4 CONTEXT 175 : MARCH 2023 OPINION: CLIMATE CHANGE UPDATE John Preston writes: The AllParty Parliamentary Group’s Report The Value of Heritage (circulated with Context 174, December 2022) has a welcome discussion of environmental value, including embodied carbon, and recommends a presumption against demolition. The report could have gone further in promoting repairs as the essential precursor to any retrofit, and its recommendation of energy efficiency amnesty for the most significant historic buildings seems seriously misconceived. Surely all buildings should contribute to energy efficiency as far as their fabric and character allow, as per Part L? Worryingly, the report does not mention the step-change in industry training that is needed. In response to my question at the launch, the panel was complacent, saying it was a generational issue. But this can not wait a generation, given the scale and urgency of the challenges. Jeremy Hunt’s autumn statement allocated an additional £2 billion a year for energy efficiency improvements to buildings for three years from 2025. A further £1 billion has been allocated for a scheme for the least-efficient homes over three years from this spring (2023). There will be a new focus on owner-occupied homes, and a new Energy Efficiency Taskforce (members yet to be announced). The Construction Leadership Council said that around 450,000 skilled tradespeople would be needed over 20 years, at a time when the industry is already facing a major skills shortage. But the government’s new target means that most of this work will have to be done over seven years. Where will they get the skilled people? In December the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) announced the winners of its £9.2 million Home Decarbonisation Skills Training Competition. Most of the 18 training packages being funded relate to heat pumps, and just one of the bodies provides the Level 3 Energy Efficiency for Older and Traditional Buildings, while up to £1 million has been awarded to the Retrofit Academy for its courses. Quick and easy After a government about-turn, there is now an £18 million campaign to provide public advice, first evident in the Help for Households energy savings advice (https://helpforhouseholds. campaign.gov.uk/energy-savingadvice), which includes ‘quick and easy no-cost actions’, ‘low-cost home improvements’ and ‘spendto-save home improvements’. Help for Households does not cover wall insulation, but it has links to the Energy Saving Trust (EST). The EST’s advice has significant inadequacies, for example: ‘If you live in Conversation (sic) Area, or World Heritage Area (sic) there are likely to be restrictions on modifications to the external appearance of the property.’ The EST says that ‘you should check with your installer that the installation is covered by an appropriate 25-year guarantee’, but most products and works suitable for traditional buildings do not have 25-year guarantees (the Sustainable Traditional Buildings Alliance [STBA] is working with industry bodies to tackle this issue). The continuing common theme throughout all this (passim ad nauseam, as Private Eye would say) is government and industry failures to recognise that traditional buildings are a significant part of the building stock which have to be treated differently. A new National Retrofit Hub is under discussion, but will it have a clear voice for traditional buildings? Traditional buildings are not even mentioned in the just-published (at the time of writing) Mission Zero, the Skidmore Report (the government’s independent review of net zero, which calls for relaxing of planning controls on solar power). Nor are they mentioned in the Environmental Audit Committee’s report Accelerating the transition from fossil fuels and securing energy supplies. This notes that while over 13 million (over 59 per cent) of homes in England are below EPC C, fewer than 100,000 energy-efficiency upgrades were installed in 2021, compared with 2.3 million in 2012. The committee is calling for at least 1 million energy-efficiency installations a year by 2025. By the time you read this, the report of the DCMS/BEIS/ DLUHC roundtables should be out. The current consultation on the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill: reforms to national planning policy includes a proposed new paragraph 161 of the National Planning Policy Framework, and asks for evidence on ways of deploying a broad carbon assessment, but not on how to deal with the carbon costs of retrofit, or on how to balance potential savings in operational carbon against the relatively short life of retrofit measures and their impacts on the low embodied carbon of existing buildings. Nor does the consultation recognise the carbon arguments for retention over demolition. A new consultation on energy performance certificates (EPCs) is also due. Hopefully the heritage and traditional buildings sector, individually and collectively, will be able to engage with these, and more widely, much more effectively than previously, so as to influence the accelerating energy-efficiency juggernaut. More immediately, the STBA is working on a proposal for draft guidance to help planners and conservation officers on the front line of these challenges. John Preston, heritage chair, Sustainable Traditional Buildings Alliance
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