B&Q owner and Lloyds urge Hunt to hand out ‘rebate to renovate’
Britain’s biggest high street bank and the owner of DIY retailer B&Q are among a group of companies urging Jeremy Hunt to support the energy transition by overhauling the stamp duty regime for housebuyers.
Sky News has learnt that Lloyds Banking Group, Kingfisher and Santander and E.ON UK, the domestic energy supplier, have signed up to the Better Homes Alliance (BHA), a new group calling for incentives to drive greater energy efficiency.
In a letter to the chancellor this week, the BHA said its members’ “shared objective is to empower households across the UK to improve the energy efficiency of their homes”.
It called on Mr Hunt to consider introducing a ‘Rebate to Renovate’, which it described as “a stamp duty rebate applied to homes that improve their EPC rating through renovation within two years of a sale”.
“We believe that a carrot, rather than a stick, approach is the only way to encourage homeowners to make the kind of improvements that will start addressing the fact that we have some of the least efficient and carbon intensive homes in Europe,” the BHA letter said.
The newly formed group cited research showing that more than £10bn could be saved by homeowners if their properties were upgraded to make them more energy-efficient.
Lloyds is Britain’s biggest mortgage lender
Britain’s residential sector accounts for 17% of all carbon emissions in the UK, according to government figures, the letter added.
“This [£10bn figure] is equivalent to an annual saving of £390 for the average household.
“Improving our stock can also add a substantial ‘price premium’ to homes, with Rightmove research showing an improved EPC rating of F to C can add as much as £56,000 to the value of a home above local price growth.
“To address rising costs and energy security concerns impacting households across the UK, and our wider commitments to net zero, it is imperative for households to be incentivised to make improvements to their homes,” said the letter, a copy of which has been seen by Sky News.
The BHA said it would conduct analysis to show why the ‘Rebate to Renovate’ would be more effective than previous energy efficiency proposals.
One Whitehall insider said that officials at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero had already held preliminary talks with Treasury counterparts about such a policy.
The BHA’s other inaugural members are Santander UK, Knauf, an insulation provider and the Energy Efficiency Infrastructure Group.
The group’s secretariat function is being provided by WPI Strategy, a public affairs firm.
The new version of the ChatGPT AI chatbot has been unveiled and offers near-instant results across text, vision and audio, according to its maker.
OpenAI said it was much better at understanding visuals and sounds than previous versions.
It offers the prospect of real-time ‘conversations’ with the chatbot, including the ability to interrupt its answers.
The firm says it “accepts as input any combination of text, audio, and image and generates any combination of text, audio, and image outputs”.
GPT-4o is to be rolled out over the next few weeks amid a battle by tech firms to develop ever-more advanced artificial intelligence tools.
Monday’s announcement showed tasks such as real-time language translation; using its vision capability to solve a maths question on a piece of paper, and to guide a blind person around London.
GPT-4o can respond to audio in as little as 232 milliseconds, with an average of 320 milliseconds, which the company says is similar to human response time.
To try to ease concerns over bias, fairness and misinformation, the Microsoft-backed company says the new version has undergone extensive testing by 70 external experts.
It comes after Google earlier this year had a major PR blunder over images generated by its Gemini AI system.
GPT-4o model will be free, but premium ‘Plus’ users get a greater capacity limit for messages.
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Previous versions of the chatbot have caused unease in schools and universities due to some students using it to cheat by producing convincing essays.
When it launched two years ago, ChatGPT was said to be the fastest-ever app to reach 100 million active monthly users.
The announcement also stole a march on Google, which is expected to tomorrow show off its own new AI features at its annual developers’ conference.
Nadhim Zahawi, the former chancellor, is to be named as chairman of one of Britain’s biggest online retailers, days after confirming that he would step down from parliament at the next general election.
Sky News has learnt that Mr Zahawi is to be appointed non-executive chair of Very Group, the largest remaining part of the Barclay family’s business empire.
Sources said the appointment, which will see him replacing interim chair Aidan Barclay, would be announced on Monday.
His arrival at Very Group will come during a period of turbulence for the Barclay family, who own The Daily Telegraph but are unable to exert influence over it under a government order while its future ownership remains uncertain, subject to a forthcoming auction.
Mr Zahawi’s appointment at Very Group, first revealed by Sky News in March, is likely to prompt a search for fresh equity investment in the near term, as well as a broader review of its capital structure.
The company, which owns the Very and Littlewoods brands, is weighed down by debt, but has nearly 4.5 million customers and significant expansion targets.
Based in Liverpool, it sells electrical goods, homewares and fashion, backed by a large consumer finance arm.
It is said to have performed resiliently despite uncertainty over its ownership.
The company recently said it had secured £125m of new debt funding from Carlyle Global Credit and IMI, which the company has said is designed to support future growth.
Mr Zahawi, the MP for Stratford-on-Avon since 2010, had a brief stint as chancellor of the exchequer, while he also held ministerial posts at the Department of Health and Social Care – where he oversaw the vaccine rollout during the COVID pandemic – the Department for Business and as chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
He was made Conservative Party chairman by Rishi Sunak but was dismissed for failing to disclose he was being investigated by HMRC and the National Crime Agency over a multi-million pound tax dispute related to the sale of shares in his polling firm YouGov while he was chancellor.
He said he had made a “careless and not deliberate” error after initially saying he had no knowledge of the investigation and had “paid all taxes”.
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February 2023 – Zahawi: Starmer grills Sunak
Mr Zahawi’s announcement last week that he would not stand again at the next election meant he joined the likes of Theresa May, the ex-prime minister, and former Conservative Party chairman Sir Brandon Lewis in deciding to leave parliament.
Prior to his political career, he was the founder of YouGov, while he is now a patron of the Adam Smith Institute, the economic thinktank.
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Mr Zahawi has been playing a role as an intermediary between the Barclay family and the Abu Dhabi-based investor IMI Investments since its interest in participating in a bid for The Daily Telegraph emerged last summer.
He had been tipped to chair the newspaper group if RedBird IMI, a vehicle fronted by former CNN president Jeff Zucker, had been successful in buying it.
However, a fierce backlash from Conservative parliamentarians prompted Downing Street to intervene and amend legislation to prohibit ownership of British newspaper titles by investors connected to a foreign state.
RedBird IMI is now finalising preparations to conduct a further auction of the Telegraph newspapers and The Spectator magazine.
The Barclays, who used to own London’s Ritz hotel, have already lost control of several of their corporate assets.
In February, Yodel Group, their parcel delivery business, narrowly averted insolvency when it was sold to a consortium backed by executives at Shift, a rival.
The parent company of ArrowXL, another delivery firm they own, had been forced into administration by HSBC, its principal lender.
Half of the £1.2bn loan that the Barclays took from RedBird IMI and IMI was secured against their media assets, with the bulk of the remainder said to have been secured against other assets including Very Group.
At various points in the last decade, the Telegraph proprietors have explored a sale of the online shopping business, having valued it at over £3bn.
Very Group and Mr Zahawi both declined to comment.
The major backer of Pinewood Studios is among the suitors vying to buy Village Hotels, one of Britain’s biggest mid-market hotel chains.
Sky News understands Aermont, which specialises in real estate-backed investments, submitted an offer last week for Village Hotels, which is owned by KSL Capital Partners.
City sources said KSL was seeking offers worth in the region of £850m or more.
A number of other parties are also understood to have tabled bids ahead of a deadline last week.
Blackstone, the giant private equity firm, is considering making an offer but has yet to do so, according to insiders.
The auction is being handled by bankers at Morgan Stanley.
It comes months after attempts to sell Center Parcs UK were called off, while a mooted sale of Travelodge has so far failed to result in a deal.
Village Hotels comprises a portfolio of more than 30 properties from Aberdeen to Bournemouth, with rooms available at budget prices.
Founded in 1995 as Village Urban Resorts, the hotels feature pub-style restaurants and gyms.
KSL was reported to have paid £485m for the business when it bought it in 2014 from De Vere Group.
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The Denver, Colorado-based buyout firm has also owned other UK hotel chains including Hotel du Vin and Malmaison.
Aermont and Blackstone declined to comment.
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