How to get a Green Deal Assessment

One of the processes that will have to take place before we all get our hands on new insulation and ground source heat pumps will be a Green Deal Assessment on each and every property that wants to take part in the Green Deal.

The assessment is like an EPC if your famliar with that process, the added difference is that that the assessment will include an Occupancy Assessment and Bill reconciliation.

The Occupancy Assessment looks at how the building is used and how many people live in the property. If you have ten kids who have their own baths each night this will effect the Golden Rule and effect how quickly you will see a return on investment. If you are a single pensioner who has one shower a week and keeps the termostat low then this will be a completely different set of figures. This is one of the good things that has come out of the debacle of the solar subsidies, that each property will be properly assessed and HOW each building is used will be taken into account.

Bill reconciliation is where the assessor will look at your current bills to find out the actual cost of heating your home or business and weather what you tell them actually tallies with your bills. Its human nature to tell people what you think they want to hear: “Yes we have the theromstat set at 17 degrees in the winter and just put on jumpers when its very cold” when in reality if your like me you whack that bad boy up to 29 degrees until you can walk around in shorts and then tun it down.

Assessors are going to be under the threat of huge penalties if they get their figures wrong so they will want to know as muh detail as possible. Things you can do now:

• Get all your bills in order, so you know what your paying and have been for the last year
• Switch supplier. Most people can make quite hefty savings simply by switching, its just a dull process, like cleaning the oven, its the bottom of most To Do lists.
• Insulate your loft if you have one, make sure you have 30 cm of good insulation in any lofts.

For the sake of research I called a number of assessors from our directory to see what kind of answers I’d get, here are my results:

• Some companies are booking in assessments for the New Year. Notably British Gas have filled their diary for January and are taking bookings for February.
• The software to log an Assessment on the national database isn’t ready, so many companies are saying, sit tight, give me your details and we will be in touch when everything is ready.

Even though we thought the Green Deal was going to launch in October 2012, we were mistaken. This is what Greg Barker said on his live web chat on Twitter:

Greg Barker: 

Lets be clear. The Green Deal wasn’t “launched” six weeks ago.The frame work went live on October 1st to allow companies to begin getting registered as Green Deal Assessors, the real “launch” as such will be 28 January when the first consumer finance plans can go live.

That’s cleared that up. The Green Deal will launch by the 28^th of January 2013 and all the assessments can then be carried out then.

 

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