5 April 2022

• Green Party co-leaders will promise to deliver locally-led insulation projects to reduce energy needs and keep people’s homes warm amid cost of living crisis
• Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay will visit Central Hill housing estate in Lambeth to speak to residents campaigning for retrofit and refurb of their homes
• Denyer: “Insulation programmes don’t sound very glamorous but what they can deliver is nothing short of incredible. Imagine – a warm, snug home even on the coldest days. Little to no heating bill at all. A neighbourhood that has almost zero emissions. That’s what Greens are pushing for here alongside residents.”
• Ramsay: “Because that’s what Greens are all about – fairness and community – sensible, practical solutions –  and protecting the places we live and the people we care about.” 

The Green Party will promise to help tackle the cost of living crisis at the launch of its local election campaign today [Tuesday 5 April].

Co-leaders Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay will set out how Green Party councillors have been leading projects across the country to insulate peoples’ homes, helping to keep them warm and reduce bills. 

The leaders will visit Central Hill housing estate, in London, which is currently facing demolition under regeneration plans by Lambeth Council [1]. There, they will speak to residents campaigning against the estate’s demolition, who instead want to see a retrofit and refurb project carried out so they can stay in their homes and ensure they are warm and comfortable.

Denyer and Ramsay will promise Green Party councillors elected on May 5 will work to emulate those in Green-led Lewes District Council, who are leading the way by working with six other local authorities to retrofit 40,000 council homes, using the collective financial firepower of their housing maintenance accounts – a combined total of £1 billion. [2]

Elsewhere, Green-led Stroud District Council has also set out plans to invest £180 million to retrofit, insulate and decarbonise its five thousand-strong housing stock to ensure warm, sustainable housing for residents. [3]

At the launch, Denyer will set out how Greens elected across the country are working hard to build fairer, greener communities.

Denyer is expected to say: 

“In the middle of this cost of living crisis, we know what needs to be done and yet the government is falling so chronically short. 

“On top of that, Labour and Conservative-run councils up and down the country are not listening to what residents want. The Labour council here in Lambeth want to knock down this estate. To displace families and friends from their community. 

“As a result they have simply neglected these buildings for a decade. And they are forcing people to live in constant fear of losing their homes, with all the physical and mental trauma that brings. 

“Greens have another plan. Not to discard these homes but to upgrade them.

“Insulation programmes don’t sound very glamorous but what they can deliver is nothing short of incredible. 

“Imagine – a warm, snug home even on the coldest days. Little to no heating bill at all. A neighbourhood that has almost zero emissions. 

“That’s what Greens are pushing for here alongside residents.”

Ramsay is expected to say:

“Because that’s what Greens are all about – fairness and community – sensible, practical solutions –  and protecting the places we live and the people we care about.

“Local Green Councillor Pete Elliott has been working with the people who live in this neighbourhood.

“Living and breathing the Green value of community first – that more power should be in the hands of the people who are impacted by the decisions made. And why is Pete doing that?

“Because he thinks it’s fair that everyone should have a warm home. He thinks it’s fair that no-one should feel terrified of their next energy bill. And he thinks it’s fair and right that we take the steps needed to protect our natural world.”

ENDS

Notes

1 https://www.brixtonbuzz.com/2020/12/greens-back-resident-campaign-to-stop-demolition-on-lambeths-central-hill-estate/

2 https://greenworld.org.uk/article/lewes-model-explained

3 https://greenworld.org.uk/article/warm-words-warm-homes-stroud

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4 April 2022

Caroline Lucas, Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion, has the following response to the launch of the International Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Working Group III: Mitigation of Climate Change report, out today: 

“This report confirms that the devastating future towards which we are hurtling can still be avoided if Governments make the right choices right now. The heart-stopping consequences of yet more failed climate leadership are unimaginable for every single individual and species with whom we share this planet. It’s time to pick a side – the fossil fuel polluters and those who bankroll them, or the future of humanity. We already have the solutions we need, and we know that action is far cheaper than delay. 

Yet our reckless Government, which talks up new North Sea oil & gas drilling, while rumours abound over reviewing the moratorium on fracking, is fiddling while the world burns. It’s failing in its first duty – to keep its citizens safe. If Global Britain is to mean anything, then Ministers must rise to the challenge of the COP Presidency and demonstrate real leadership now. 

Locking us into new oil & gas for decades means we’ll have to rely on expensive, unproven and as yet unscalable carbon dioxide removal technologies. While some extraction for past emissions will be unavoidable, the impact of the giant hosepipe of carbon emissions currently gushing into the atmosphere won’t be stopped by sucking it back out with a paper straw. This ‘burn now, pay later’ approach simply gives fossil fuel companies licence to wilfully continue with business as usual, when this emergency demands the opposite. 

There’s no silver bullet to tackling the climate emergency. But we do have an array of effective, realistic and genuine solutions at our fingertips – from rapidly winding down fossil fuels, to reversing the depletion of our natural world’s carbon sinks, and developing long-lasting energy efficiency for our leaky homes. The only thing we lack is the political will to deliver them.   

The goals of energy security, tackling the cost of living crisis, and cutting climate-wrecking emissions all point in the same direction: an energy system based on renewables and energy efficiency which will deliver a safer and fairer world for all, with bountiful energy supplies, warm homes, clean air, and a thriving natural world. This report shows there’s no time left to delay.” 

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31 March 2022

As energy bills are to surge by more than 50% tomorrow, Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsay said:

“People are already struggling under the rising cost of living and tomorrow will mark another blow to those who are forced to choose between heating and eating. 

“While people are bearing the brunt of spiralling energy costs, oil and gas companies are raking in unprecedented profits. We need an immediate tax on those companies’ dirty profits to raise money to provide immediate financial support.

“The Government has utterly failed to help people in fuel poverty and there is now no Government funding that homeowners can access to help them with insulation. 

“We need an immediate plan to insulate every home in the country that needs it and ramp up renewable energy provision, so that we are no longer reliant on oil and gas.

“That retrofit revolution is the only sustainable way to bring down the cost of living, while also benefitting those on lowest incomes and creating green jobs.”

ENDS

Notes

1

Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsay is available for interview to respond to the price cap hike  – for more information or to arrange an interview contact press@greenparty.org.uk or call 0203 691 9401

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31 March 2022

As the Government ends free covid testing from 1 April, Green Party deputy leader Amelia Womack said:

“The pandemic is not over and ending free testing will both hit the poorest hardest and prolong the impact of covid. The introduction of charges is penalising people for being responsible and will disincetivise people from testing.

“This move will also harm key workers who need to test regularly for their jobs, and will hinder the collection of data of the number of cases. 

“Fundamentally, the introduction of charges is a further attack on the principles of free healthcare in this country. 

“It is shameful that this Government, which has wasted billions on dodgy contracts to ministers’ mates during the pandemic, is now once again making ordinary people bear the brunt of the financial cost of covid.”

ENDS

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28 March 2022

• No evidence that academies and free schools raise standards overall.

• A comprehensive recovery plan would include a focus on the real needs of children and students and an inclusive, creative and collaborative curriculum

The Green Party has responded to the government’s new white paper on education which calls for all schools to join a multi-academy trust by 2030 and to be open for a minimum 32.5 hour school week [1]. Greens are backing teaching unions in challenging the lack of ambition for young people in this document, the focus on academic targets without the extra resources and oppose the academisation of schools.

Green Party Education spokesperson, Vix Lowthion, who is a working secondary school teacher, said:

“The government is using the disruption caused by Covid as a way to push through their damaging educational agenda of tough academic targets and more testing, rooted in a longer school week and Ofsted inspections.  

“This White Paper also resurrects the previously unpopular policy to force the academisation of our schools, when there remains no evidence that academies and free schools raise standards overall. By contrast, there is plenty of evidence that multi academy trusts, in particular, are syphoning public money without the accountability offered by local councils.

“This is not the way to support children and teachers to recover from the disruption caused by the pandemic. A comprehensive recovery plan would include a focus on the rounded needs of children and students and an inclusive, creative and collaborative curriculum. Instead, we will see even more pressure heaped on teachers and students to achieve higher targets in English and Maths, resulting in even more school hours spent away from lessons in music, PE, humanities, technology and the arts. Young people need to be offered a broad and balanced curriculum to learn, show their potential and to succeed.”

Young Greens co-chair Kelsey Trevett said:  

“A focus on maths and English means the government once again fails to recognise the value of creative and humanities-based subjects, creating exam factories for the sole purpose of preparing young people to enter an exploitative profit-driven workplace.”

Young Greens co-chair Jane Baston added: 

“These standards also place an extra burden on teachers, taking them over their annual hours and placing them under even more pressure within a system which only sees academic achievement and grades, not people.”

Notes

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/mar/28/plans-for-englands-schools-include-national-behaviour-survey 

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