

Full details about the methodology used to construct the index and the sites which were web scraped can be found in the technical annex.

Table 1: Indicators used in the construction of the index including their description and metrics

3. Identifying priority places for insulation

The data used to construct the Priority Places for Insulation Index can be used in various ways to identify local areas that would most benefit from actions to improve home insulation. For example, some policy questions may be most appropriately answered by using a subset of the factors that make up the full index, and in Section 4 we consider how the index can be used for two specific policy applications. However, we begin with a description of what the full composite index shows.

We define ‘priority places’ as places in the bottom 20% of the index (the 9th and 10th deciles). These places can be either LSOAs/Data Zones/Super Output Areas (local areas), parliamentary constituencies or local authorities, depending on the chosen geographical level. These priority places have a wide geographical spread, but are more common in some parts of each nation of the UK. A description of the priority place local areas is given in Section 3.1, while Section 3.2 presents case studies identifying different types of constituencies that are priority places.

3.1. Priority place local areas

The local areas which are priority places can be found throughout the nations of the UK, but analysis of the index reveals there are certain types which are more likely to have greater need for the housing stock to be insulated.

England

About half of the priority places in England can be found in its three most northerly regions; the North West, the North East and Yorkshire and the Humber (see Figure 1.1). This accords with rates of fuel poverty being higher in the north of England and, on average, a greater proportion of homes fail the Decent Homes Standard [12]. 

Figure 1.1: Regional breakdown of priority place local areas in England 

The proportion of priority places which are rural is 22% [13], which is similar to Scotland and Wales (see Figure 2). Nine out of 10 (86%) of the priority places mainly have owner-occupied properties which highlights the need for better engagement, access to qualified installers, and potentially support with costs for some households. Only 14% of priority places are mainly made up of private and social renters (8% private renters and 6% social renters).

We identify three types of places that are particularly likely to be priority places:

• Secondary or ‘other’ cities - According to the House of Commons, major population and economic centres are defined as ‘core cities’ and cities with populations larger than 175,000 are defined as ‘other cities’ [14]. The index shows variations in the spread of priority places across these two different types of cities. In many ‘core cities’ outside of London in the North and Midlands like Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Sheffield and Leeds, a doughnut effect’ occurs where the outer local areas of the city form a ring of priority places around the centre of the city which are a cluster of lowest priority local areas (see Leeds in Image 1). However, in the so-called ‘other cities’, such as Stoke-on-Trent, Coventry, Wolverhampton and Bradford, there are clusters of priority places throughout and only a few low priority areas dotted around (see Bradford in Image 1). All of these cities in the north of England and the Midlands will have suffered from deindustrialisation, but it seems likely that investment to promote urban regeneration has focused primarily on the city centres of the ‘core cities’, with growth metrics such as employment increasing more within the city centres versus its outlying districts [15]. 

Image 1: Example of ‘doughnut effect’ in Leeds versus the absence of this effect in Bradford

• Former coalfields - There are clusters of priority places in former coalfield wards, with about one in seven (15%) priority places located there. In England, areas like Durham, Yorkshire, and certain parts of Lancashire have a higher proportion of priority places in former coal mining areas. The contraction of the coal mining industry in the latter part of the 20th century reduced economic activity in these areas. This meant both reduced employment opportunities and relatively low levels of housing developments. As a result, people in many former mining areas are still feeling the impacts through high levels of deprivation and ill health with much older housing stock [16]. 
• Coastal communities - There is a concentration of local areas of need in the coastal areas around the UK. These coastal communities typically have higher levels of deprivation and people claiming sickness benefits [17], but there are variations between coastal communities and they may not all require the same policy response to improve the insulation of the housing stock. For example, the Norfolk and Lincolnshire coasts have a relatively better housing stock but experience worse fuel poverty with an older population and a greater prevalence of health conditions, while along the English south coast levels of fuel poverty are lower, but poor housing stock is combined with a high proportion of older people and people in poor health.

Wales

Nearly two-thirds (65%) of Welsh priority places are in South Wales, with a third in South Wales Central specifically, see Figure 1.2. Although there are some clusters of priority places in Cardiff, Newport and Swansea, this is largely driven by the Valleys in South Wales such as Merthyr Tydfil and Vale of Glamorgan. These areas are also former coalfield areas which are now one of the most deprived localities in Wales [18], with high levels of older terraced homes built before the 20th century and higher proportions of people reporting long-term illnesses [19].

Figure 1.2: Regional breakdown of priority place local areas in Wales

Wales has the highest proportion of rural priority places at 26% [20], although it’s only slightly more than England and Scotland. Wales has a similarly high rate of priority places consisting of mainly owner-occupiers at 81% with about a tenth of priority places with majority private renters (9%) and social housing (10%).

Scotland

Figure 1.3: Regional breakdown of priority place local areas in Scotland

In Scotland, the areas with the greatest number of priority places are South Scotland (23%) and West Scotland (17%), particularly in the coastal areas. There are also some clusters of  priority places around Glasgow and Dundee and, similarly to the other nations, there are clusters of priority places in former coalfield areas such as in Ayrshire and Lanarkshire.

The proportion of priority places which are rural is 23% [21], similar to England and Wales. The priority places in Scotland are also primarily made up of owner-occupied properties with a rate of 80%. There is a slightly higher rate for priority places with social rented properties at one in five (20%) and only 1% private rented. 

Northern Ireland

The priority places in Northern Ireland tend to be located around urban areas like Belfast (particularly in the Northern and Western sides) and Derry/Londonderry. Both areas are among the most deprived in the country and are likely to experience considerable levels of fuel poverty. 

Northern Ireland also has the highest proportion of priority places which are urban (96%) [22] (Figure 2). Northern Ireland is very similar to Scotland with 80% of priority places primarily made up of owner-occupied households with the rate for priority places with social rented properties at two in 10 (19%) and 1% with private rented properties.

Figure 2: Rural/urban breakdown of priority place local areas across the UK

3.2. Case studies: Priority places in Westminster Parliamentary Constituencies

The Priority Places for Insulation Index has also been created at a constituency level (Westminster and Scottish Parliament) to explore the different levels of need for each constituency. 

The following case studies identify different types of Westminster constituencies that are priority places. The rankings (in brackets) refer to the ranking within each nation, where 1 is the constituency of lowest need.

Case study: Liverpool, Walton (ranked 501 out of 533 English constituencies)

Case study: Berwick-upon-Tweed (ranked 512 out of 533 English constituencies)

Case study: Westmorland and Lonsdale (ranked 444 out of 533 English constituencies)

4. Policy applications of the index

In this section we give examples of how the index could potentially be used to help the targeting or evaluation of policy interventions. 

For example, government grant schemes and the ECO scheme have eligibility criteria based on a subset of factors from the index - energy efficiency of a home, income, and health conditions. The index can be narrowed down to these factors and used to evaluate the targeting of eligible households and funding allocation. 

Similarly, the index could be helpful for targeting interventions that would empower self-funders to undertake insulation projects. Areas with low levels of fuel poverty, but where housing stock metrics indicate a high level of need are likely to have a greater proportion of households that will need to self-fund work. These households face different challenges from those eligible for public funding as they do not receive the home assessments and certified installers that are part of government funding schemes. As a result, self-funding households need access to reliable information and advice services to support their understanding of their property’s insulation needs and plan work, and help to identify qualified and reliable installers. In previous research, Which? identified that nearly half of UK homeowners have not looked into insulating their homes (46%), despite many likely living in poorly insulated homes [23]. The UK government is taking some actions to support households [24], however they could extend the availability of advice by working with the nascent sector of local One Stop Shops which support households through the insulation process and installing low carbon heating [25].

Our analysis indicates that areas with poor wall, loft, and floor insulation levels but where residents have lower levels of fuel poverty [26] can be found in the following parts of the country:  

• In England, these types of local areas are predominantly in London (67%) and the South East (23%), with clusters around the South East suburbs of Gravesham and Medway and London suburbs like Barnet and Richmond upon Thames.
• In Wales [27], these places are primarily in South Wales with 42% in South Wales Central and 18% in South Wales West, but with a larger proportion in Mid and West Wales (18%). They are clustered around Cardiff West and Ceredigion. While these local areas are still predominantly urban (71%), there is a slightly larger rural make-up (29%). 
• These types of local areas in Scotland can mainly be found in West Scotland (37%) and Lothian (24%), typically around Southern Edinburgh, Dunbartonshire and Renfrewshire.
• In Northern Ireland, they tend to be located around areas like Belfast South and South Antrim. All of these types of local areas are urban, the highest rate among all four nations.

5. Availability of insulation installers

The availability of qualified and reliable assessors and installers is a critical factor in improving the insulation of UK homes, however there is currently a significant national shortfall in the number of installers with the skills needed to properly assess homes and install insulation. 

A report from PWC states that insulation specialists are one of the skills most urgently needed [28]. The Construction Industry Training Board has estimated that in order to retrofit 27 million homes and 2 million non-residential buildings, “around 12,000 workers a year would need to be trained over the first four years, with that annual recruitment ramping up to 30,000 between years five and ten” [29].

Although national governments are still key in encouraging increases in overall supply, there is a role for regional and local governments in addressing this skills shortage. For example, they can work with local suppliers and encourage them to invest in the necessary skills, as well as coordinating the expansion of training places.

With this in mind, we have created a geographical dataset of insulation installers and estimated the availability of installers at LSOA, constituency and local authority levels. We have also identified whether these companies are certified installers. In total, we have identified 537 companies across the UK who provide services to fit insulation to domestic properties.

Combining the data on installers with the Priority Places for Insulation Index we are able to identify places where there is a relatively high need for insulation but a relatively low supply of installers. 

Section 5.1 describes the level of availability of all insulation installers for Westminster constituencies in the UK and compares it to the insulation needs in those areas. In Section 5.2, we discuss the importance of having certified installers and describe the availability of certified insulation installers.

5.1. Availability of all insulation installers for all constituencies

Firstly, we look at the supply of insulation installers on a national level. In England, we estimate the median number of installation firms is 17 per 100,000 people (equivalent to one firm per 2,262 households) and this drops to 16 installers available for priority places (one firm per 2,403 households [30]). The numbers are lower for the other nations, especially Scotland and Northern Ireland:

• In Wales, the median number of installers is 17 available per 100,000 people (one firm per 2,262 households), although this increases to 20 installers available for priority places (one firm per 1,923 households) [31].  
• In Scotland, the median number of installers is 8 available per 100,000 people (one firm per 4,808 households), and this reduces to 4 installers available for priority places (one firm per 9,615 households).     
• In Northern Ireland, the median number of installers is 2 available per 100,000 people (one firm per 19,231 households), which stays the same at 2 installers available for priority places.  

Even though the shortage of skills is a national issue, there are places which will have lower supply than others and hence, need more attention to be paid on improving their supply level. Figures 3.1-3.3 provide a more detailed look by showing the comparison of need and supply for Westminster constituencies across Great Britain [32]. They are ranked from lowest to highest need on the horizontal axis and ranked from lowest to highest supply of installers on the vertical axis. The shaded area on the right indicates constituencies which are ‘priority places.

The figure clearly show that there is no correlative relationship between levels of need and supply [33] across England or Wales. However, this is not the case for Scotland. In Scotland, we see the counterintuitive finding that supply tends to be relatively lower in priority places compared to elsewhere.

Figure 3.1: Need and supply ranking of constituencies in England

Figure 3.2: Need and supply ranking of constituencies in Wales

 Figure 3.3: Need and supply ranking of constituencies in Scotland

Constituencies who are of higher need but relatively lower supply are likely to be the places where it would be most beneficial to target interventions to tackle skills shortages. We even found four predominantly rural constituencies (such as Copeland and Workington) that we classify as priority places, but for which we failed to find any installation services from the sources we examined and assumptions made [34]. 

As the level of supply is based on a relative ranking, even constituencies of higher need but with relatively more supply may not have enough installers to meet demand. For example, Burnley is ranked relatively better for supply (15/533) but there are only approximately 48 installation companies available per 100,000 people, equivalent to about one firm per 801 households. Although policy interventions that improve public engagement may be more important in these constituencies, there should also be continued actions to reduce the skills shortage. 

Despite there being no correlation between need and supply, we did find some regional variations within England. Whilst a majority of constituencies in the North West of England are of higher need but have relatively higher supply, a majority of constituencies in Yorkshire and the Humber also have higher need, but relatively lower levels of supply, and a majority of London constituencies have lower need and comparatively higher supply.

There is also a particular issue with the availability of supply in rural areas. Figure 4 shows that many of the English constituencies who are of high need but have relatively lower supply are rural, and in fact half of all rural constituencies are in this quadrant [35]. Housing stock in rural areas tends to be older and more difficult to retrofit [36] and the relative lack of available installers only compounds these issues. 

Figure 4: Need and supply ranking of constituencies in England broken down by rural/urban

5.2. Availability of certified installers

In markets such as the installation of insulation where there is a substantial information asymmetry between the consumer and the business as to what work needs doing, what is a reasonable price and what good quality work looks like, then it is important that consumers are able to have simple and reliable ways to assess the quality of the firms they deal with. One such method is the existence of reliable certification schemes as these can signal quality indicators such as installers having the necessary technical qualifications or having insurance backed guarantees in the event of business failure. In this section we explore the availability of suppliers who are with certification schemes that we are confident provide a reasonable signal to consumers.

There are currently a wide variety of different certification schemes, consumer codes, trade associations and trader directories that installers of insulation could belong to. This creates a confusing certification landscape for consumers, potentially deterring them from getting work done or increasing the risk of getting a poor quality job. Which? has supported the CMA’s proposal for the government to conduct a review of certification schemes to address this problem [37], but for the purposes of this analysis we consider firms to be certified if they belong to one of three particular schemes.

The foremost certification scheme is Trustmark. All insulation measures funded by the government or Energy Company Obligation (ECO) schemes must be installed by Trustmark certified installers [38]. Alongside this we include the Installation Assurance Authority and Which? Trusted Traders. These are schemes that, based on our own assessment, offer consumer protections comparable to that offered by TrustMark. Further details on this are provided in our technical annex.

From Table 2, our analysis shows that if we only include installers which are part of at least one of these three schemes (certified installers), the median number of installers in constituencies falls but the size of this fall varies. There are noticeably fewer certified installers in Scotland [39]. This has an impact on the constituencies in most need of public funding as there is a relatively worse availability of TrustMark certified installers in these places

Table 2: Median number of installers per 100,000 people and one firm per number of households figures in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland

6. Conclusions

Improving the energy efficiency of a home reduces energy bills, improves health outcomes and provides a warmer home for people, but the scale of the challenge to improve the UK’s leaky housing stock is immense and many interventions will require careful geographical targeting. To aid this, Which? has brought together data on a range of factors that determine the need for a household to insulate its home. Putting these together into the Priority Places for Insulation Index, we are able to identify the priority places in the UK where there is likely to be the most urgent need for insulation. 

These priority places exist right across the UK, but are more commonly found in some places. In England, they are most likely to be in the northern regions, and we see they are especially common in coastal towns, former coalfields and in secondary or ‘other’ cities. Nearly two-thirds (65%) of Welsh priority places are in South Wales, with many local areas in the Valleys having high levels of need. In Scotland, the priority places are especially common in South and West Scotland, while Northern Ireland is striking for the proportion of priority places that are in urban areas.

We believe that the index could have various policy applications. For example, it can be used to identify local areas likely eligible for government grants and so could be used for the evaluation of funding. It can also identify more affluent areas where the housing stock is of particularly low quality and this could be helpful in targeting the information, advice and guidance interventions that self-funders need, such as the provision of One Stop Shops that guide consumers through the process of insulating their homes.

Alongside the policies to support households, a critical part in improving the insulation of UK homes is ensuring the availability of installers, especially qualified and reliable ones. Recognising the importance of regional and local governments to support the recruitment and retraining of installers, our research highlights the places with a high need for insulation but relatively lower levels of supply. When we only include certified installers, this gap increases across all four nations but especially for Scotland.

We hope that the collation of this data into a single index will prove to be a useful tool for policymakers, local governments and others trying to support consumers to improve the energy efficiency of their homes.

Footnotes

[1] Cities defined as major population and economic centres.  ↑

[2] Average household energy bills have more than doubled since the energy crisis began and are predicted to remain high for several years. Direct GHG emissions from heating homes accounts for 17% of UK emissions.  ↑

[3] Tado survey of over 80,000 homes. Quoted in Mission Zero. Independent Review of Net Zero. Rt Hon Chris Skidmore MP.  ↑

[4] Climate Change Commission, Sixth Carbon Budget.  ↑

[5] Hitting a brick wall, Resolution Foundation.  ↑

[6] The development of this index follows the co-creation of a similar tool, the Priority Places for Food Index, with the Consumer Data Research Centre at the University of Leeds. The Priority Places for Food Index highlights areas where people are most likely to have difficulties accessing affordable food and is being used by a wide range of stakeholders in the design of research, the targeting of policy, and the evaluation of programmes.  ↑

[7] Energy Company Obligation (ECO) - Homeowners and tenants | Ofgem  ↑

[8] PWC (2022) Green skills as an enabler of UK retrofit.  ↑

[9] These are small areas designed to be of a similar population size. In England and Wales, LSOAs have an average of approximately 1,500 residents or 650 households. Data Zones in Scotland are smaller with around 800 people on average, while we estimate that Super Output Areas in Northern Ireland have an average of around 2,000 people.  ↑

[10] Work that is funded by grants from government or Energy Company Obligation schemes require installers to be registered with Trustmark. There is no equivalent requirement for households that are self-funding work, however there are other schemes accessible to self-funding households which offer similar protections to TrustMark such as the Insulation Assurance Authority and Which? Trusted Traders. Given the relatively high potential of financial harm in this sector, there is a strong argument for enhanced consumer protections as offered by these schemes.  ↑

[11] Census 2021: Insulation and energy efficiency of housing in England and Wales: 2022  ↑

[12] APPG Child of the North: Child Poverty and the Cost of Living Crisis  ↑

[13] This is higher than the proportion of all local areas in England which are rural (17%).  ↑

[14] House of Commons Library: City & Town Classification of Constituencies & Local Authorities  ↑

[15] Townsend, A. and Champion, P. (2020) Core Cities’ strong growth in the 2010s: Were they ‘leaving behind’ the rest of their regions?. Local Economy: The Journal of the Local Economy Policy Unit.  ↑

[16] Sheffield Hallam University: The State of the Coalfields 2019.  ↑

[17] House of Commons Library: The future of coastal communities.  ↑

[18] Welsh Government: Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation 2019.  ↑

[19] Welsh Government: The Socio-Economic Characteristics of the South Wales Valleys in a Broader Context.  ↑

[20] This is lower than the proportion of all local areas in Wales which are rural (32%).  ↑

[21] This is slightly lower than the proportion of all local areas in Scotland which are rural (29%).  ↑

[22] This is much higher than the proportion of all local areas in Northern Ireland which are urban (70%).  ↑

[23] Which? (2023) Empowering homeowners to insulate their homes through improved awareness and information.  ↑

[24]  It recently launched a public engagement campaign and is expanding its online information service and supporting some local pilot initiatives to provide advice to hard to reach households and households in hard to treat properties.  ↑

[25] Scotland has a more developed information and advice service called Home Energy Scotland and Wales offers a telephone advice service.  ↑

[26] Poorest wall, loft, and wall insulation levels are defined as places in the 9th and 10th deciles for at least two out of the three insulation measures. Relatively lowest incomes / highest levels of fuel poverty and poorest health are defined as being in the 9th and 10th deciles for the fuel poverty / income and health conditions factors.  ↑

[27] Only 40 of the 1,909 LSOAs fall into this type of neighbourhood.  ↑

[28] PWC (2022) Green skills as an enabler of UK retrofit.  ↑

[29] Building Skills for Net Zero CITB March 2021.  ↑

[30] Using an average UK household size of 2.6 people per household.  ↑

[31] This increase is likely explained by a smaller number of constituencies - around 8 - which are priority places in Wales.  ↑

[32] Northern Ireland is omitted since the small number of constituencies, 18, limits the value of this analysis.  ↑

[33] Level of supply for a constituency is based on a 25 mile radius from the centre of the constituency. This is equivalent to approximately 26 minutes - 60 minutes driving time based on average driving speeds in the UK for motorways and ‘A’ roads.  ↑

[34] There may be installers with no online presence or the presence of national companies that we did not include as we were unable to verify their presence. However, sensitivity checks with the assumption that all national companies had their own presence throughout the UK revealed no significant changes to the ranking results.  ↑

[35] No rural/urban breakdown is provided for Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland constituencies as there is no data available at this geography level.  ↑

[36] Rural England (June 2021): Opportunities and challenges for rural communities from net zero carbon legislation.  ↑

[37] Which? (2023) Empowering homeowners to insulate their homes through improved awareness and information. The Competition and Markets Authority has also made a similar call, see Consumer Protection in Green Heating and Insulation, May 2023.  ↑

[38] The 2016 independent review for government Each Home Counts recommended certification apply across the insulation sector, but this has only been introduced for government or ECO funded work.  ↑

[39] Of course, it may be that the businesses are larger in Scotland and employ more installers, but they would have to be on average twice the size in Scotland to have parity with England and Wales and this would still leave consumers with less choice.  ↑

[40] Although there is a much larger fall in the figure of one firm per number of households for Northern Ireland, this is because of the already very low number of all installers.  ↑

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Citation

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