Home owners replacing their boilers should also have to install efficiency measures like insulation, according to government climate advisers.

Lord Adair Turner, Chairman of the Committee on Climate Change this week wrote to the Communities and Local Government department to ask for the two home improvements to be linked under new building laws.

In a letter to Andrew Stunell MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary at the DCLG, he said: “We expect around 10 million boiler replacements over the next decade, compared to potential for insulating 6 million lofts and 6.3 million cavity walls. Linking these measures with property extension would a further 1.5 million households to 2020.”

Lord Turner suggested linking the home improvements would also “buttress the Green Deal through creating demand and therefore provide more confidence that a market will develop.”

The Green Deal is a flagship policy from DECC to help the UK meet its carbon budgets. It offers homeowners loans to install efficiency measures. It has come under fire for being ineffective and still too expensive for homeowners.

Linking boiler replacements and property extension with insulation under new building regulations would cut the “currently high degree of risk” associated with the Green Deal, he suggested.