As Mr Justice Mitting today scheduled a High Court hearing next Tuesday of a claim by Friends of the Earth that the Government’s slashing of feed-in tariffs was unlawful, David Cameron’s boast that his would be the greenest government ever has turned to dust, says Reading Labour Party.
Schools and community groups are paying the price for the government's abrupt and untimely decision to slash the Feed-in-Tariff (FIT) by over a half, and their bringing forward the cut-off date of the higher tariff from March 31 2012 to the Monday just past has led to a chaotic log jam in a developing industry.
Paul Gittings, Reading's Lead Councillor for the Environment and Climate Change, says Reading Council's scheme to spend up to £5 million on fitting solar panels on it's own buildings and schools has been badly undermined, and sadly not one panel had been installed by the December 12 cut-off date despite the best efforts of council officers to work with suppliers to bring forward projects.
"This is a shameful situation and entirely of this coalition government's making," he adds, "and by moving the goalposts with barely over a month's notice, it was clear the government wanted to scupper ambitious schemes such as ours. And it’s dealt a real blow to a skilled industry with the potential to employ many thousands of people."
Reading is not the only local authority affected by the arbitrary cuts to solar panel subsidies and the Tory-controlled Local Government Association also called on the Coalition to reverse its policy. Cllr David Parsons, Tory Leader of Leicestershire County Council and Chairman of the LGA's Environment Board: "Local councils and local people are paying the price for this government department's mistakes.
“Broken promises of funding from DECC have left local authorities unable to afford to meet the promises they made to tenants who will be left hundreds of pounds worse off as a result. This is going to have a major impact on families who could have benefitted from cheaper energy. We have also seen that it is likely to lead to the loss of thousands of jobs as energy firms find contracts falling by the wayside.
"Councils were spearheading the rollout of tens of thousands of solar panels on public buildings and the homes of those who could not afford to do it themselves.
"By moving the goalposts at the last minute, Government has risked undermining confidence in its green agenda.”
Cllr Rachel Eden, Reading's Lead Councillor for Housing and Neighbourhoods, said the government's proposals to reduce the FIT subsidy by a further 20 per cent for aggregated schemes was a serious blow to local authorities who were planning to use the scheme to tackle fuel poverty.
"We have ambitious plans to fit solar panels on a large proportion of our social housing stock, but our task has been made much more difficult, particularly against a background of unfair government spending cuts to local authorities such as Reading."
Cllr. Gittings adds: “But it is not just on FITs that the government is showing it has lost any pretence of being green. Chancellor George Osborne in his autumn statement proposed to change planning policy so as to weaken the safeguards that protect valuable wildlife sites from development, announced a major expansion of road networks while putting on hold plans for the High Speed Rail link to the north of England, and supported plans for an expansion of airport capacity in the south-east of England.
"We have already seen a government that was prepared to sell off large swathes of our forests to the private sector, but were forced to scrap the idea. Now they want to by-pass local concerns about the environment and biodiversity with the presumption in favour of development under their new planning regime.
"They tried to talk the talk on the environment before the election, but the Treasury won’t fund the walk, which is a " an incredibly short-sighted approach which belies what Chris Huhne signed up to at Durban last week and is bad for local communities in Reading and across he country.”
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