The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has announced plans to make the Green Deal more straightforward.

The government’s flagship environmental initiative is designed to improve the energy-efficiency of UK homes, without people having to pay all the costs in advance.

The Green Deal is almost a year old, and from January 2014, DECC is putting new measures in place to progress the scheme, including improving the Green Deal Advice Report, adding more measures to the list of those that can be supported under the initiative, and working with industry to find ways to reduce the cost of insurance requirements attached to Green Deal measures.

Tim Pollard, head of sustainability at Plumb and Parts Center, said: “DECC’s plans to streamline the Green Deal make a lot of sense to us. The majority of people start thinking about their heating systems and energy consumption when they’ve got a problem, or when they get a huge bill. So if you capture people at that point, and make the Green Deal easy to understand, that’s going to help. We welcome a lot of these ideas because the Green Deal is a scheme that will be around for the long term.

He added: “The UK has the oldest building stock in Europe, and we need to find ways to make homes more efficient, ensure people can pay their energy bills, and reduce fuel poverty. The Green Deal can do this. We have the supply chain in place, and the expert installers to make it happen, so it’s encouraging to see DECC working to improve the initiative.”