Work limit put on insulation firms

Insulation installers are having caps placed on the number of subsidised homes they can fit out. Photo / Supplied

Government officials have capped the number of houses businesses can fit out under the new state-funded home heating and insulation scheme.

The Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority limit has outraged at least one business which employed more staff to cope with the work.

Firms who found the Government's tap suddenly turned on in midwinter are now finding limits being imposed on how many houses they can work on.

Under the Warm Up New Zealand Scheme, the Government is aiming to insulate or heat 27,500 homes in the year to July 2010.

A spokeswoman for EECA said this week the Government's energy campaign was being fine tuned and companies were being offered new deals. Contracts with a group of selected approved providers - the only ones consumers are allowed to use to get the state subsidy - were being renegotiated.

Interim contracts were signed in July but, from October 1, new contracts will be in force. Some had already been finalised but she could not say how many houses firms were limited to.

"There's been an allocation on the numbers of houses to ensure national spread. We have a finite amount of funding spread over four years," she said, referring to constraints on the scheme, which has proved far more popular than expected.

Thousands of homeowners are waiting for an assessment and insulation or heating fitouts, stretching specialist businesses.

The scheme sees about $1000 of an average $3000 insulation or heating bill paid by the Government.

While a limit has been placed on the number of houses businesses can fit out, the number of approved providers EECA is negotiating contracts with has risen from 58 to 60.

Richard Watson of Premier Insultation said his business could do 500 a month but had been limited to just 1000 houses over nine months. The numbers had been provided to Premier verbally but not yet in a contract, he said.

"As providers, we proved we could handle the numbers. Now they've brought in new providers, that pushes our volumes down.

"The scheme is inherently good but decision-making has not been good," he said, adding that Premier had hired more staff to handle the work. "Now, the volumes they've given us are insufficient to match our resources."

Adam Wright, also of Premier, complained about the new deal.

"EECA is changing the rules. They are limiting our company. That means my employer is going to struggle to profit, let alone keep on the installers, the phone assist people such as myself and the quoting officers who were all trained for this work.

"So the good work that this programme has done is about to be reversed.

"I am desperately trying to get someone in the media to listen. To me this is big news. Faceless board members are taking away the consumer's right to choose and they are threatening to make me and many others unemployed.

"I looked for work for nine months prior to this job. I was originally a refugee of the finance industry. Am I now to be a refugee of the EECA programme too?"

* A list of approved providers is at www.energywise.govt.nz.