The summer is over, Parliament is back and the Budget looms. This is when reality starts to bite the most recent Prime Minister and his Chancellor.

John Healey could face a £35bn shortfall according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), whilst defence spending rockets up the agenda.

If Healey fails to cut the exploding welfare budget, he will need to look for savings elsewhere, given that any tax increase will further harm the economy, jobs and growth, and borrowing costs are at a generational high.

To avoid a situation akin to the Titanic and an iceberg (lettuce, perhaps, of the Truss variety) savings will need to be found else. With Miliband shunted out of DESNZ, the current BUS scheme seems like a potential victim in the making.

Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh has already been asked to find £2bn from the energy budget, and with BUS eating up £2.7bn it is a likely contender to be shaved and grant levels or overall funding capacity scaled back.

Another options could be to make other cuts to the overall £15bn Warm Homes Plan, which is due to be devolved to mayors and other strategic authorities in England, of which BUS might or might not be similarly devolved.

Critics argue that cutting BUS would decimate a growing industry, with Nesta saying it could “effectively wipe out the heat pump industry in England and Wales overnight” citing what happened to large parts of the installation industry when the Energy Company Obligation (ECO) scheme was scrapped and as the rooftop solar industry did after the feed-in tariff abruptly ended in 2016.

Likewise, Greg Jackson, CEO of Octopus Energy, pointed to the financials, and said: “Britain's exposure to gas cost the Treasury £80bn in the last energy crisis. The Boiler Upgrade Scheme budget is just 0.5 per cent of that and is key to getting off gas.”

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