The government needs to create a national retrofit programme for the long term, with enough clear guidance, financial support and consumer protection to give householders the confidence to adopt it on a huge scale, the prime minister has been told.

A coalition representing industry and consumers has written an open letter to Boris Johnson arguing that short-lived and flawed schemes like the Green Homes Grant were ill-thought-through and have caused reputational damage to a crucial endeavour.

"Retrofitting 29 million homes as part of the net zero transition is a once-in-a-generation undertaking," says the letter. "Public trust and confidence will be crucial. Both could be easily lost if people can’t work out how to make the changes that are right for their homes, if they’re put off by horror stories of things going wrong or they can’t afford to make changes."

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