REVIEW AND ANALYSIS 23 Model showing internal wall insulation proposals at Trinity College, Cambridge, and (above) one of the finished student rooms: while this intervention is reversible, it would surely have been both more harmonious and efficient to replicate the cornice on the inner face of the IWI, so avoiding a cold bridge. (Photos: John Preston) Cambridge University’s latest exemplar, a former 1930s telephone exchange, before and after its retrofit (Photos: John Preston) objected. The city council granted consent (for a local authority, climate change trumps heritage) and the Secretary of State raised no objections. Now the project is complete, the replacement windows are a very good match for the former appearance, but the internal interventions are a very different matter. The project is being monitored for seven years as a condition of the consent. At almost £3,750 per sq m, the Trinity project was very costly, predated all current guidance (BS 7913, PAS 2035, PAS 2038) and should not be taken as anything other than an exceptional test case. Similarly difficult choices regarding windows are highlighted by the Entopia Building: a 1930s telephone exchange now turned into a ‘world-leading example of an ultrasustainable retrofit’4 for Cambridge University’s Institute for Sustainability Leadership5. This solid brick neoGeorgian building (unlisted, but prominent in the conservation area) had sash windows which were its principal architectural feature. But heritage did not feature among the university’s otherwise exhaustive initial list of considerations. At the planning application stage, the university did consider retaining the windows, but found it was simply not possible to achieve the desired performance. The council granted permission. Underlying all this is the tension between the government’s desire to reduce red tape, and the failure of anything other than regulation to achieve substantial change in industry practices within the timescale needed. So it was worrying to see Duncan McCallum of Historic England quoted in the Times article as saying that ‘Historic England is actively exploring with the government and other organisations ways in which the system of managing change to listing buildings can best address the urgent need to reduce carbon emissions’. This seems a very narrow approach, when whichever changes are introduced need to tackle traditional buildings, not just listed buildings, and to tighten rather than weaken regulation. It is particularly narrow at a time when the government has at last begun to tackle the toxic combination of regulatory and industry failures that led to the Grenfell disaster. Michael Gove’s statement on building safety signalled a welcome but limited change of heart, requiring (or attempting to require) remediation by those responsible for cladding failures, but failing to create more effective regulation for all retrofits. Effective joining up of regulation (including cross-referencing between PAS 2035 and Part L, etc) is urgently needed. Instead the draft of the
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