The treasury announced that they were removing VAT on energy efficiency measures two months ago, the Club were quick to celebrate. However, the final details of the new scheme fall far short of our hopes and leave owners very much out in the cold.

The new scheme does reduce the VAT rate payable on energy saving measures, and even extends it to cover labour and materials in almost all circumstances. However, it also excludes secondary glazing from the scheme entirely. While non-listed buildings might not care about this, listed buildings have very few options to improve the energy efficiency of their windows and cannot normally use more modern approaches like double glazing.

Secondary glazing is a cost effective approach to improving listed buildings that also keeps the existing historic windows in place. It is exactly the kind of improvement that the government should be supporting for listed buildings, but they have declined to do so.