Oxford to Ban Gas Boilers and Hobs in New Homes From 2025
Gas hobs and boilers are to be banned in all new homes in Oxford from 2025 under the council’s radical Net Zero plans. The Telegraph has more.
Oxford City Council has said the new rules for builders, part of a wider scheme for the city to hit net zero by 2040, would help tackle the “existential threat of climate change”.
Appliances that use fossil fuels in heating and cooking are to be forbidden from being installed in new houses and commercial developments with only limited exceptions, under the proposals.
The Labour council wants to bring forward its previous 2036 date for the ban on gas and oil in new builds, going further than what has been set out by the Government.
In September, Rishi Sunak pushed back a number of green targets 10 years to 2035, including the ban on new gas boilers and petrol and diesel cars.
The Home Builders Federation (HBF) has criticised Oxford councillors for diverging from the already “very challenging” national timetable to meet Net Zero by 2050.
A foretaste of what we can expect from Labour after the next election?
Worth reading in full.
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I am pretty sure my colleague in the Social housing sector told me that all new build homes are already banned from using gas boilers or oven or hobs.
This is a plan, but they have run into reality!
At some stage is no-one going to make the point that such bans risk leaving elderly and vulnerable people at severe risk in Winter in the event of a failure of the electricity supply? (I grew up in the 1960s and 70s, during an era when it was regarded as prudent to have alternative sources of energy available for heating and cooking. No-one seems willing to question the security of our electricity supplies despite the mounting evidence that we are heading for serious problems.)
If the electric goes then surely the boiler goes as well. I grew up in a house with a Rayburn that took coke.
True, a gas boiler will not light if it loses its electrical connection, its a built in safety feature
Gone are the days when you could poke a lit piece of twisted up daily mirror through a hole to light the pilot!
And chalk gas mantels! The sound and smell of the seaside caravan was unique! Reminds me of walks along the prom with fish and chips in a newspaper! Reading about the Profumo affair whilst waving away the seagulls! Ooo I could just eat some!
A downtick!!! Why? Ffs
The Tilly lamp gives the same experience independent of the gas main. Though it also adds the sweet odour of paraffin and a slight fire risk if you start pumping before it’s hot enough!
During the power cuts of the 1970s tube trains were powered from generating stations owned by London Underground so they could keep running. Lighting for stairs and underground walkways were not.
they hung Tilly lamps along the pedestrian routes to platforms and thousands of people an hour walked past. No working from home then and besides homes had power cuts too.
when reliance on “renewables” gets too high while districts and entire services will cease. How they will be brought back without huge technical difficulty is not clear to me. TFL has hundreds of servers to run the network. If one does not restart correctly the system cannot be run safely or at all.
😁 arr yes, I’m no avid camper but I know the lamps your talking about, temperamental little buggers weren’t they
I was going to buy one for emergencies when the oil shortages kicked off last year, but owing to a supply-chain shortage they couldn’t manufacture the paraffin containers. Looks like it’ll be back to tallow and reeds come the revolution.
Tallow and reeds ! Love it
Even more complex than that, the boiler now has a pump and computer and these need to work before anything happens. All in the name of energy efficiency of course. I could be sceptical and point out that a non-working boiler is 100% energy efficient, but of course useless scrap metal! However the subtlty of that is completely lost on most people in the “Green” movement.
Nail on the head mate👍All your eggs in one basket has never been a sensible idea!
There was nothing like warming oneself in front of the gas fire as a student in cheap digs during the 1970s, especially during power cuts. And they talk of more power cuts in the future because of the increased demand, some of it driven by EV charging points, and reduced supply because the governments over the past 20 years and more have had zero ability for long term planning and now think we can cover the UK with fields of unrecyclable solar panels and ruin the countryside with arrays of vast unrecyclable wind turbines all to ‘save the planet’ They just deal with the short term and their fixation on elections and power not what they are there to do which is to guarantee our basic services such as electricity, heating and housing. Barstewards!
‘Net’ zero ability for long term planning!
And barstools
“We are going to have to get used to using electricity as and when it is available” ———————–Head of the National Grid (Steve Holliday) about 12 years ago. ——-If pensioners are cold and dying the eco socialists will simply hand them a chunk of more taxpayers money to help them keep a bit warmer and at the same time advise them to put on more jumpers.
So you can sell the house with a gas connection just not the plumbing and appliances
The banning of the sale of such properties is on the way.
There are 21 million gas boilers in the UK. ——–They are taking more than a decade to even change everyones meter so how long will getting rid of 21 million gas boilers take? Imagine the almighty cutter in everyone’s house and huge expense, and all for WHAT? ——–This is utterly PATHETIC. This will never happen before 2050
Gas hobs and boilers
I think they should all be switched off and permanently removed before they can do anymore damage!
The councillors that is!
I remember councillors in their global warming wisdom planting Yukka Trees all along the promenade somewhere, it may have been Torquay. ——The following winter they all died. These are the kind of dummies that we have making decisions that are beyond parody.
I’ll bet my house these North Oxford based globo-fascists continue to enjoy all the trappings of their giant gas powered AGAs and range cookers. Just like they gerrymandered their own ULEZ scam to come nowhere near millionaires row where they live.
Are there any such thing as elections anymore in Oxford? Or are people just cake brained zombies? How TF are these Stalinist butt munchers still in power??
Oh you’ve just given me such a belly laugh with your excellent turn of phrase 🤣🤣!
No doubt someone has the answer, but I do wonder on what legal basis a local council has the right to ban facilities which are legally available across the nation. If LAs can ban certain kinds of cars, and now certain domestic fuels, does that mean they have devolved powers to, say, introduce Sharia Law, forbid the sale of beef, or any other whim they take on?
We usually think that we are citizens with the rights of the English or the British, rather than subjects of Oxford State.
Excellent point.
Ah – a proud citizen of Oxford has downvoted me!
I assume Oxford will refuse to permit a heat producing appliance powered by gas (gas boiler) in a planning application for a new building and reject the application. However once a building has been issued with a certificate of completion with, say, electric resistive heating, the purchaser of said building can install a boiler compliant with Building Regulations. In England and Wales local authorities must be informed within 30 days when a heat producing appliance is installed in a property, so a Building Regulations Compliance Certificate can be issued. I can see Oxford being ‘difficult’ in issuing such a certificate but unless Building Regulations are changed to allow local whims, legally they will have no option. A flueless appliance retrofit such as a gas hob is covered by voluntary notification not by the Building Regulations and a Declaration of Safety Certificate, a little different to a Building Regulations Certificate is issued.
While absence of certificates might affect resale I can’t see how Oxford can actually stop anyone using either.
Presumably the good people of Oxford can use their democratic power to remove this idiots from office?
There’s also direct democracy. Obstruction, non payment, protest, legal action …
So , do the builders of new homes think that the negative publicity surrounding heat pumps will just be ignored ? I do not think so . Therefore , I as a builder will seek to build houses elsewhere and Oxford Council can go hang .
The world can rest easy now in the knowledge that Oxford won’t be using gas cookers (in new homes, so in a tiny percentage of Oxford homes).
The “climate crisis” is solved.
Those who fear CO2 emissions needn’t worry about the dozens of new coal powered plants China (and other countries) are building. Oxford will make it right banning gas cookers.
Clowns.
Pho#kin fascist idiots.
Tony Blairs government in 2008 gave us the climate change act (Miliband). This set us on the path to excruciating energy prices as we used more and more unreliable niche technologies, and charged the public for it all via their bills. But the same Tony Blair has recently said that nothing the UK does regarding NET ZERO will have the slightest effect on global climate, mainly because we only emit 1% of human emissions of CO2. If doing something will have no effect then why do it? ———–The only reason for doing it is because it isn’t for the reasons you claim. How many people on the council in Oxford could explain to a five year old anything about climate and energy? They are simply group think brainwashed dreamers that are prepared to try and get a little gold star from government and the UN for their pretend to save the planet nonsense and are going to impoverish their own residents to achieve those goals. How many more of these phony climate initiatives are the UK citizens to suffer before we wake up to the real reasons for it all and it has NOTHING to do with climate as even… Read more »
I think we are very close to the point where the “project” will collapse. Certainly a cold winter, a determined low pressure system and zero wind, and a single gas plant failure will ensure power cuts, presumably rotated around with smart meters. All the cold citizens will begin to ask “how did we arrive here, usually quoting the winter of discontent”. Suddenly they will realise that the discontent is not of coal miners, but of bureaucrats who are actually even more stupid than Arthur Scargill. Whilst I consider this an ideal situation, the MSM will probably claim it is due to Covid, or something equally ridiculous, and the population will believe the propaganda from the “nudge” unit.
Last (mild) winter we were dependent on the 2 Drax coal-fired generators to keep the lights on. These are now permanently closed down so it’s not if but when we have rolling blackouts. I remember the 70’s well but we weren’t quite as dependent on electricity then. People will scream loudly when they can’t use their WiFi and mobiles and computers – no working from home possible, no TV, no central heating, no heat pumps, no lights, no cooking (unless with gas) etc, etc, etc.