Hot take
Think tank: Resolution Foundation
Author(s): Zachary Leather; Jonathan Marshall
January 22, 2026
This report from UK think tank the Resolution Foundation examines the Government’s Warm Homes Plan.
January 2026 saw the eventual release of the Warm Homes Plan, delivering on a flagship election pledge that the Government expects will make up to five million homes cheaper to keep warm.
With a healthy £15 billion budget, the Plan contains much to applaud: low-income households are firmly at its centre, and delivery of energy efficiency programs is set to be simplified and stabilised after years of chopping and changing.
However, the Plan will not benefit all households in need, and a reliance on financial transactions (government-backed loans) risks favouring better-off families. And while regulation is being used to deliver significant change in the private- and socially-rented sectors, Ministers have shied away from stronger action that could accelerate wider progress, such as tougher rules that would enable the cost of key technologies like heat pumps to fall quicker.
