Anthony Hibbs, John Taylor and Dr Robert Whitmarsh.

Q1 The Chair: Good morning. This is the first session of our latest inquiry into the Government’s Boiler Upgrade Scheme. Today’s focus is on the experience of people who have already installed a low-carbon heat system with support from the scheme. We welcome our three witnesses online: Anthony Hibbs, John Taylor and Dr Robert Whitmarsh. A transcript will be taken and made public; you will get sight of it before it is made public,[1] if you wish to make any alterations. The session is webcast live and subsequently made available on Parliament’s website. I ask members to declare any relevant interests before asking their questions.

I invite our witnesses to introduce themselves before we ask any questions. Please say a little about the type of property that you have and the type of retrofitting that you have undertaken with the support of this scheme.

Anthony Hibbs: I am a 60 year-old retired ex-employee of the water industry. I live in Newcastle-under-Lyme, in a relatively modern 22 year-old detached house, which had double glazing, cavity walls and roof insulation when I bought it new. I am retired; I am a grandad, and I do a lot of voluntary work these days, which is much more rewarding and less stressful than paid work—I volunteer for the National Trust.

The things I did before I installed the heat pump were the natural things that you would do to improve your house anyway, even with gas heating. I did not do them in one go but over 10 years. I improved the loft insulation first, and I removed the front and rear cold aluminium doors and replaced them with insulated ones. I have an integral garage that is useful as storage space—it is not quite big enough for a car, to be honest. It was really a cold sink—it let cold into the house—so I replaced its door with an insulated one.

Incidentally—this is more for aesthetics—the front of the house has Georgian bars in the glazing, which is due to our town planning requirements. But they went yellow, so, rather than replace the whole windows, which we did not need to do, we replaced just the double-glazed units, and what a difference that has made—it was a revelation that modern double glazing is better than 20-odd year-old double glazing. That is what I did to the house pre installation.

The Chair: That is really helpful. I apologise, but we have a slight problem here: it is very warm in this room, so we need to have the windows open, and work is going on outside. Either I am going deaf—which is quite possible—or you are speaking clearly but not quite clearly enough. So I encourage all of you to go close to your microphones to account for the fact that the room is not ideal. The problem is not with you but us.

Anthony Hibbs: I cannot hear your background noise, which is good. Can you hear me any better now?

The Chair: Yes, that is marvellous.

John Taylor: I am John Taylor; I am 71 years old and have been retired for 21 years, fortunately. Like the previous guest, I am very busy with great-grandchildren and grandchildren a lot of the time.

I live in a 400 year-old grade 2 listed building. On my journey with carbon saving and trying to help the planet, I tried to get solar panels installed on my roof about 14 years ago, but the council was having none of it, so I put that to bed. A couple of years ago, I tried again, and it took six months to get solar panels installed. I went to Zoom committee meetings, and there were 11 in favour and two against. Derbyshire County Council is supporting work on climate change, which proves that councillors are listening and looking at the real position with the climate.

My spare time is spent walking and reading about cosmology and astronomy. I am very aware that we do not have anywhere else to live—there is not another planet close by; they are literally trillions of miles away, so we really have to look after the planet.

I am also a founder member of Derbyshire Dales Community Energy. We are installing solar panels on various commercial roofs, and the occupants are using the electricity that we produce with them—but they are buying it from the grid at quite a considerable discount. This is going very well; we want to get a megawatt of energy under our belts as soon as we can.

There are around 480 different companies like ours throughout the UK, all trying to help the planet, which is my mainstay and why I am doing this. I have grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and we really need to do something. I know that Britain is a small country, but we can all do our little bit, which is what I have done: I have solar panels and my air source heat pump—which was installed only in September—and I drive an electric car, so I drive on sunshine a lot. I am very aware of trying to help and do as much as I can.

As a side issue, I have been a vegetarian for 38 years, and that in itself helps the environment. If a lot more of us were veggie, we could certainly feed more people on the planet and there would be less environmental pollution from the food we are not eating.

Dr Robert Whitmarsh: I will give a bit of background: I was a research scientist in marine geophysics for 40 years, and I retired a bit over 20 years ago. My wife and I live in a late-1980s four-bedroom detached house in Winchester. Since we moved in, in 1995, we have done a lot to the house to gradually improve the insulation with things such as cavity wall insulation, double glazing, a proper well-insulated front door and lots more insulation in the roof space. We got to the point where we really could not do any more, other than get rid of our gas boiler, which was contributing the largest amount to our carbon footprint. So we did that in September this year, like John, which means that we have had an air source heat pump installed for only seven weeks, so we do not have a lot of experience with it yet. That was of course supported by the Boiler Upgrade Scheme.

To say a bit more about what I do in my spare time, over the last 15 years, I have devoted a lot of time to a local group called Winchester Action on the Climate Crisis—WinACC—which we hope has made some impact on the local population. We also work closely with Winchester City Council and, increasingly, Hampshire County Council to try to get them to support suitable action to reduce the climate crisis.

Q2 The Chair: Thank you for that, Bob. I remind committee members that the Winchester Action on the Climate Crisis group provided evidence to us for our behaviour change inquiry.

You have all said a little about your motivation for participating in the scheme, but can you say a bit more about how you heard about it? We want to know how widely the public are being made aware of this. Was it clear from the outset who was eligible?

Dr Robert Whitmarsh: How I heard about the upgrade scheme goes back to the Winchester Action on the Climate Crisis group. Through the National Energy Foundation, WinACC was made aware of a project called the Hampshire redress project, which was set up by NEF to encourage people to retrofit their homes. Within Hampshire two projects were set up, one of which is based in Winchester and effectively operated by WinACC. It has a project officer who is paid for by WinACC with funds directly from NEF.

Part of that scheme was to encourage people to have a whole-house retrofit survey done, which is quite expensive at £500. Perhaps we will come to costs later. That enabled people to find out what they needed to do to their house to get the most out of reducing their carbon footprint and cut down on their energy consumption.

I am pretty sure that was how I heard about the Boiler Upgrade Scheme for the first time. The Winchester Area SuperHomes project provided lots of extra information about installers and so on, which was really useful when it came to trying to find an installer, as there are lots out there and it is quite a difficult decision to make, as I am sure you are aware.

I am sure I must have also heard about the Boiler Upgrade Scheme through the media. I subscribe to all sorts of groups which send out emails about energy saving, insulating homes and all that sort of thing. I am sure I heard about the Boiler Upgrade Scheme that way as well.

John Taylor: When I had my solar panels installed, Tom from Smart Homes UK who did the installation mentioned the air source heat pump. There was no Boiler Upgrade Scheme then, but the green homes scheme, which did not support air source heat pumps as far as I was aware. I had a gentleman down from Stockport—I live in Matlock—to give me some indication of the cost and it was about £10,000. That was without changing the radiators or doing other things to the home.

I had an EPC done on my home; it was 90, which is actually really good for a 400-year-old property, and it is very well insulated, but I wanted to do more. I found out more from the internet. That is where I really heard about the Boiler Upgrade Scheme. I know that there was the green homes scheme, which unfortunately was not successful. I found a lot of information online, as Bob said, and went forward from that point. I will say more about choosing the installers later in the discussion.

Anthony Hibbs: My interest goes back quite a long way. It is a bit cheesy, but I think I saw a ground source heat pump on “Grand Designs” years ago and thought, “That’s a great idea, taking residual heat from the earth and using it”. It stayed in my mind for a while. I cannot remember how I became aware of air source heat pumps. I started a quick investigation several years ago, but the price was unaffordable for me then. I kept it on the back burner. I kept dipping in and having a look at how things were improving. I looked on the internet and all that sort of thing.

I was aware of the renewable heat incentive, which basically pays for it. If you get an air source heat pump in on the renewable heat incentive, then over several years you basically get all your money back. However, you had to have that money initially, which I did not, so I kept watching.

I get my energy from Octopus Energy, as I suppose a lot of other people do. It sent an email about the end of the renewable heat incentive and how it was going to be promoting heat pumps and installing its own systems. It was a case of registering my interest and it kept me informed. It did not quite work out; we did an online and phone survey, and my house was not suitable for its system. It has a “one size fits one size system”, where it is just going to get mad numbers, which mine would not do. That is how I became aware of the change from the RHI to this BUS grant.

Baroness Boycott: This is a point of clarification for Bob. I got a bit lost in all the different schemes that you were involved in, particularly the whole-house retrofit survey, which you said you had to pay £500 for. It sounds like a really good idea that someone comes and looks at your entire house and gives you overall advice. Did you have to pay £500? Who puts this project together? If you go after changing your heating, is there a government body which will come and visit a house—especially an old house—and say that you can do XYZ and give you a way forward? It seems that you did a lot of work, and you are obviously determined and smart.

Dr Robert Whitmarsh: I had to pay for the whole-house retrofit survey myself.

Baroness Boycott: Who did you pay? Who are these guys?

Dr Robert Whitmarsh: I paid the retrofit assessor—the man who came to assess our house.

Baroness Boycott: I really want to know if you paid a private contractor. How much difference did it make to the whole process of moving your heat sources that you had this whole-house retrofit survey? Was it very helpful and was it something you think people need?

Dr Robert Whitmarsh: I like to think I am fairly technically aware, and I have done quite a lot of insulating of the house over a number of years, so I was not surprised at the outcome of the survey. To be quite honest, I somewhat regretted having to pay £500. However, I think a lot of other people in this scheme would have found it advantageous, as if they were not so technically aware, they may have been thinking of spending on doing things with less effect on their energy consumption.

I should add that the scheme does not require everybody to pay £500. I am not sure if I can remember the details exactly, but if you are in a council tax band of A, B, C or even D, which are smaller houses, you may not have to pay the full amount. I think you can get away with paying half the amount or, if you are on benefits, not paying anything at all. It is variable.

Baroness Boycott: I am still slightly confused about it all.

The Chair: How did you find out about this assessor? Did the climate action group say that there are assessors out there? When you were looking on the internet about this scheme, for example, did it say, “you should approach an assessor and here is a list in your area”? How did you find them?

Dr Robert Whitmarsh: It was because I was a member of Winchester Action on the Climate Crisis—

The Chair: Okay, so it is the local group.

Dr Robert Whitmarsh: —which set up a project management board for the Winchester Area SuperHomes scheme, which I happened to be on, so I was right at the coalface. I was very aware early on—I can go into more detail about this later—that it provided a list of installers, for example, which was incredibly useful. It did not recommend people but provided a list of installers who had to be MCS-certificated—that is the Microgeneration Certification Scheme, if I remember rightly. That was very helpful. That is really how I got involved and how I obtained the information about what to do next.

Q3 Lord Lucas: Good morning. How was your experience prior to the installation of the low-carbon heat system, including finding installers to get quotes? Also, to pick up on what Bob has been saying, what advice was there as to what you should be doing? Did you find that you were in a position where you could really trust the suggestions you were getting and the advice from installers? How did you find the balance of upfront costs and financing options available, and how did this affect your decision to proceed? How smooth were your parts of the application process?

Dr Robert Whitmarsh: My experience before the installation of the low-carbon heat system was that the carbon footprint of the house was dominated by the fact that we had a gas boiler, which of course uses natural gas. That is a fossil fuel, and we all know that it produces greenhouse gases. I found an installer from a list that, as I explained, was produced for this Winchester Area SuperHomes project. I got three quotes using that list. I chose one company because I knew two people who had experience of it, one in the very recent past and one several years ago. I chose the second on the basis of its website; I was just impressed by it. The third company happened to be very close to Winchester, which is where I live. That is perhaps not a very good criterion, but it is one way to go.

I got these three quotes. The companies’ responses were slightly different. One of them—quite quickly, I seem to recall—sent out somebody who was very technically competent. He spent probably a couple of hours going around the house, measuring the rooms, counting the number of radiators and doing all these sorts of things that have to be done to come up with a firm quotation. I was impressed by that. The second company was very reluctant to send anybody out at all and, when I eventually persuaded it to, I was not impressed by the people it sent; that was the end of that company. The third company produced a quote, but I was less impressed by the technical content of the quote and, perhaps, the company’s technical ability. The interesting thing was that they all quoted exactly the same model of heat pump, made in China by a company called Midea. That is how I chose the final installer.

On the finance, I was lucky that I was able to afford the upfront cost without really considering having to find money from somewhere else—but, obviously, that would not apply to everybody.

The application process was pretty smooth. The installing company took care of the application to the BUS for the £5,000 normally given for an air source heat pump. Then I received an email from Ofgem which, as I understand it, handles the funding. Strangely enough, it wanted me to give my consent to the installer’s application, but it did that only after the installation had been completed. It needed to confirm my address. Apparently it uses a database by Experian, which I think has a huge amount of data on all of us living in the UK. It went through that database and was able to confirm my address. At that point I had to send Ofgem photo ID and a utility bill, but that was all; that was the end of the process. I got a confirmation email back from Ofgem to say that it had all gone ahead, and that was it. It was smooth and relatively straightforward.

Anthony Hibbs: It was a similar sort of situation when I was looking for installers. There is only way to describe it when you go to buy an air source heat pump and use this grant: you have to be determined, because it is not a standard field out there. I approached five companies. The first was Octopus Energy, which was the one giving the information. It does not actually come to your house. You fill in an online survey, it phones you up for a chat and you are storming along quite well, but as soon as you mention that your house has microbore pipework, it is gone. “We don’t want to do that. Sorry, we can’t do it.” So that was that.

Then I started trying local installers. We just called in KRIS solar. The company is local, has done solar for years, has lots of experience and has recently gone into heat pumps. It came around and was there for quite a while—a couple of hours. It does the heat-loss calculation and tells you what it might do, where you might put things and what you might need to change. To be honest, it seemed quite dramatic. The amount of work he was suggesting and where he was suggesting siting the unit were almost off-putting. When he had gone, I thought, “I’m not so sure I want to be doing this now”. That was in my mind.

I had a direct contact at Vaillant, a major manufacturer. It just could not provide anybody even to come and give me a price or a survey. Another couple of companies, through online chats and phone calls, gave me a basic price. It is strange that the basic price seemed to be very similar. The size of the heat pump was uniform—everyone suggested the same size, with different manufacturers—but the prices were very much the same.

By this point I was thinking, “This is hard work”: people are not turning up, they do not want to come, and I do not quite like what they are telling me they are going to do to my house. Then a company called Abacus from the Wirral came—engineers who have been fitting the things for seven or eight years. It was a complete breath of fresh air. The guy was here for about two hours and did all the normal things. His suggestion was a game-changer. All my gubbins, pre heat pump, were upstairs: tanks in the loft for water, a hot water cylinder and a shower pump in a cupboard on the landing. There is an integral garage, which has been a great thing, and I have a washing machine in there. He went in there and asked whether I would be able to sacrifice part of that garage to put the tank and the gubbins in. I said, “Yeah, great”. That was good, for a start; the siting of the unit made a lot more sense than previous suggestions. The retrofitting in the house basically came down to swapping a few radiators for doubles; most of my downstairs ones were doubles anyway. My house is pretty overspec; it has three radiators in the front room, which are always too warm anyway.

They got the job because they knew what they were talking about, they had the experience and I could see that it was not going to be a major nightmare—but you have to be determined. If I had stuck with the first three or four, I might have just given up. So that was the installers.

I financed it. I have a little self-employed pension that I was able to access when I was 60. I took the 25% tax-free from that, and that is what I used. With this very generous grant, I could afford to do the heat pump, so I did not have to look into any financing as such.

The company tends to do the application initially. Ofgem gets in touch and you authorise Abacus to work on your behalf and claim the grant. Basically, you have to prove who you are; it is like going through a credit check. It was very smooth. Quite quickly, it issues you with a sort of online voucher. It has quite a short shelf life, to be honest. That is a problem at the moment—mine expires at the end of this month—so you really need to get your stuff done and the grant sorted. That was that. It was a very smooth process, with no problem whatever. The company starts the ball rolling, and all you do is confirm who you are. I guess Ofgem does the basic checks, and then off you go. That is my experience.

John Taylor: I reiterate what the gentleman has just said. My experience was on very similar lines. I had several companies around. There are quite a few cowboys out there, I find. There was a big variation in price, from £11,000 up to about £18,000. I had all my radiators in the house changed. I bought them from Screwfix, £1,000 for nine radiators and £600 to get them fitted, so it was £1,600 to get the radiators done. One company quoted me £6,000 to change the radiators, so you have to be very careful.

I am an ex-financial adviser and I was an electrician for 10 years, so did quite a bit of the work myself, getting the cabling ready and siting the pump. We do not live in a big house; we had a big triple cupboard and I sacrificed two-thirds of that to site the internal tank. I had a 190-litre tank, and the air pump is just through the wall on the outside. One of the guys who came said, “I've got to drill through this two foot six wall”, but modern tools today will go through that almost like butter; it is not that difficult.

So I had done all the necessary work through the house. I had had the radiators upsized a month or so before I had the air pump in. My grandson is a builder and he put in a load more roof insulation, so there is eight to 12 inches of insulation and the walls are two foot six thick. All the house is double glazed, and I have spent £1,600 to £1,800 on a new Solidor door that is fabulously airtight. The grant was handled by the company that I eventually chose, which was very professional—and local; I think that matters. I was a local business, and I like to trade locally because you can always get hold of someone, as opposed to when you are dealing with someone 200 miles away. I am on Octopus Go. As the gentleman said, it is one-size-fits-all, more or less, which does not work because we all live in different types of property, but IMS is very technically able without getting too complicated.

On finance, I have enough money just to cash in a bit on an investment I have. I have spent a lot more than the grant for what I have done—I have probably spent £8,500 of my own on top of the grant to get the air pump done—but I have done it for the environment, not necessarily for financial savings. If I do not save money on my gas or electric bills, I am not really bothered. I am having a positive impact on the climate, I feel, and that was really my main reason for doing it.

My boiler was seven years old. It had not broken down, but seven years old was its warranty expiry. I chose Vaillant in the end because I live in Matlock, and Belper, where Vaillant is, is only 10 miles away, so again it was local to where I live.

Still, you have to watch out for cowboys. There needs to be more publicity about the scheme because you have to do a lot of your own groundwork. I do not feel that there are people locally to hold your hand. The reason why I chose the company that I did is that the local climate change officer for Derbyshire Dales County Council had used it for about 11 years and it proved worth having. It was a good company, recommended by the climate change officer. That is my route so far, anyway.

Q4 Lord Lucas: Thank you all very much. You seem to have a common challenge in finding sources of good advice and a good installer. Is there anything that the Government, or local government, should be doing to make that easier?

Anthony Hibbs: When you look on the government website for the BUS grant, there should be a list of preferred installers that are professional and accredited, and perhaps local, so that you can be confident. There are so many out there that it is down to you. If you look on the internet, that can throw up all sorts of things. There needs to be something like Checkatrade for air source heat pump people.

John Taylor: Unfortunately, there is quite a lot of negativity about air source heat pumps: “Oh, they won’t work in winter. You’ll be having it out and need some other form of heating.” That is a challenge that needs to be overcome as well. So far, I have found mine incredibly good.

Dr Robert Whitmarsh: On accrediting installers, the MCS scheme seemed to be a good starting point—I cannot remember what it stands for. It insists on a quite high quality of competence by the installer, so if something goes wrong the fallback is that you can complain to the MCS scheme.

Lord Lucas: Has putting in an air source heat pump involved accepting a lower temperature on your central heating?

John Taylor: Not at all.

Lord Lucas: What sort of level are you aiming to keep your heating at?

John Taylor: Twenty degrees centigrade. It is quite rapid to warm up, too. Within half an hour you are quite toasty. I find mine very good and I have no complaints, but we are not having cold weather yet. It is exceptionally mild right now—maybe through climate change.

Baroness Young of Old Scone: I would like clarification about what the quotes from your suppliers covered. Did they cover all the insulation and radiator upgrades as well as the installation of the pump, or did some suppliers not want to quote for those elements? Secondly, how robust were those quotes? Did you have any experience of people coming back and saying, “Actually, now we’re into it, it’s going to cost a lot more because we didn’t realise that this turns left rather than right or the power supply is somewhere completely different”—the things that builders tell you?

Dr Robert Whitmarsh: I found that the quotes were very similar. They were all within about £1,000 of each other, let us say. They were all around £12,500. That sounds like a lot of money but we wanted to make a lot of changes while the heat pump was being installed, so it includes not only the heat pump but four new radiators. We needed a heat exchanger—this was all going on in the airing cupboard, and we had one plumber who sat in the airing cupboard for three days replumbing it. The air source heat pump delivers hot water at a pressure of 1.4 bars, but we had previously had leaks in our central heating system so this was a scheme whereby the central heating system remained vented or unpressurised. We had a large 300-litre hot water tank installed in the airing cupboard. There were a couple of other things: we have a solar thermal panel and the pump was getting old and needed to be replaced, and we put a pump in for the en suite shower that had very low pressure. That is why the quotes may seem a bit higher than other people have mentioned, because there was a lot more involved.

John Taylor: As I said, I did quite a lot of the work, sorting out the radiators and getting a plumber, because quite a few of the air source heat people did not want to change the radiators. They are a different beast—they are dealing with a different technical aspect. They are very good at doing the air source heat pumps; certainly the plumber that I used was very good at plumbing and did an excellent job, with very little mess. Fortunately, I had room to have bigger radiators throughout the house without a problem.

Financially, as I say, it varied from £11,000 to £18,500. I think some people think, “These people live in a niceish house and have a reasonable amount of money so we’ll adjust our charge accordingly”. I really feel that if they think they can get another couple of grand out of you, they will add it on. We are still in the infancy of this scheme, and I think that as it develops there will be far less difference in the prices.

Baroness Young of Old Scone: Did you have any bother with the listed building officer?

John Taylor: Not at all. My building is listed because of the timber works within it. It was a council depot 20-odd years ago so it has had a lot of work done to it. It is all dry-lined. It was converted to a dwelling in the late 1990s—1996 or 1997. The pump stands outside in a yard. Drilling a hole through the wall is no problem whatever. It took a lot more getting solar panels on my roof but, again, I really was so pleased because they go hand in glove. I am yet to have an inverter or converter fitted so that, when my panels have sunshine on them in summer and I do not have the heat pump on or it is on very low, my water will be heated by the panels. I want to try to use all my solar if I can because I get 4.2p exporting it and I am paying around 30p right now to buy it. So if I can send as little as possible back down the wires, it is in my favour.

Anthony Hibbs: For me, the quotes were pretty much within £1,000. They did include different things, though. The price of the local chap who had some strange ideas was okay—it was in the middle—but he had a lot more work. He was swapping a lot more radiators, digging trenches to put pipes underground, siting it far from the house and putting two lots of pumps in, upstairs and downstairs. It seemed like overkill, really, but his price was still the same.

I only mentioned the three solid quotes; the rest were paper quotes, and you cannot really count those. But they were all much of a muchness. My quote from Abacus, which I went with, included radiator swaps and literally taking out all the tanks, pipework and stuff upstairs. The airing cupboard is useful storage for us now. They piped it all and there is just a tiny manifold where the old pipes are connected to each other and boxed in, so we now have a great piece of extra storage up there.

That is what the work seemed to include for me. There was no insulation work or serious pipe work in the house or anything like that. That was my experience of the quotes and the amount involved. They seemed to vary by £1,000 either way but the amount of work going into it seemed to vary considerably.

Dr Robert Whitmarsh: There was a question that I am afraid I did not answer about the temperature of the radiators. The nature of an air source heat pump is that it will nearly always produce a much lower water temperature than you are used to from your gas boiler. It therefore takes longer to heat up the house. However, as somebody said earlier, it has been so mild this autumn, I think our heat pump has delivered water to the radiators to heat the house only around three times so far, so we have very little experience of that. It came on this morning, for example, and it has warmed the house up. We have our thermostat at 18 degrees and it manages that perfectly well.

John Taylor: Can I just say something about the hot water system as well? Whereas with a combi boiler, you are waiting 30 seconds or more for the hot water to come through the taps, with the heat pump, the shower, the taps downstairs et cetera are so much quicker. They take five or six seconds and you have got really hot water; it is too hot to keep your hands under. It certainly heats it up very efficiently.

Q5 Lord Colgrain: I was very interested to hear two of you say that certain suppliers thought that they could do a survey remotely. On the basis of your experiences, do you think that is at all possible, or do you think that they have to come on-site?

Anthony Hibbs: They have to come on-site. Air source heat pumps are not like a gas boiler where you just replace one with another. Every house is different. That is the main issue. They need to come to your house. There is also a heat loss calculation to do; it is a bit of a mystery to me but two of the people we have gone with have taken the time to do that. They measured every room and it took them well over an hour to do it. I just do not think that you can do that remotely. You can give a basic quote, which is what I got, but you really need the person on-site. Again, I had various, very different solutions. The one I have had done is, to me, the most simple, and it works brilliantly. You need to get people on-site.

Lord Colgrain: So if you had recommendations on the government website, that is one recommendation you would want to see: that there must be site visits?

Anthony Hibbs: Yes, definitely. I think they have to. The installer must do that before they come. I cannot imagine anyone fitting a heat pump from a remote visit.

Lord Colgrain: John, I see you chuckling and nodding vigorously. Do you agree with that?

John Taylor: Absolutely. Every house is different. The windows are measured. The heat calcs are done very accurately. We measure the rooms to the inch. We have an 18-foot-high ceiling in the kitchen—it goes right up to the eaves—so you have to work it out. There is a big volume there. I have a 1.8 metre by 1 metre double radiator in there to give a lot of heat out because it is a big volume to heat. I know that you do not sit in the kitchen of a night-time—we live in the lounge. We do the cooking in the kitchen so it is quite warm. For example, we often leave the oven open to let the heat out again. Use the heat you can, rather than wasting any of it.

Dr Robert Whitmarsh: Another factor that was quite awkward in our case was where you site the heat pump outside the house. It cannot be anywhere. It has to be a certain distance away from the boundary, the house wall and the hot water tank because it will pump the water only so far, but it mostly goes uphill from the ground. You will see an air source heat pump on the ground but a hot water tank in an airing cupboard on the first floor, and other things like that. In fact, in our case—it is quite a long story—we had to move a low wall that surrounded a flowerbed back by around a metre and a half to make room for the heat pump. I had to rebuild the wall myself. So there are various aspects to it that cannot be sorted out on paper or over a telephone.

I think somebody said just now that these calculations are quite precise and use standard formulae. In fact, the company I finally used said that it had developed its own software, which really impressed me. That is perhaps why it produced quite a detailed technical spec for what needed to be done and how the heat pump would respond in terms of keeping the temperature right.

Q6 Baroness Boycott: We are, as you have all said, at the beginning of this scheme. You have obviously had a very wide range of service from the people whom you have rung up, with some people prepared to come, some people just doing it over the phone, et cetera. In some cases, there were big differences in cost. Do you think that, because it is a cowboy area, as one of you mentioned, we are going to see a race to the bottom where people are tempted by the lowest prices and we end up with bad installations and corners being cut? How would you best ensure that that does not happen?

Dr Robert Whitmarsh: Go to companies that have the MCS—the microgeneration certification scheme; that is its proper name. If they have that backing, that is a very good start.

Baroness Boycott: You think that is sufficient?

Dr Robert Whitmarsh: I am not sure because I have not had experience of making a complaint and going through the MCS scheme, but it is known for requesting quite a high standard from installers, which is reassuring.

Baroness Boycott: John, you said that you had between £11,000 and £18,000 in your quotes. Were all those companies certified?

John Taylor: Not necessarily. You would think they would want to say that they were, because it adds credibility to their business, obviously.

Baroness Boycott: Absolutely.

John Taylor: But they do not. The one I used in the end—IMS, from Sheffield/Perth—is registered with the scheme. It is an excellent company to deal with, it really is.

Lord Grantchester: I notice that all of you have installed air source heat pumps. Was that because that was all that was on offer, or did you assess ground source heat pumps but then went for air source heat pumps? What is the difference, and what persuaded you? Did you even consider ground source heat pumps?

John Taylor: Basically, it was the cost. I am 71, and a ground source heat pump would have cost maybe £10,000 more; I know you can get a slightly higher grant but, with the listing of the building, I do not think they would be too happy with digging up large areas to bury pipework, et cetera. On our site we could not have retrofitted a ground source, whereas the air source is free-standing. In fact, I have blended it with the building. I have covered it in a stone fablon material and it blends in well; I have stood it in a good area. It would have been very nice to have had it this summer, when it was so hot, to stand in front of the cool air it emits. If you have only £6,000 against a ground source, you are going to pay maybe £24,000 or £25,000. You have to consider that that is a lot of extra money. If there was a larger grant for ground source, I think there would be more take-up.

Anthony Hibbs: For me it was just practicality—I never considered one. I imagine it would be more expensive because of the physical groundworks outside, but mine is a modern house with a relatively small garden so a ground source one was never going to be a consideration.

Dr Robert Whitmarsh: It was the same for me. Our garden is not really big enough to lay out trenches with these slinky coils in, which you need for a ground source heat pump, let alone to drill a bore-hole, which is very expensive. It is well known that ground source performs better, but it can be a lot more expensive.

Lord Whitty: I was struck that all your properties are detached, relatively self-contained and relatively large. You described the space you needed. How do you think the scheme would operate in the vast majority of premises, which are terraced or semi-detached houses with relatively little inside or outside space?

Anthony Hibbs: Terraces are difficult because you have to site them in a certain area so that they are not noise-intrusive. It is not winter or sub-zero but, so far, every time mine is working even remotely hard it makes hardly any sound at all; it is like a light fan. There is no real noise, so maybe the rules need changing to accommodate the more modern heat pumps that are much quieter than when the rules were first set. Terraced houses will struggle because, physically, where would you site one? I imagine it would end up on the wall, but you still have the issue of the noise. That might need looking into: is it too stringent? I do not think mine is intrusive. For anyone who lives anywhere near a road, the air source heat pump is nowhere near as loud as even a car quietly driving past.

Lord Whitty: I was thinking not so much of the noise, although that is an important consideration in such housing, but of the extra space.

Anthony Hibbs: I was surprised how quiet it is. Mine is called an ultra-quiet—I chose it because it is a quiet model—but it really makes hardly any noise at all. On the internal space, if you have a loft you can utilise that. One of the suggestions I had was for the hot water cylinder to go where my normal hot water cylinder is—like for like—then the buffer for the heater to go in the loft above it. It is not big: a 50-litre thing with a bit of pipework. I think it is practical in smaller houses; it is just the siting of the outdoor unit that would be the issue.

John Taylor: I have recently been to Norway, and I noticed how many air source heat pumps were fitted there. The majority were installed on the wall, basically like an air conditioning unit. Just to reiterate the silence, my son-in-law said, “You’ll hear it”, but he cannot tell when it is on. It is whisper quiet, and I mean whisper—very quiet indeed.

It has probably taken about 1.5 by 1.5 metres of floor space on my ground floor. My air source heat pump, the tank and everything is downstairs. It took a surprisingly small amount of room. I thought it would take a lot more room than it did, so I was very pleasantly surprised how it was fitted.

Dr Robert Whitmarsh: Heat pumps come in different sizes, and if you are in a smaller terraced house, you need a physically smaller box for the heat pump—so that might make it a bit easier. In practice, it is conceivable that you could have one heat pump at the end of a terrace of, let us say, four houses and share the heat between the houses.

We have not yet mentioned that heat pumps can work like a fridge and cool a house. With some heat pumps, in the summer it should be possible to cool the house when it is getting really hot outside. I suggested that to our installer, who said you would get lots of condensation on the pipework around the radiators. That may well be true, so it might cause damp. We will try it in the summer—suck it and see.

We have not talked about underfloor pipework, which is ideal when you are building a house from scratch. If you do that and have a heat pump, you are in a very good position to cool the house, because you cool the floor—a big mass of concrete—and that will keep the house really nice and cool in the summertime.

Q7 Baroness Young of Old Scone: You have pretty well answered my question, to be honest. We have heard extensively about your experience during the installation process. Was it the contract from your installer with you, or was it with the grant giver? There were two contracts, were there not? I gather that Ofgem has a contract with your installer for the grant, but presumably you also had a contract with your installer for the installation. Is that how it works?

Dr Robert Whitmarsh: I think that is right. My contract was with the installer, which had an agreement with Ofgem for the grant money.

Baroness Young of Old Scone: So that is the way it operates—and there is no friction between those two? That works perfectly well, does it? Good. I have no more questions on installation; we have heard lots.

The Chair: We will move on. It has been marvellous.

Q8 Lord Colgrain: My question comes in two parts. First, how happy have you been with the system’s performance and, in particular, where do you feel it has not really met your expectations? Secondly, how do the running costs compare with what they would have been for your previous heating system, and what are your expectations for future running costs? I know that in two cases the installation has been in for only a very short time, so maybe you could just give a guide on that.

Anthony Hibbs: As I say, so far there are no issues at all. The house is comfortably warm and the system is totally quiet. I have the best showers I have ever had. Before, my hot water pressure was absolutely pitiful; we had a shower pump to get a decent shower. Now it is almost like a jet washer. There are so many improvements. There is extra space upstairs. You cannot beat extra space—my wife is delighted with all that. Having tinkered with the timers and set up the temperature, I am really pleased with it so far. The caveat is that it has not been sub-zero yet, so we will see then.

The radiators get warm. It is a fallacy that you cannot warm your bottom on an air source heat pump radiator—you can. You can stand by one and be warm. There is plenty of hot water. I have a 250-litre cylinder, which I heat off-peak overnight so that it is all heated up by 2 am. I can have a bath at 8 pm and the water is still hot. The new cylinders they come with are so well insulated that they do not even feel warm on the outside. I am absolutely delighted so far. It is a uniform heat; you do not seem to get any cold spots. It is almost as if your house has warmed up after a summer’s day, and in the evening it is still comfortably warm and maintains that heat. As far as we can see so far, we are absolutely delighted with it.

On the running costs, we have had ours on a bit more than we normally would have. My wife is convalescing after surgery so, since it has been installed, it has been on literally all day at 19 degrees—not too hot—then it goes down in the evening. My first energy bill—this is electricity only because I have no gas, thank goodness—has been just £143 for the month. That includes charging my car; I have done about 750 miles in my electric car. That is everything—washing, drying, dishwashing, water heating, the car, heating—for £143 in an autumn month, so I am quite pleased with it so far, yes.

Lord Colgrain: Was that in line with what you were anticipating?

Anthony Hibbs: It is better, in a way. When I first started to think about it, there was an optimistic view that you would save money by having a heat pump in. The energy crisis has overtaken that now, but you can realistically say that you should not be any worse off with a heat pump. You are helping the environment considerably but, financially speaking, the cap means that electricity is three times the cost of gas and they say that a heat pump is three times as efficient as a gas boiler, so the cost should be similar to gas. Certainly, so far I have been pleased.

John Taylor: Do either of the other panel members have solar panels at all? I feel that they really go hand in glove with heat pumps and go very well together.

Anthony Hibbs: I have looked at it, but my house is not optimally facing. Over the years I have had several quotes and discussions with people, and basically it is not really the optimum situation for me. That is the only reason why I do not have solar panels. If I were south-facing, I would definitely go for that.

John Taylor: I find it works so well together. As you say, it frees up space; we have more space in the kitchen now for another kitchen cupboard. That is always going to get full, so it is always handy. We shower—I have not had a bath for years—and the shower gets hot very quickly, so you are not wasting the water. As we have been short of water this year, you think, “I don’t want to run the shower for 30 or 40 seconds and waste water when you can get in within five seconds”, and look at a four-minute shower on purpose, so that you can conserve both water and heat. Over a day, if you do not draw any water off, the temperature drops by about one or two degrees centigrade because it is very well insulated. It is hardly an airing cupboard where the heat pump tank is, because it does not let any heat out—it is that well insulated.

Lord Colgrain: But what about the costs in terms of how you had estimated them in advance?

John Taylor: I have recently plugged in my Octopus meter in the house. From midnight through to 9 am I might use 80p to 90p of electricity. Again, there is no gas; the gas meter has been taken out. I am on Octopus Go. I can put 120 miles on the car for £2.25, which is incredible. I am really pleased that I am on the route that I am.

As for whether I save money, as I say, I have not done it for money saving; I have done it to help the environment. More of us—who can afford to—have to do something about it because otherwise the world is going to change beyond all recognition, certainly within our children’s lifetimes.

Dr Robert Whitmarsh: I agree about the hot water tank being very well insulated, compared to what it used to be. We had to change our tank. The old one, even with a fibreglass jacket around it, would let out a lot of heat, but there is still a lot of heat coming into our airing cupboard through pipes that I have not yet fully insulated. I have yet to do that but it is a very easy job.

On our experience so far, I had problems setting up the programming for the hot water in the way that I wanted. The programming for the heating was set up by the installer, basically, and I was happy with that. It turned out that there is a control panel with all sorts of buttons to press and menu options and so on. It is quite complicated. I had some initial support from the installer but I thought they rather fell down on providing the support that they ought to have provided me with in the initial month or so. It has been sorted out now—the hot water comes on at the right time of night and so on—so that is working okay, but it was quite a steep learning curve.

You asked about running costs. I have had a September bill, like John, but I think it is much too early to judge whether it will be cheaper or more expensive than having a gas boiler. In fact, I always expected that it would be more expensive than a gas boiler. I was not in it for the money either; I wanted to reduce our carbon footprint. However, there are some signs that it might become cheaper. We get our energy from Ecotricity, which—like most companies, I think—upped its prices this month, in October. Although the ratio between the electricity price and the gas price was well over four in September, it has now come down to 3.4, which, as someone was just saying, is near enough the ratio of what is called the coefficient of performance for the heat pump. So there are signs that it may be no more expensive than the gas boiler and perhaps, if the electricity market gets sorted out so the electricity price is decoupled from the gas price, that can only help in future. Air source heat pumps may actually become cheaper to run than gas boilers.

The Chair: I want to pick up on the point about aftercare. You three gentlemen have shown that you understand quite a lot about these matters—perhaps more so than the average person on the Clapham omnibus. When it comes to aftercare, it is important that people know how to use these installations. From what you were saying, Bob, it got sorted out, but do you think there needs to be some component of the commitment by the installer or some part of the government scheme that makes it clear that you do not just have to turn to Google to work out how to run these things three weeks down the line, which is what most of us do when something starts to go wrong in the house?

Dr Robert Whitmarsh: I entirely agree with that. I have dealt with builders in the past, and it is very nice if you can keep back 10% for a month or two until you are really happy with the work. With something like an air source heat pump, which is quite complicated technically, you cannot be sure that it has been set up right and so on until some time after it has been first commissioned. If the Boiler Upgrade Scheme said something like they would not be paid the last £1,000 until the recipient of the heat pump had signed off on it a month or two afterwards, that could encourage them to provide—in my case, anyway—a slightly better aftersales service, let us call it, for the first few weeks until the customer had gone away satisfied. After all, customers are paying thousands of pounds for fitting a heat pump, and they deserve a slightly better service.

Anthony Hibbs: I had a similar experience to Bob’s. The company that I chose has been installing them for several years now and is obviously really busy because of the grant, so it is beneficial to air source heat pump installation. Up to 12 months ago the guys in the company were installing heat pumps, but now they have contractors to do it.

I had two contractors that I had absolutely no problem with. They did the whole job in two days. They put covers down in the whole house, with not a scratch or a scuff or anything. They took all the old gubbins out, which was remarkable, and did a really tidy job. But, when they finished at about 8 pm on the second evening, they were very reticent about taking me through the settings. Basically, we just set it up quickly, because I wanted the heat and the water at a certain time, but the next day I ended up going on Ecodan’s YouTube channel to see how to set the timer and temperatures, so that was a bit of a let-down.

Having said that, a few weeks after, Abacus sent an engineer, one of its own people, and he literally went through the system top to bottom. He even changed some of the wiring; he said, “This can be done better”, and rewired part of it. He went through the whole system and then said, “Do you need to know anything? I’ve got time for you.” He was in no rush to go and took me through some things I did not know. Initially, I think they are busy—contractors are being used and perhaps that is where they fall down—but they redeemed themselves. At first, like Bob, I felt, “I have been left on my own here”, but they came good in the end. That is another reason for choosing a decent installer.

John Taylor: I definitely agree. When I wanted my installer to come, they were really good. The only thing that I have not been able to do yet is control my heat pump remotely. Vaillant are working on this with my installer so that I can control it from my mobile phone or tablet, which is handy. You can put it on so that it warms up before you come home, if you have been on holiday, for example. But, otherwise, my service has been second to none. Did you two gentlemen use local companies?

Anthony Hibbs: Mine is reasonably local, although they are further than I wanted. Like you said, I tried to find one that would be only 10 minutes away if I had a problem and would be likely to come back to me. The contractors I chose were on the Wirral and, in the traffic, it took them 90 minutes each way, so they were not as local as I would have liked. But I went for experience: I narrowed it down to companies that had been doing it for several years and had a good track record, rather than ones you could not see anything about.

Dr Robert Whitmarsh: Mine are pretty local—10 or 12 miles away—so on the motorway it probably takes them 20 minutes to get here.

Q9 Baroness Boycott: You have answered some of my questions as we have been going along. How do you think the scheme could be improved? Are there any single big differences that you would like to make to how people take it up? The whole way through the system, what could the Government do—or what more could they do—given that we have a fantastic take-up planned? You are in the early cohort, and you obviously know a lot about this, which puts you way ahead of the game. So, if you were coming at this not knowing anything, what would you want to see the Government do?

John Taylor: The main problem for people will be the finances. Houses in Matlock have reached an average of £300,000, to get anything like reasonable. A lot of new properties are being built, and they ought to automatically have ground or air source heat pumps built in—

Baroness Boycott: We all agree with you about that.

John Taylor: So I suggest perhaps having more publicity about air source heat pumps in the local press or on TV, encouraging people. The cost of gas and electricity is becoming very expensive, so the pay-back time is becoming shorter. Solar panels used to pay back in 14 or 15 years, but now I think it is five or six and, if you have an electric car, it is even quicker. So younger people ought to be encouraged and perhaps helped financially a little more. The country is short of money as it is, but we need to encourage alternative forms of heating that will not wreck the climate.

Baroness Boycott: When you say extra money, where would you put it? Would you increase the basic grant, or put it into other areas?

John Taylor: I think perhaps increase the basic grant if possible. As I say, I spent an extra £8,500 on top of the heat pump price, because I have the money available—if I cannot do it at 71, I never will. But, if you are in your 30s and 40s and you have a young family, are going to university, et cetera, you cannot just find that £8,000, £9,000 or £10,000 extra. I do not think that my system costed a fortune, even though I am in an older property. It would probably cost the same in a modern house, because it has not been that difficult.

Having it installed was less disruptive than I thought it would be. I mentioned that I thought, “Oh, this is daunting. I’ve got to have these pipes and do this and that”, but I have not had to change any pipework in the house. I have 15 millimetre pipes, which have worked really adequately. At the end of a run, the radiators seem warmer with the air source heat pump than they did with the gas boiler. The gentleman mentioned microbore, which does not work with air source heat pumps normally. Did you have to change your microbore pipes?

Anthony Hibbs: No. It was only Octopus which said no; all the other installers were fine about it. As you say, my radiators are hotter and more uniformly hot than they were with the gas boiler, so I have had no problem. But it is not all microbore. When you say “microbore”, people think you have a pipe as thick as your little finger throughout your house, but you do not: you basically have runs of much thicker pipes and a manifold that will go to two radiators from that pipe. I do not have massive runs of microbore, but it does not seem to be an issue.

We have all had the same problem—most people have—which is the determination you need to find the right supplier. There has to be a preferred installer list. When you are researching this on the government website or wherever, there has to be a link to a preferred installer. I do not know how you have an accreditation scheme, but one needs to be associated with the BUS grant.

Also, the scheme applies to biomass boilers, but it should not. It should apply exclusively to low-carbon air source heat pumps that do not burn anything.

John Taylor: One of the installers said to me, “Oh, you’ll have to pay me in full and then wait until I get the grant back”. That put me off that guy straightaway: he was asking that I pay the extra £5,000, on the chance that I may not get it back. No—I did the scheme because I was going to get the £5,000 back. The company that I used claimed all of the money. Saying to someone, “You’ll have to pay it, and then I’ll get it back afterwards” is not how the scheme works—for me, anyway.

Dr Robert Whitmarsh: You asked if I would make one change: it would be more money, which is pretty obvious. I referred to the Winchester Area SuperHomes scheme. Quite a lot of people are interested, and perhaps half of them decide to go ahead with the whole-house retrofit plan or survey for £500. But we then found that the number of people going ahead at that point drops off a cliff. I cannot remember exactly, but the amount of people who go ahead after getting the whole-house retrofit plan done might be as low as 10%.

The National Energy Foundation, which I mentioned earlier, is looking into why this is. It is doing a survey at the moment, but I have not seen the results yet. But, in what it has had back, finance is one of the things that may be influencing this lack of take-up. This needs investigating because, to reduce carbon footprints and save energy, it makes an awful lot of sense for people to move to air source heat pumps, particularly for brand new houses. These should all have air source heat pumps, particularly since the Government have decided that, from 2025, no new houses will have gas boilers anyway. So a bit more money would help.

Baroness Boycott: How much more money? Do you think people go into the scheme thinking that the Government will pay for the whole lot?

John Taylor: I suggest putting £10,000 towards it.

Baroness Boycott: So double it?

Anthony Hibbs: Actually, I think it is very generous that the Government have given me £5,000 to upgrade my house. We are lucky—well, we have worked hard and made the right financial choices—to be able to fund the rest. But £5,000 is a lot of money, and I am really grateful for it. I think that, even at that amount, people like us will take it up. As with electric cars, in a few years the installers will become more slick and find better ways of fitting them, like the way they plumb in the tanks now—they will probably come as one unit to cut the cost. This is basically starting the ball rolling. It would be nice if the Government paid for the whole thing, but, in the current situation, £5,000 is very generous.

John Taylor: I am not saying that I need extra; I am suggesting giving it to encourage younger people with young families. My grandson has just got married and has three children, and he could help the environment. That is what this is all about: saving the planet and cutting down carbon. Young people need more financial assistance to get on board. I can manage, but the younger people maybe cannot.

Q10 Baroness Young of Old Scone: One or two other alternatives to the grant have been suggested and I wonder how you feel about them. One is a combination of a grant and a loan that would be paid back through your bills over a period of time—say, 10 years. The other is some sort of discount on your mortgage payment if you undertake the upfront cost because, at the time you are changing houses, you probably have money beginning to switch around in terms of the way you use it; for example, it might be easier to get a capital sum at that stage. Do you think that loans and discounts might be as attractive as an upfront payment?

John Taylor: Rather than grants or loans, which are fine—we should have to pay something back—what about a system, if it can be worked out, for cheaper electricity to run the system? That would be an incentive if you are putting some money in upfront. As we have said, electricity bills potentially are not going to be any cheaper than running a gas boiler, so we are doing it for an unselfish reason. I can charge my car at 7.5p per kilowatt between 12.30 am and 4.30 am so I am encouraged to put my car on and use electricity at non-peak times. The air source heat pump will also use electricity at that cheaper rate because that is what Octopus does, but it would be good to have a system where, if you put an air source heat pump in, cheaper electricity could be provided somewhere or other to run that system for us.

Anthony Hibbs: That is a great idea, John.

John Taylor: I think that would work. I think it would really encourage more people to go down this route in future. It really would be good.

Dr Robert Whitmarsh: I am not a financial person but I think that loans and grants seem like quite a good idea, provided that the loans do not come with a high interest rate, which is what has happened in the past. That killed one government scheme, did it not?

Anthony Hibbs: In Scotland, you can get an interest-free loan to do these things. I do not know how the Scots do it but I noticed it when I was looking at financing initially; this was several years ago, and that is still rolling on. I think it is the Energy Saving Trust, which does all sorts of things in Scotland. Electric car chargers are cheaper up there because you get a double grant and an interest-free loan. Even just an interest-free loan would be a good incentive.

The Chair: Thank you. We will look at some of those—certainly the Scottish example.

The Duke of Wellington: Can I just ask a supplementary question to your previous answer? Are any of you able to tell—I do not know whether it has gone on for long enough—whether a heat pump consumes more electricity than a gas boiler? That is, in not using oil, are you in fact spending a whole lot more on electricity? I would be interested to know that.

Anthony Hibbs: It is hard to say without it being sub-zero. We are all in the early stages of it so it is hard to say. I am pleased so far. Before, we were burning gas. For every unit of gas you consumed, you just burned something like 200% of it. With the heat pump, there is a 3% co-efficient of efficiency, as they call it, where one unit goes in and you get three units of energy. Using electricity has got to be better. If you look most days—I am a bit of a nerd; I look on the ESO app and see what the mix is—at the moment, you get quite a few days where the carbon intensity is below 40%. So you are running your heat pump—especially at night when it is off-peak. I think we are agreed here: we are all about reducing our carbon footprints. I think we are happy enough if the cost is the same as gas but we have much reduced the carbon footprint. That is as much as I can say at the moment; you would have to come back to me again in February and ask me about the definite cost in mid-winter.

Dr Robert Whitmarsh: I looked at some figures yesterday because, as I said earlier, our heat pump has been in commission for only seven weeks. We are now using less energy in kilowatt hours in terms of electricity and gas than we did beforehand. We use a tiny amount of gas for cooking at the moment but we will probably disconnect that in the spring. We are certainly using less energy than we were before.

John Taylor: Because I run an electric car, I am probably paying around £30 a week in total for electricity. Before, I was spending £100 a month running a car when I used diesel or petrol. That is now all integrated into my electricity bill at home. I think that spending £30, even £40, a week on electricity is very good when I am running the car, heating my home, cooking, et cetera. Everything is on electricity. I think that is very reasonable.

Again, I have solar so I am using less electricity from the grid on sunny days. There ought to be a tie-up between electric cars and solar panels because having an electric car and plugging into the grid just burns fossil fuels whereas, when I charge my car when it is sunny, I do not create any more pollution of the environment. There could be a good tie-up there because electric cars are £30,000 or £40,000 these days but solar panels cut down their running very much indeed. That is something to look at in future.

Lord Grantchester: I have a brief follow-up question: you have all been excellent pioneers in installing and going ahead with the heat pumps scheme. How have you got on with your children? Are they going to go ahead, following your example?

Dr Robert Whitmarsh: I have two sons. One is 46; the other is 50. They are certainly interested. I suspect that, given the time and money, they may be convinced to transfer to an air source heat pump too.

Anthony Hibbs: I think so too. When I first got an electric car three years ago, my whole family thought I was a bit crazy, but it has become apparent that it is a good thing. So I would imagine that, when they next change their cars, both of my children will change to an electric car. Once they have experience of the air source heat pump in our house, you can imagine that, whenever they come to change gas boilers or houses or whatever, it will be something that they look into—at least I hope so. I hope that it influences them.

John Taylor: We share solar panels. We have 22 solar panels giving 7.5 kilowatts of energy. My son-in-law and daughter live next door, and we have so much each. On the air source heat pump, I think it is a case of “suck it and see”—that is, seeing how we get on. They currently burn fossil fuels; they have a wood-burning stove and they get the wood for free. If you get something for free, you are not going to rid of it very quickly, but when it becomes illegal to burn wood or coal, I think an air source heat pump would be the natural progression forward for them.

The Chair: Thank you very much to all three of you for your openness and honesty. You have not only been brilliant in telling us about your experiences of the scheme; you have also shared so much about your personal lives, which we on the committee really benefit from. We need to hear how it is actually happening on the ground. We are going to talk to academics, the Government and Ofgem but we wanted to start our inquiry by talking to you, the pioneers who have started to take this forward. We are really grateful for your time today, and we wish you all the best with your air source heat pumps, particularly over the winter. Thank you.

[1] Correction: The transcript for evidence sessions is made public in an uncorrected form, and this is then replaced by a corrected version when witnesses have had the opportunity to make corrections.