46 C O N T E X T 1 2 8 : M A R C H 2 0 1 3 The Green Deal and the Energy Company Obligation John Preston writes: In Context 124 (May 2012) I suggested that the Green Deal was a juggernaut. Instead it trickled into effect on 28 January 2013, months late and with a whimper, not a bang. While property owners had been encouraged last October to get Green Deal assessments, only five had been completed before mid-January. The practicalities and economics of the Green Deal received a very bad press (such as by Philip Inman and Patrick Collinson in Guardian Money, 26 January). It is unclear whether, by the time you read this, the government will have managed to revive the Green Deal. However, the issues and challenges have not gone away: far from it. There was brief hope, when it became clear that solid wall insulation could not meet the Green Deal’s ‘golden rule’ payback criteria, that the pressure was off traditionally constructed buildings. Instead, the pressure is back with a vengeance. The government is encouraging councils and the social housing sector to upgrade their properties by making use of the £1.3 billion which the Big Six energy companies are, collectively, required to provide each year under the Energy Company Obligation (ECO). The energy companies have to spend this money. Social housing offers them bulk quick wins, but they are also targeting private homes. This ECO funding was originally targeted at areas of fuel poverty and social housing. Now all ‘hard-to-treat’ private sector homes (including traditional solid-wall housing) are eligible. The Department of Energy and Climate Change is directing more than £700 million of the £1.3 billion ECO money towards solid-wall insulation, including window replacement, which is eligible as part of a package with either external or internal wall insulation. These measures, the millions of pounds and the number of target properties (such as Liverpool’s 86,000 solidwall dwellings, of which 50,000 have nine-inch brick walls) make the ECO a much greater threat to traditional buildings than the Green Deal. To help the Green Deal, the CLG amended its technical guidance on permitted development for householders in January 2013 to say that ‘solid wall insulation constitutes an improvement rather than an enlargement or extension to the dwellinghouse and is not caught by the provisions of d(i) and d(ii)’. This gives carte blanche in planning terms for external insulation on all dwellings (including designated buildings of local interest) outside ‘Article 5 land’: national parks, the Broads, areas of outstanding natural beauty and world heritage sites. The building regulations protection for traditional breathable buildings under para 3.8 of Part L1B continues, but how many installers will be aware of it, and how (if at all) will it be enforced? The ECO has compounded the concerns I raised last May: risks to the traditional building stock, inadequate training of people specifying and doing the work, and potential mis-selling. The ECO money comes collectively from us, through our fuel bills; the need to fund the ECO is one of the reasons why fuel prices are going up.We now have the added risk of paying doubly for inappropriate works: first for the ECO money (coming from us through our fuel bills), then as property owners or taxpayers, in picking up the tab for consequent remedial works. On the plus side, knowledge of traditional building performance is improving. SPAB’s reports are at www. spab.org.uk/advice/energy-efficiency/. English Heritage and Historic Scotland continue their research. Publication of English Heritage’s work on brick buildings is awaited. The DECCfunded Responsible Retrofit of Traditional Buildings, by the Sustainable Traditional Buildings Alliance (STBA), provides an invaluable digest of current knowledge and gaps. Further STBA research highlights problems with current standards for moisture, thermal conductivity and internal-wall insulation. The next STBA project is a guidance tool covering energy, technical and heritage benefits and risks. The STBA combines conservation, sustainability and construction interests; the IHBC is one of the conservation bodies on the steering group. Responsible Retrofit of Traditional Buildings was both very timely and very worrying. It showed just how poor knowledge of traditional buildings has been, and how serious the issues are. The report, produced at great speed, did not pretend to be comprehensive; it barely covers issues relating to the aesthetics of the historic environment. The STBA’s efforts to date have focused on building performance and the risks of future problems arising from inappropriate works to individual buildings, rather than history or aesthetics. The IHBC raised the issues in its response (available at www.ihbc.org. uk) to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Excellence in the Built Environment’s Inquiry into Sustainable Construction and the Green Deal.We stressed the need for a built environment sustainability hierarchy; life-cycle analysis of performance; appropriate materials and techniques; refocusing construction industry training towards maintenance and repair; and perhaps most important, good guidance on traditional buildings. Concerns regarding ECO and the Green Deal are now shared more widely, for example in DavidWhite’s presentation to the 2012 AECB conference and his follow-up (both available at www.aecb.net). These concerns will increase as and when the quality and effectiveness of ECO- and Green Deal-funded works are assessed. Such assessments may only reinforce knowledge that is already out there, such as Joanne Hopper’s 2011 doctoral research project ‘Assessing the execution of retrofitted external wall insulation for pre-1919 dwellings in Swansea (UK) (available at www.salford.ac.uk). This whole government initiative, both the Green Deal and the ECO, has progressed without learning lessons either from past experience or current research.While the DECC has an Older PropertiesWorking Group, on which I represent IHBC, its messages are not getting through. A prudent watchword would be more haste, less speed. There is no sign yet of any change of course by the DECC in relation to traditional buildings in general. More positively, this continues to be a fantastic opportunity to promote traditional building skills and building repairs. The IHBC continues to work closely with other sector bodies to press for change. Good ammunition is still needed to make the arguments: please send case studies (photographs are particularly useful) to me at jpreston@ phonecoop.coop. John Preston, IHBC vice chair, policy committee
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