A petition to decrease the VAT from 5% to Zero has been raised. Currently, the reduced rate of VAT on “energy saving measure” does not cover all retrofit elements and isn’t straightforward to claim.
The petition states that the removal of VAT would mean there is more of an incentive for all homeowners to carry out retrofit works to the whole house that would reduce their energy consumption due to less energy being lost.
In July 2013, The UK Green Building Council report titled “Retrofit Incentives” explored these issues in section 4.5 title “Reduced Rate of VAT for energy efficiency”. There were some legal obstacles to achieve this in 2012 and the petition calls for the matter to be re-addressed, given the new context of a climate emergency.
For more information, see https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/264073
