Another new department - So who's running the gaff?
I shouldn't have missed this but with all the financial calamity, together with Mandelson's appointment as Business Minister saturating the news, it got drowned in the noise.
Anyway, Gordon Brown has re-installed Margaret Beckett into the Cabinet, anointing her Housing Minister whilst transferring our Caroline Flint to the role of Minister for Europe.
Great!
That's four ministers since EPCs were announced to launch last year now.
Department of Energy and Climate Change
I did hear about this but details are still scant: Ed Milliband has become Secretary of State for a newly-created department: the department for energy and climate change (a new acronym: DECC).
Great!
So who's running the gaff now then?
I'm not exactly sure, but talking to journalists yesterday, he said: "The climate change bill imposes legally binding carbon budgets on the whole of government - the department responsible for managing them needs to be able to deliver them. And the need for an international climate agreement next year has put this high up the government's diplomatic agenda."; which, interpreted broadly, could easily sweep EPC legislation into his care.
Interpreted literally, though, it might not either, unless EPCs are judged as technically delivering carbon reductions in the same way cavity wall insulation is.
I somehow think not, yet at least.
Removing the hip
Whilst it would seem "sensible" for EPCs to find berth in a department for energy and climate change, it would mean wrenching it away from the CLG - much to the chagrin of its civil servants, I'm sure! - which by consequence, would sever its umbilical to HIPs.
Maybe that's the plan.
Which would (should) be great, if it were not for the considerable task of porting it all over to a new department and integrating it.
Great!
Tug o' departments
What a tangled mess this could become: housing is undeniably a central focus of attention for carbon reductions - ergo: housing department - so from whomever's lap the EPC wakes up in the morning, there is bound to be protracted inter-departmental tussles involved going forward, it would seem.
Great!
