24 YEARBOOK 2022 Culture, including heritage, is part of sustainability (from “From Retrofit to Regeneration”, STBA 2021) forthcoming update to Part L of the `Building Regulations in England proposed weakening the special consideration for traditional buildings. The situation isn’t totally bleak. The government’s focus on ‘fabric first’, and reluctance to tackle behaviour have been overtaken by the current energy price shocks. Now we all have to consider behaviour changes. Last July Dr Tia Kansara told the Environmental Audit Committee: ‘The fastest way to retrofit a building, if I may say so, is behaviour change … we have found that between 20 per cent and 35 per cent of energy can be reduced inside a building primarily with use’6. That was before the current crises. At the time of writing, the committee has yet to publish its report. Helpful guidance is freely available, including the IHBC’s own Toolbox Guidance7, and the STBA’s Guidance Wheel, ‘Planning Responsible Retrofit’, and ‘What is Whole House Retrofit?’ point the way. Detailed guidance is available from Historic England and Historic Environment Scotland. HES has taken the lead in a very important development which will hopefully be introduced across the UK: the Retrofit Installer Skills Matrix which requires installers working on traditional buildings in Scotland to have completed the level 3 course in Energy Efficiency Measures for Older and Traditional Buildings. HES is now delivering this course (which needs to be far more available UK-wide). On costs of guidance, a very welcome development is that BS9980:2022 Methodology for Fire Risk Appraisal (issued following Michael Gove’s Building Safety statement on Grenfell) is now freely available to download by people registering on the BSI website. This surely sets a precedent for arguing the case for free availability of all the other government guidance on retrofit. The need for progress is very urgent because 2022 is the year in which the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) has said, in its Independent Assessment of the UK’s Heat and Buildings Strategy8 that ‘policy development needs to be largely finalised and implementation must follow rapidly’. In its highly critical report the CCC states that the pace of improvements to the existing building stock needs to ‘ramp up quickly and continue over the next 10–15 years’, but there are major policy gaps in relation to energy efficiency in nonfuel-poor homes: ‘proposals for owner-occupied homes are weak’. According to the CCC there is a key strategic challenge for government to set out how it will deliver on the EPC C target for the majority of homes, which are owner-occupied. The offer to these households needs to be visible and easy to access. While the government is beginning to tackle the challenges of larger owner-occupied and private-rented commercial buildings, the CCC identify another policy gap in relation to smaller owneroccupied commercial buildings. Both the CCC and government pathways aim to achieve the bulk of energy efficiency upgrades by 2035. Both pathways rely to a large extent on heat pumps and heat networks. IHBC’s own publication ‘Some observations on moving forward after COP26’ and the STBA’s ‘From Retrofit to Regeneration’9 (2021) suggest local area opportunities for IHBC and its members. The UK’s COP26 pledge mentioned local government only twice, although local government is responsible for a third of all UK emissions. It’s worth remembering that the UK’s COP Presidency extends until COP27, and the UK in common with other countries is working on its ‘nationally determined contributions’ pledge for COP27. Councils are already the focus for delivery of retrofit initiatives, and this will only increase as government targets bite. The Local Government Association is now active in the lead up to COP27 in Egypt in November, the LGA’s cross-party Climate Change Task Group. How many IHBC members are involved in Council and other initiatives in their areas? Local engagement is a great opportunity to share understanding, including broadening awareness of historic places and traditional buildings. There is potentially much common ground, particularly in relation to skills challenges. References ¹ Heat and Buildings Strategy bc-url.com/ heatandbuildings 2 Special thanks to Nigel Griffiths of STBA for this analysis 3 Featured as a case study on p.26 of the 2015 Hansford report “Solid Wall Insulation: Unlocking Demand and Driving Up Standards” bc-url.com/sidewalls-standards. For more on this very controversial application, visit bc-url.com/ cambridgeplanning and enter 12/0836/LBC 4 See bc-url.com/cambridgeplanning and enter 19/0964/FUL 5 https://www.cambridgeindependent.co.uk/news/ prince-charles-praised-for-his-climate-work-bythe-universit-9247473/ 6 bc-url.com/formalmeeting-builtenv 7 ‘Retrofitting of Traditional Buildings’ by John Edwards, updated March 2022, and ‘Climate Change and Older Buildings – key sources’, by John Preston 2019. 8 bc-url.com/ukheatandbuildings 9 From Retrofit to Regeneration: A blueprint for post-Covid recovery, STBA, bc-url.com/stbaretrofit John Preston is an artist, historic environment consultant and lecturer, Heritage Chair STBA, Vice Chair IHBC policy committee and member of National Trust working group on minimum energy efficiency standards. Locally, he is involved in Transition Cambridge Energy Group, and with the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Independent Climate Commission and the Cambridgeshire COP.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjgyMjA=