The government has spent £16m on marketing and administering its flagship Green Deal retrofit scheme since April 2011 - around £450,000 for each signed Green Deal plan.

In response to a Freedom of Information request, the Department of Energy and Climate Change said that from the end of April 2011 through to July 2013 it had spent £12.68m administering the Green Deal scheme and a further £3.74m on marketing campaigns - a total of £16.42m, which equates to £456,111 spent for each of the 36 Green Deal plans signed at the end of June.

DECC said its administration budget for this financial year for the Green Deal was £5.22m.

It said no decisions had been made on future marketing budgets for the Green Deal. “The marketing budget for future years have not yet been finalised and are subject to agreement following DECC business planning processes,” the department said.

The latest official Green Deal figures showed that up to the end of June 2013, there have been 44,479 assessments of properties under taken since the scheme launched in January, up from 30,962 at the end of May, with 36 finance plans now signed by households.