Peers welcome government plans on rooftop solar

Last week’s announcement that the vast majority of new build homes in England will be required to be built with solar panels has been welcomed by P4P Peers -  who have made the case for rooftop solar on new builds over many years. 

With only around 5% of the UK’s 28 million homes fitted with solar panels, alongside car parks and non-domestic building roof space, there is a huge opportunity to deliver on the government’s promise of a ‘rooftop revolution’ and tripling solar power by 2030 using urban space alone.

Responding to the current Government’s proposals Baroness Hayman commented:

“It is genuinely welcome that government has indicated that the Future Homes Standard will include a presumption in favour of new rooftop solar; something that I and others have called for, for a number of years.

What we need now is for the Future Homes Standard to be published and implemented as quickly as possible to reduce the amount of homes that are currently being built which will need to be expensively retrofitted by homeowners in the coming years, and for the many thousands of hectares of commercial building’s roofs to also have solar panels installed”

Notes:

• During the passage of the Levelling Up Act, former P4P Chair, Baroness Hayman, tabled an amendment which would have required all new build homes built after April 2025 to be built with solar panels.

• A similar amendment, also proposed by Baroness Hayman, would have required, in addition to all new homes, all new and existing public and commercial buildings to also be built with, or fitted with, solar panels.