The energy secretary Ed Miliband has visited Reading to champion affordable and green heating and energy to help people tackle the cost of living crisis.
Mr Miliband visited the Arthur Hill Flats, on the site of the old pool, which were opened as affordable key worker housing in January 2024.
He was joined by Liz Terry, the leader of Reading Borough Council, and Matt Rodda, the Labour MP for Reading.
Mr Miliband was there to inspect the home of Pam, a key worker, to observe how an air source heat pump is efficiently keeping her home warm.
She was overheard saying that she did not need to put the heating on in her bedroom due to the heating efficiency of her flat.
Mr Miliband welcomed the Arthur Hill Flats as an exemplar of efficiency as the Labour government rolls out its Warm Homes Plan to upgrade insulation five million homes in the country.
He said: “Look, I think this is a fantastic testimony to the incredible job that Reading Council under Liz’s leadership is doing.
“This is new social housing, we met a very satisfied tenant in Pam, she loves her flat, she loves the clean heating that is keeping her bills low. She says it’s incredibly comfortable.
“And our Warm Homes Plan is all about working with great councils like Reading on ensuring that not just people like Pam, but thousands of people across Reading can have warmer homes and lower bills.
“And, we’re seeing record investment in our Warm Homes Plan, 15 billion pounds of public investment in order to tackle the biggest issue that people across Reading face, which is a cost of living crisis, but we need great councils and great leadership that we’re seeing in Reading in order to make it happen.
Cllr Terry (Labour, Coley) added: “So we’ve made a determined effort wherever we can to raise the funding to make sure that we have affordable properties and part of making them affordable is making sure that they’re sustainable because that’s the best way to heat and to run properties these days.
“We opened up some new council housing only yesterday that’s almost all to Passivhaus standards, they’ve got ground source pumps in them, so solar panels, the insulation, the triple glazing, all the things we’ve talked about and seen here today (Thursday, January 30).
“And Pam’s been here a couple of years and she just proved it, hasn’t she? ‘I hardly have to put the heating on’, she said, because it creates an ambient heat all of its own with the triple glazing and it means her heating bills are really kept down very low.
“She’s a key worker for us, so it’s another part of the population we’re really keen to support, as well as all the other people who deserve to have great, warm affordable homes.”
Mr Miliband said: “Look, the great thing about the Warm Homes Plan is we’re catering to every type of tenure. So we’ve got new higher standards in the private rented sector.
“We’ve got help for people in fuel poverty who are in social housing, help for people who are owner-occupiers.
“People who are slightly higher incomes will also get help with things like heat pumps or low-cost loans for solar power.
“So it’s about saying, look, we don’t just want the kind of clean tech for which there is massive demand now to be available to the richest in our society, we want it to be available to everybody so we can tackle fuel poverty.”
You can apply for a Warm Homes Grant to improve the heat efficiency of your home on the government website.
