House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

Environmental Audit Committee

 

 

Housing: Building a Sustainable Future

 

 

Wednesday 23 June 2004

COUNCILLOR DAVID SPARKS OBE, MR DAVID WOODS, MR MARTIN BACON

and MR LEE SEARLES

DR DAVID CROWHURST, MR DAVID WARRINER

and MS DEBORAH BROWNHILL

Evidence heard in Public Questions 77 - 186

 

 

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

1.	This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee, and copies have been made available by the Vote Office for the use of Members and others.
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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Environmental Audit Committee

on Wednesday 23 June 2004

Members present

Mr Peter Ainsworth, in the Chair

Mr Colin Challen

Mr David Chaytor

Sue Doughty

Mr Mark Francois

Mr Malcolm Savidge

Mr Simon Thomas

Joan Walley

 

________________

Memorandum submitted by The Local Government Association

 

Examination of Witnesses

 

Witnesses: Councillor David Sparks OBE, Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council, Chair of the LGA Economic Regeneration Executive, Mr David Woods, Director of Housing and Health, London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, Mr Martin Bacon, Managing Director, Ashford's Future Core Delivery Team and Mr Lee Searles, Programme Manager, Planning and Transport, Local Government Association, Local Government Association, examined.

Q77 Chairman: Good afternoon. I hope you do not mind starting a little early but it would be helpful to us to get cracking on this. Thank you also for the memorandum which you submitted. It is quite clear from the memorandum that you are not entirely happy with some of the conclusions of the Barker review. Do you accept the main conclusion that to decrease house price inflation we need to increase supply?

Mr Searles: There is obviously a relationship between house price and supply. However, there needs to be more debate on what the Barker review has hinted at before we leap into policy solutions which we might regret. I think we feel that there are issues around utilising the existing supply which would be a factor in that argument. There is an issue about the effects of recent trends resulting from the relatively recent change in PPG3 which led to an emphasis on brownfield land and the effect that might have had on dampening permissions for new housing. Another relatively recent effect is the buy-to-let phenomenon and investment in property and the whole atmosphere that is created around the view that property is an investment. I think whilst we are not saying that they are definitive reasons in themselves, there are enough other factors that play a part in determining and influencing the price/supply equation.

Q78 Chairman: Are you saying that if you increase supply you do have an impact on prices but that the Barker solution is not the one that you would like to see; there are other ways of doing this.

Mr Searles: Yes. Obviously there is a need to increase supply and there is a relationship between price and supply but it is by no means the only part of the story and it needs to be a much more sophisticated response than that recommended by Barker.

Q79 Chairman: Many of Barker's recommendations seem to jeopardise the role of local planning authorities in controlling and ordering development. How do you respond to those recommendations?

Mr Sparks: As far as that is concerned, this is a major area that we are dissatisfied with in relation to the report which is entirely consistent with our overall position. Essentially what we are concerned about is that we, as local authorities, have had to review how we operate fundamentally over the past ten years or so. We do not wish to repeat the mistakes of the past. We know that thirty years ago, when there was a lot more coordination, a lot more control, a lot more resources, we still managed to create some absolute nightmares and disasters in terms of housing development that we do not wish to repeat. One of our biggest concerns about the current debate as it is currently portrayed is that you could just look at the quantitative aspects of the problem and end up repeating the mistakes of the past with insufficient investment in infrastructure. One final point on that, what we did not have thirty years ago was the concern about sustainability to the extent we now have and we are genuinely bothered about the need for any development to be sustainable, especially in relation to housing.

Q80 Chairman: So you think that Barker's recommendations about the role of planning authorities - or lack of it - threaten the sustainability of the houses that she is recommending should be built?

Mr Sparks: It is an unnecessary high risk factor because our experience is that a good, modern local authority that is totally signed up to sustainability is in an ideal situation to coordinate all the different partners that need to be brought together to coordinate all of the activity so that you do get a sustainable and integrated activity.

Q81 Chairman: Is one of the difficulties from the Government's point of view that local authorities are often seen as being obstructive and difficult and getting in the way and making it very difficult to develop? Is that what really lies behind Barker's thinking about the role of local authorities in the future?

Mr Sparks: It is a difficulty of perception. We would argue that in the majority of cases that this is not necessarily a problem nor need it be a problem because local authorities themselves have a vested interest in the sustainability of their own communities.

Q82 Chairman: Broadly speaking you are very hostile to the, as it were, marketisation of the planning system which is what is essentially proposed.

Mr Sparks: We are hostile to anything like that, yes. We are not going to be in favour of the reduction in local authority powers in relation to planning.

Q83 Chairman: I take it from that that you are equally concerned about the proposal to allocate up to an additional forty per cent of land as buffer zones for future development where building can be triggered by market mechanisms.

Mr Sparks: We are particularly concerned about (a) the statistic of up to forty per cent and (b) the importance of judging each individual situation on its merits. It depends on the circumstances. It depends on land availability in different areas. That is why essentially we argue that local authorities - because of their local focus - are ideally placed as coordinators to achieve a sustainable approach to this problem.

Q84 Chairman: What is the problem with the forty per cent? Is it just too big or too blunt?

Mr Sparks: We are particularly sensitive to any incursion into the green belt, especially given that we have known the experience of white land, green land et cetera, et cetera, and people's perceptions.

Q85 Chairman: Given all this and the difficulties that you have, how are we going to increase the supply of affordable housing which I think everybody agrees needs to be done? What plans do you have for that?

Mr Sparks: I have two of my colleagues here at the sharp end and that is why they are here.

Mr Woods: Can I just say something about an aspect that I think Barker has overlooked? That is about the opportunity to use windfall sites and to densify existing town centres, particularly in the south east of England, and to take in with that the possibility of regenerating some of the sites that Councillor Sparks talked about earlier, some of the 60's and 70's estates that need regenerating in town centres, and housing that needs to be brought up to decent home standards - whether it is private sector or public sector - could be included in these regeneration schemes. I think it is often overlooked that something like fifty per cent of new housing starts in London are on windfall land and infill land. Most of that is not on anybody's capacity study so it is not planned for in the type of review that Barker has done. I think there is a real opportunity being missed here to build out from areas like the Thames Gateway and to build out from town centres where community and physical infrastructure is already there; to maximise land values, increase sustainability and diversity in communities and if we could somehow capture those increased values and reinvest them in new areas like the Thames Gateway that might be a different approach.

Mr Bacon: I am the Managing Director of the Core Delivery Team for Ashford's Future and under the sustainable community's plan we have to provide for 31,000 houses, 28,000 jobs for the next thirty odd years. We see it as trying to make the planning machinery and the money machine work together. We see that as being very important. As we are preparing our master plan - that will be available at the end of this year - we are looking at the financing of this whole development. We have calculated that the cost of providing the infrastructure to sustain that level of growth will be something like £1.15 billion. Then we have looked at the way it might be financed and we have found that half of that money can probably come from what might be called mainstream funding: grants from governments, utilities companies and so on and so forth, those sort of usual funding streams that one finds. The remainder of the balance can probably come from the private sector. In Ashford we currently collect about £12,000 per house through the Section 106 system and we think with a modest increase on that - we are looking at that figure and discussing it with local land owners and house builders - probably £15,000 or £16,000 could provide the bulk of the rest of the money. There will probably be a small gap and we think that might be made up through the Government allowing us to keep perhaps one per cent of stamp duty through the period of the growth plan. All of that can be done within the existing legislation. It is a question of doing the financial calculations at the same time as one does the master planning.

Q86 Chairman: Before you go on, I am unclear about what the £15,000 or £16,000 refers to.

Mr Bacon: Basically when planning permission is granted, if there are barriers in the way to the granting of that permission, then the developer may contribute sums of money to making sure that permission can be granted. For example, the classic thing is roads or sewers and so on, so they make a contribution to that infrastructure through the planning process.

Q87 Chairman: You are talking about an additional £15,000 to £16,000 per house.

Mr Bacon: No. We currently collect around £12,000 and we think that figure might rise to about £15,000 to £16,000 per house.

Q88 Chairman: My original question was about affordable housing; I do not want to talk about putting prices up.

Mr Bacon: I am coming on to that. We do think the roof tax would need to apply to affordable housing to make those calculations work, but we are doing our master plan on the basis of the regional planning guide, that thirty per cent of that housing - the 31,000 - would be affordable.

Q89 Joan Walley: Could you just clarify for me the difference between what you referred to as a roof tax and Section 106.

Mr Bacon: As I said, we collect through Section 106 £12,000 a year. What we are suggesting is that if we collected something in the order of £15,000 to £16,000 we could actually meet the infrastructure bill on top of the mainstream funding plus the stamp duty I referred to. We would regard that as an infrastructure tariff for the plan. What we want to see is an infrastructure tariff charged on the big issues - the big sewers, the big roads, the big schools and so on - and then have a separate Section 106 for site specific issues that are well-defined within the site or adjacent to the site. We think the advantage of that for the development industry is that they would know that the infrastructure was being paid for; it would come through and be locally determined and so on. The point I was going on to makes is that for us the problem is that we do not think it is for the development industry to finance this, it is the timing of the finance. The developer cannot make that contribution - whether it is a local land tax or a roof tax - until they have sold their houses, and yet the infrastructure needs to be provided. What we need is finance up front to be provided to pay for that infrastructure so that what can happen downstream is that the developers can make their contribution towards that infrastructure later on. What we are looking at is seeing whether we could establish an infrastructure company as a public/private partnership with the board in which the infrastructure company puts up perhaps ten per cent of the cost of the infrastructure up front and they role it through. The risk on provision of the infrastructure would be with that company. We feel that can work within the existing legislation provided the Government maintains a whole emphasis on sustainability community plans, on providing infrastructure and quality at the same time; that we do have proper mechanisms to marshal the mainstream funding; we have support for this infrastructure tariff I referred to and perhaps we could have a modest increase from the stamp duty towards those costs. We think then we could make a package to make that work. The whole affordable housing, the whole of the agenda, could be made to work within the existing legislation.

Q90 Joan Walley: Just following that up, what you are suggesting therefore assumes that the mainstream money that would be coming through from the regional development agencies or whoever and through the regeneration zone spending would need to be attuned at this stage in order for that up-front investment that you were talking about for the infrastructure to be there. What indication is there that that is there, that that would be forthcoming?

Mr Bacon: I think the Government wants to try to marshal its mainstream funding to provide the necessary infrastructure at the right time. What we are doing is, as I said, doing our master planning process, calculating the bits of infrastructure we would need, costing them, looking at when they would come over time. Then we would be going to the Government and saying, "This is the profile for this expenditure over thirty years, can we enter a public service agreement between the board and the agencies on the board with yourself to provide that funding at the time required so that we can assure the development industry who are making these contributions that it will be on time?" If we can do that deal, then we feel that would provide the infrastructure at the right time, when the local people want it, the newcomers want it and when the house builders want it.

Q91 Joan Walley: Is that conditional upon getting permission from ODPM for that to happen, in order that you get the things in sync?

Mr Bacon: Obviously they would not have to object to the local development framework that we are proposing and we require them to support - or the Government to support - the infrastructure tariff I referred to.

Q92 Mr Francois: On the point you were making about Section 106 agreements, the slightly alternative approach that you are talking about is interesting because my own experience of Section 106 is that they always tend to be weighted very heavily in favour of the developer. The houses tend to get built first; sometimes you get the infrastructure, sometimes you do not. The developers usually have extremely experienced teams of lawyers who use very artful wording when the agreements are drawn up. They appear to make a commitment and then when you actually get a few years down the line they then argue that market conditions have changed and therefore they cannot always provide exactly what you thought you were going to get. My experience to date is that Section 106 agreements normally work in favour of the developer rather than the community. Also, local government is often at fault because it does not ask for nearly enough. The developer makes a massive profit and the local community gets a relatively small payback for that. Are those factors anything that outline the alternative approach that you seem to be putting forward?

Mr Bacon: Yes, they are. What we are saying is that you must do that calculation up front when you do the master plan so that you can establish the true cost throughout the period of the plan and you can then make that clear to local people and everybody understands; all the land transactions that go on from that recognise that fact right up front. The second point about Section 106 is that reform is needed; I think the LGA and the private sector want a reform. What we are suggesting is to do a two-bit approach: to have an infrastructure tariff and a very specified Section 106. Talking to the land owners and most of the developers in Ashford, they feel that they would like that because it would take out all the hassle in the planning process about which land owner goes first, who contributes what to what score, et cetera, et cetera. It should make it a lot easier for the planning authority to deliver what it needs to deliver and to work with the private sector; we need to work with the private sector to deliver this agenda.

Q93 Chairman: Is there anything in the Barker review that you actually welcome?

Mr Searles: We did welcome the recognition by Barker - certainly in the interim report and it was carried through to the final report - of the sharpness of the impacts that certainly local development creates, the sort of development that happens in every local authority up and down the country and how local authorities are often unable to demonstrate to the local community that they or the developers will meet those impacts. It comes back to the point made about Section 106. The Section 106 negotiations are often tortuous; local authorities do not often secure from them what they need and then they do not arrive. The local community see them as either selling or buying permission, depending on which perspective you are from. The whole atmosphere is a poisonous one in many communities when all they see resulting from new housing developments are increases in congested roads, crowded surgeries, over-subscribed schools and what have you.

Q94 Chairman: A familiar story.

Mr Searles: We welcome the Barker review from that point of view. She said it was perfectly understandable that many communities take a cautious approach in that circumstance. We have taken from that a cue to try to raise debate about the issue of how we pay locally for the impacts that arise from development in order that we, as community leaders - local authorities acting as community leaders - can better sell the benefits that development can bring. After all, those houses may well house the key workers we need; they may house the doctors, the nurses, the policemen and all the other businesses we need to service with new housing. We do not have a position precisely on what changes need to take place, but we are firmly of the belief that that debate is needed about providing sources of income for local government to be able to better demonstrate that those impacts can be met at the time the developments arise or at the time the plans are made. That argues in favour perhaps of the planning supplement that is being proposed although we do not yet have a firm position on that; or other form of land taxes or indeed different distributional mechanisms. We are engaging in debate and that is all we can really say about that and we have postulated a few mechanisms that might be used.

Mr Sparks: I understand we have sent you a document, a specific discreet document to take the debate further in terms of finance.

Chairman: We look forward to reading it. I am getting a little anxious about time; we have had quite long answers. I appreciate these are not easy issues, but if you could try to keep your answers as snappy as possible I think we would all be helped.

Q95 Sue Doughty: I would like to turn to sustainable communities and the Sustainable Communities Plan. We have the Government focussing its efforts in the south east as part of the plan but there are, within that, implications not only for the south east but for other parts of the country, particularly when you are looking at Barker's views that housing should be built where there is the greatest demand. What are your views on this because you are from differing parts of the country, not just the south east?

Mr Sparks: It cannot just stop at the south east. There are tensions within local government in relation to this particular question. As a West Midlands councillor I would be crucified back in the West Midlands if I did not say that the West Midlands authorities are less than happy with some aspects of the growth proposals in relation to Milton Keynes. Equally, there are huge questions about the emphasis on a massive amount of investment in the south of the country at a time when you have major problems in the northern regions. I think that is something that needs to be taken into account.

Mr Bacon: In relation to east Kent, east Kent has had a major problem of getting quality development, meeting housing demand, getting jobs and so on and so forth for many years. I think at Ashford we see the opportunity through the Sustainable Communities Plan to use that growth to mend the settlement as it currently stands and also to grow it and improve it and make it a really outstanding settlement. All I would say is that within the south east it is not one blanket uniform area of prosperity; it has areas and pockets where this growth opportunity can be used to help to resolve existing problems.

Mr Woods: Can I just add to that that in the Thames Gateway I think there is a very real danger that the current strategy in the Communities Plan which started off with the Treasury model of envisaging about 50,000 or 60,000 new homes would produce exactly the kinds of problems that Councillor Sparks talked about before: poor infrastructure, low community facilities, relatively low density, high environmental impact or low environmental sustainability. Some work which the housing directors in east London have had done with the LSE recently and is just about to be published shows very clearly that if we take a longer term strategy to developing the Thames Gateway - perhaps up to 2030 - at higher density with infrastructure development up front something like 120,000 to 150,000 new homes could be created with much higher environmental standards - aiming for standards like carbon neutral and so on, a much higher quality design - and the way to do that is to build out now from town centres with the existing infrastructure which I referred to earlier and to take a more measured view about what can be delivered over the next fifteen or twenty years. I would be very happy to let you have a copy of the draft work on that, if you would like that.

Q96 Chairman: We would very much like that.

Mr Woods: I think it would be very helpful. The second thing I would say is that the same principle applies really in the south Midlands and elsewhere. On the same basis, why would you not consider expanding and developing in Birmingham rather than building in Milton Keynes? In a presentation that Anne Powers from the LSE did recently she said, "Look at the Virgin timetable. From September it will be quicker to get from London to Birmingham than it will to get across London or out to Milton Keynes".

Q97 Chairman: I will believe that when I see it.

Mr Woods: I think it is the same sort of principle. Start with the existing areas, move out, take a more measured view and you will get more of the infrastructure funded through the private sector. However, I will stop that answer and give you the documents.

Q98 Sue Doughty: I had planned to ask if the Sustainability Communities been a good thing for the areas that you represent and yet outside of Ashford I am beginning to get the feeling that you are not seeing it as a good thing.

Mr Sparks: I think it is fundamentally a good idea; at least it is a recognition that there is a problem; there is a massive problem and something has to be done. In fairness, in relation to the point I made about the West Midlands, the argument from some local authorities within the West Midlands about growth in Milton Keynes affecting their boundaries is equally applicable within the West Midlands region. If you are talking about Stoke-on-Trent or you are talking about the Black Country, they will not necessarily benefit from some growth proposals within the West Midlands region. I think that what needs to happen is that we need to have a far more balanced approach to this particular problem and we must learn from history. It is ridiculous. One of the big problems about what we are faced with as local authorities at the moment is that you have a whole raft of initiatives that seem to have been invented by policy makers who have never really even looked at the 60's or 70's, never mind anything earlier. Many of us have been around long enough to know that we can create nightmares if we are not careful. We are in danger here of creating bigger problems than we have ever had before.

Mr Bacon: The agenda has two parts to it: one is a housing agenda and the second one is very much a radical, different approach to how we actually plan settlements. I think we must not confuse the two. It is the housing agenda and all the concerns about building trash and going too fast, but I think everyone welcomes the second part of the agenda which is the housing plus agenda which is about getting jobs where houses are, which is providing proper infrastructure, which is looking at the whole issue of community development and above all can we make our whole settlements more sustainable than they have been. I think everybody welcomes that. It is that "plus" part which other government departments - particularly Transport - are not yet actually really tuned into. It is a question for the Government to get its soldiers in a line over the next couple of years to ensure that that "plus" part is actually brought into being.

Q99 Sue Doughty: Having said that about some of the development side of it being welcome, do you actually agree that the Sustainable Communities Plan is compatible with sustainable development?

Mr Woods: I think without a guarantee of the infrastructure being funded and sensible phasing of the infrastructure, it is impossible to guarantee that it will produce sustainable development. I think there was a select committee a year ago that described the infrastructure costs as £20 billion for the Thames Gateway; at the moment we have £446 million plus whatever is in a few other pots. There are two ways of looking at that: one is to look at it from the view that ODPM have created a number of pots without many rules so that they can respond flexibly and innovatively wherever that will work. A different way of saying it is that there is not a joined-up plan; they want to put houses up quickly and cheaply and creating a number of pots will splash some colour in the Gateway over the next five to ten years but will not do much more.

Q100 Joan Walley: Can I follow that up and ask Councillor Sparks, you mentioned the need to have balance, where do you expect that mechanism to come from? Do you think that mechanism exists at the moment? You have obviously talked about local authorities not being part of that balancing mechanism; where do you expect within government that mechanism to come from?

Mr Sparks: To answer your question first of all, the mechanism does not exist at the moment. I think that we are well on the way to constructing such mechanisms in particular by recognising that a lot of activity needs to take place at a sub-regional or a local level within regional strategies. What we need to do is to make sure that we do not have too many initiatives affecting a locality which are uncoordinated. In relation to Stoke-on-Trent or the Black Country, the Black Country is the perfect illustration especially given that there is a Black Country sub-regional study as part of the regional planning guidance process where usually development plans are being integrated in relation to that; I think that is the way forward. It is not a question of producing plans. We are experts at producing plans; we produce thousands of plans. What we need is a programme to implement the plan which is properly funded.

Q101 Sue Doughty: The Energy Savings Trust this week called the Sustainable Communities Plan "reckless" and it said that the Government is trying to build houses as cheaply and as quickly as possible, overriding environmental commitments. You have also expressed concerns about compromises on environmental standards. Do you think the Government is at all committed to ensuring that environmental standards will not be compromised or do you think it is development at all costs?

Mr Searles: I think there is a commitment in terms of trying to ensure they live up to the term sustainable in the delivery of the sustainable communities. Whether it is actually going to feature in the delivery on the ground is an open question and I think colleagues from the two growth areas need to comment on that. There are undoubtedly issues around the higher capital cost of delivering sustainable construction at the outset and that can tip the balance. I think I would rather pass over to colleagues from the actual growth areas to hear what they have to say.

Mr Woods: From our experience in Barking in particular there has been in the past no commitment to meeting future Energy Savings requirements and I think the danger in the Communities Plan is that it is volume houses fairly quickly and apart from the lack of community sustainability there is the danger that we will not be able to meet the energy targets of the future. More investment now in things like combined heat and power schemes in much higher standards of construction and insulation, models like BedZed and so on will in the end bring lower energy and water costs and so on to everyone, including those who are in subsidised housing. I do not think you will see a commitment from government to making those high standards and those kinds of energy provisions like CHP schemes.

Q102 Chairman: What kind of commitment is there from local government? You have had the chance to do it for years and nothing has happened.

Mr Woods: Local government has had the opportunity but only through things like Building Regulations, through trying to influence how housing corporation money is spent and to what standards. Those are really quite modest standards and where they are enforceable they have been enforced. I can well remember our first attempts to get lifetime homes built where developers had to be dragged kicking and screaming but after the event found that they sold all of those off the plan and wished they had built more. I think people who are building, investing capital at the front end, have little or no interest in the running costs of the property for others afterwards and I think it would be much better if governments set high environmental standards as a condition of receiving grant including housing corporation funding as well.

Mr Bacon: The building control officers in Ashford Borough Council feel that the regulations do need to be strengthened to meet the targets that have been implied in this plan. My staff have met officials from the ODPM and they say that they are actively looking at amending the Building Regulations but I do not know any more than that. Secondly, I think English Partnerships and a whole range of organisations including the Housing Corporation do a number of pilots on trying to make housing more sustainable and so on. The problem is that these pilots do not get translated into mass production in the private sector and I think one of the things we have to find is the link between the two and we can get there. I think that is the one we should explore.

Q103 Sue Doughty: Going on from that - energy efficient homes and climate change - we have no examples of the need to manage climate change if we are going to build in the Thames Gateway. Much more does need to be done.

Mr Woods: I would agree with that and I think the model that the Ann Power of the LSE puts forward of a longer term development could and would achieve a carbon neutral development. I do not think that can be said of either the Treasury model or the plan that is currently being discussed. Again, the evidence for that is in the report which I will submit to you.

Q104 Chairman: That is carbon neutral excluding the carbon emitted during the building and construction phase presumably.

Mr Woods: I imagine so.

Q105 Chairman: That is quite big, too.

Mr Woods: Yes, it is.

Q106 Sue Doughty: Referring back to a point made by Mr Bacon, when you were worried about whether we are actually going to be a building trash, we do have the problem that if we build trash we will be back to that cycle as I was saying before of houses built in the 60's and 70's where we have to go in for renovation. How would we really overcome this whole problem of short-term gain regardless of what problems are stacking up for the future?

Mr Bacon: I think first of all we need a proper master plan for an area. Secondly, as I said, a proper financial assessment of what the plan costs and where you are going to find the money for it to implement it and so on. A very strong planning authority supporting those standards through the appeal process. An inspectorate lining up with what the ODPM wants in term of those standards being enforced. We do not always see that joined-up government between what the inspectorate are deciding and what is written in the national policy guidance. I think it is very important that we have that sequence followed through. We can do it; this is not rocket science. It is done in other parts of Europe very, very well and so there is no reason why we cannot do it in Britain but it does need a very firm political backing for it to happen.

Mr Sparks: You also need the rest of the master plan to be implemented at the same time.

Q107 Mr Chaytor: In your written evidence and in your comments this afternoon you use the word "sustainability" very freely. Does the LGA have a working definition of sustainability?

Mr Searles: I do not think we have defined one for ourselves. Obviously the generality of the term sustainable development has evolved over the years to one which is now encompassing of wider economic, social and environmental factors. I think that wider definition is the one the LGA generally works with. Emphasising Martin's comments from before, in terms of delivering sustainable communities we mean sustainable in an environmental sense but also sustainable in terms of having a requisite social and economic infrastructure to support that as well.

Q108 Mr Chaytor: In terms of the current planning guidance and Building Regulations, what are the main weaknesses that have prevented local planning authorities from developing sustainable communities and building sustainable homes?

Mr Searles: I think the main planning guidance PPS1 is a very common sense framework.

Q109 Mr Chaytor: That is new, is it not? PPS1 is not in force at the moment, is it?

Mr Searles: It is draft.

Q110 Mr Chaytor: In terms of the existing raft of planning PPGs and Building Regulations, where are the main weaknesses there that have prevented local planning authorities from building sustainable homes and sustainable communities?

Mr Bacon: We have a development control led planning system for the last twenty years. We have not had a development plan led planning system. I suspect you know about the Egan review and all the emphasis on skills and getting the planning profession up to a standard where people want to enter it again and all that sort of thing. A lot of people have left the sort of forward planning and gone into housing or gone elsewhere because they did not feel it was worthwhile doing. So we have had a development control led planning system whereby basically everything is fought out through the appeal process or through hard graft over the development control table. We have not had this sort of vision, this sort of standard against which that development should be set. That has been a major weakness.

Q111 Mr Chaytor: Has that led to a loss of expertise and a loss of status within the planning profession?

Mr Bacon: Yes it has and a degradation of skills which I know the ODPM and the RTPI and others are trying to put right. Another thing is lack of real practical examples to go, see, touch and feel as to how it works and so on which, although you have these pilots, they are not being transformed to the mass production to go into the private sector. Also, I think there is lack of real bite in the regulations to enforce sustainability in Building Regulations, in water and energy, all that area generally, transport particularly.

Q112 Mr Chaytor: Just pursuing the point about the track record within the existing framework, in your written evidence in reference to the materials and resources used in building, you say that the main way that local planning authorities can control this is through having effective conditions placed upon developers when permission is granted for a site. Why have they not been doing that? What has restricted or limited local planning authorities from placing effective conditions upon developers? In my seven years on a planning committee we always had the power to place conditions. Is it not just an issue of political view or is there something else?

Mr Bacon: It is partly because you can only place conditions on a planning consent where the conditions are relevant, appropriate et cetera to the actual site.

Q113 Mr Chaytor: Surely quality, resources, the design and materials and the volume of waste produced by the development are relevant conditions, are they not?

Mr Bacon: There are two things there. Firstly, the skill of the planning officers to negotiate with the private sector a quality development. I have heard it argued that there are not the skills in local authorities to do that any more for various reasons.

Q114 Mr Chaytor: Is this an issue about the expertise or the skill base within the profession.

Mr Bacon: Yes. The second thing is the degree to which, within planning conditions, one can enforce some of the sustainable objectives through energy, waste, so on and so forth. You can only do it in relation to the development as it is being built and through the regulations. You cannot go beyond what might be termed as reasonable to that particular development. This gets back to my point earlier today about looking bigger than the site through the master planning process and looking at the infrastructure that you need to develop sustainability. You might have a local heating system that you want to establish burning waste. You cannot do that on a site-by-site basis; you have to do it through the master plan, you have to establish the cost of that, you have to say to the developer that it is £X thousand per house in order to pay for that. That is the way it works. If you solely do it through a site by site basis you will not see the bigger picture which is what sustainability is all about.

Q115 Mr Chaytor: Coming back to PPS1, are you confident that PPS1 is going to remedy the defects and what is it particularly in PPS1 that could provide the evidence for this?

Mr Searles: From my perspective, having been involved in discussions about the planning bill, planning reform for three or four years now, I think PPS1 came as confirmation of what we all understood so I do not think there was a very excited reaction from local government or many of our partner organisations about what PPS1 said. What it has done is place sustainable development at the heart of the new system which is a really good thing and good design is an important element in that system. I think the big opportunity from the new planning system which obviously PPS1 alludes to is the link between the land use plan and wider considerations. There is an opportunity in taking forward a community strategy or local strategic partnership or just wider activity with other partners who are active in the local area - businesses and other public services - to tie that up with the land use plan. There is an opportunity to have that kind of debate bringing in these kinds of considerations and wider issues that are outside the traditional scope of land use into a debate about how to achieve our objectives, not just where and what but how we are going to do it, when we are going to do it. Issues about things which perhaps would normally be considered with the system can be brought in to discussions about materials, resource use et cetera. It stands a better chance of being brought in. I think it is a positive agenda.

Q116 Mr Chaytor: Will it be possible to refuse a planning application on the grounds that it is unsustainable? How will planners have to phrase their reasons for refusal? If we talk about Milton Keynes, for example, if there is a planning application for 5000 houses in Milton Keynes and the judgment is that there is not the transport infrastructure to sustain 5000 houses, will lack of sustainability be a valid reason for refusing permission?

Mr Bacon: I do not think there is any problem for the planning system on refusing development on a physical side - lack of infrastructure, in terms of transport, social facilities and so on - if there is a political will to do so. I think, as I said earlier, it is on some of the other aspects - energy, waste - where really the conditions on planning are more difficult for planning authorities and that is why PPS1 as a guidance allowing us to look at other strategies and rely upon them as part of the overall planning justification is welcome.

Q117 Mr Chaytor: In terms of PPS1 you are saying that it will provide the powers to refuse on the grounds of lack of sustainability in respect of the broader infrastructural reasons, but in terms of design of building or materials or emissions, it will not.

Mr Bacon: At the moment it will not. There are test cases and one goes through them. That is why I think that if the Government set down a firmer framework it would be a lot easier for us to move that issue forward.

Q118 Mr Chaytor: You have set yourself against the idea of a national strategy for housing in your written submission. The reasons you give do not seem to me to be terribly convincing. You actually go on to say that there is a real danger of construction resources being diverted from the north and the Midlands to the south east to cope with the overheating of construction activity there. Is that not the very best argument for having a national plan? I can see that every electrician in my constituency, once he learns he can earn £60,000 a year on Terminal 5 at Heathrow or £50,000 a year in Milton Keynes or Thames Gateway will get on a Virgin train at Manchester and it would be economically worthwhile for him to commute to Milton Keynes every week given the kind of work and wage rates that will be available for him there. Is this not the very best argument for a national strategy? Why are you so opposed to it?

Mr Sparks: We are fundamentally opposed to it because we are fundamentally in favour of individual regions and localities and sub-regions or whatever working out what is best in the circumstances of that particular locality. Our fear is that a, quote, national plan could end up with a national plan that develops everything in the south east; it does not necessarily follow that Manchester will be best served by a national plan.

Q119 Mr Chaytor: We have a national plan now which does focus development in the southeast but if the national plan had focused more on regeneration in the West Midlands, east Lancashire and west Yorkshire, would you not be happy with that kind of national plan?

Mr Sparks: No, because we can plan it better than any bureaucrat in Whitehall. If we are planning them on a sub-regional basis in a regional framework with a properly funded programme it will end up being done and being done to a more sustainable level. It is as simple as that.

Q120 Joan Walley: I suspect we are going to be beaten by the division bell. Could I just say that I wanted to ask about the Egan report and about the skills shortage not just in relation to planners and understanding sustainable development, not just in relation to contract management, but in terms of skills as well? Could you perhaps write to us if you have any particular further evidence about where you see genuine shortages of skills and ways in which the recommendations of the Egan report could help us deliver those skill shortages?

Mr Sparks: With pleasure.

Chairman: Thank you for your evidence today which has been most helpful.

 

(The Committee suspended from 4.30pm to 5.20pm for divisions in the House)

Memorandum submitted by the Building Research Establishment

 

Examination of Witnesses

 

Witnesses: Dr David Crowhurst, Director, Centre for Sustainable Construction, Mr David Warriner, Managing Director, Building Sustainable Solutions and Ms Deborah Brownhill, Associate Director, Centre for Sustainable Construction, BRE Environment, examined.

Q121 Chairman: We are grateful to you for coming and also for the memorandum which you submitted. Can I begin by referring to the mission that you have which is to promote excellence and innovation. We would be very interested in your thoughts on whether this is a message and a mission which finds a receptive audience in the building industry.

Mr Warriner: Yes, I think it does with some sectors. The problem of the industry is that it is so diverse and so disparate. There are clearly some leading edge players for whom innovation is very much their every day bread and butter. There is a vast majority of the industry which has little interest in innovation and merely wishes to turn out stock solutions. Clearly we are targeting those who are already converted but equally trying to raise the standard of the majority as well.

Q122 Chairman: Why do you think there is such a range of different types of behaviour when clearly those who are at the cutting edge, who are doing the right things, are doing so not only because it is good for the environment but also because it is good for their bottom line? Why has the message not filtered down?

Mr Warriner: I presume because many of them feel that their business is perfectly sustainable without doing so until some pressure comes on them that changes that. I think you are right; those who are doing it are seeking that edge. Unfortunately in many cases I guess they do not feel the need to seek that edge; they are able to sustain their current business. I think it is also a major issue about knowledge and expertise in being able to do some of those things and that is clearly where we see one of our major roles.

Q123 Chairman: Do you think you are as effective as you would like to be in spreading the word about good practice?

Mr Warriner: I think we are very effective in those areas where we have targeted programmes. The big issue with any sort of thing like that is that it has to be funded in some way. Energy (which is funded) is quite a good area and there are some very effective programmes. In others it may not be quite so.

Q124 Chairman: The WWF told us last week that there are a lot of companies that only do the right thing if they are made to. Would you agree with that?

Mr Warriner: I think the industry certainly likes a level playing field. In many cases it does not like to feel that it is doing something it does not need to do and that is often an argument about Building Regulations: it provides a floor that everybody at least knows where they are starting from and what they have to do. I think there is inevitably some truth in the fact that many will only do the minimum they think they need to do.

Q125 Chairman: In your view is it true what Barker said in her interim report that house builders' profitability depends on obtaining valuable land rather than building a higher quality product in ever more efficient ways?

Ms Brownhill: I think it probably is true. She is the economist; we are scientists in this. There is not a premium or an incentive for house builders normally to build to higher sustainability standards in terms of the economics.

Q126 Mr Challen: Barker says in one of her recommendations that there ought perhaps to be a windfall tax on land sales where the price is increased through the permission given to it for house building. Having myself recently looked at house builders' profits which have gone up tremendously in the last five years, do you think there is any mileage for extending this principle of the windfall tax to other areas like house builders' profits so that that money could be recycled into higher standards or environmental purposes and things of that sort?

Ms Brownhill: I think the idea of windfall tax on planning gain is not actually a new idea. I think there was legislation a number of years ago which did implement a tax like that. I am not exactly sure why that ceased to be and it is obviously the land owners are the ones who make huge profits from doing nothing; they merely convert the land from agricultural land into building land. There is a huge amount of money in the system that could be used to support neighbourhood combined heat and power schemes or renewable energy programmes or higher sustainable development in terms of social and economic aspects. The house builders will certainly argue that their profits are more inconsistent than that. Sometimes they do make a lot of money and at the moment they are doing, but if you look back to the late 80's then they certainly were not making much money and things were problematic for them. We certainly looked at some fiscal incentives in work that we did with the WWF which looked at fiscal incentives that the Government could implement to encourage green development like a reduction of the stamp duty if a house met a certain high standard or other such Treasury incentives. That has remained as a recommendation; it has not really been picked up by the Government so far. There are fiscal incentives that could be introduced that would help to pay for some of the sustainability costs but these costs in our experience are greatly exaggerated. We have some information on costs if that would be helpful to the Committee.

Q127 Chairman: It certainly would.

Ms Brownhill: We have a label that ranks housing on how sustainable it is on a scale of good to excellent and we have information on the costs of achieving each different standard that was produced by the Housing Corporation and sustainable homes so it is nothing to do with us and it has not had any vested interest for house builders producing that information. It has just been produced for the common good of housing associations. At the moment with a favourable site - which means the sort of infrastructure, local facilities and public transport provision that the LGA were talking about which is so important to sustainability -in order to get an excellent on our scale for the housing (because we measure those local aspects as well in our label) then it costs about £1800 per property to raise from where Building Regulations are now to what we would call our excellent standard. That is not a lot of money in the build costs; we worked out that it is less than three per cent even if you take quite a low build cost which would more reflect the Midlands that the south east.

Q128 Mr Challen: Do you have any evidence - although it may not be in your remit - to show whether or not the public, if they were offered a choice between a common or garden current cheapskate house building job and a good BedZed style building, whether they would pay a premium for that?

Ms Brownhill: The only evidence that I do have is that I have worked closely with the development of Milton Keynes over the years - over quite a lot of years now - and we had a development called Energy World in the 80's which was one of the first large scale developments of energy efficient housing with the new technologies in it. For many years in Milton Keynes - and even still now - houses on Energy World sold at a three per cent premium. So there is some evidence that provided the publicity is there - the Milton Keynes Development Corporation had a huge amount of money to publicise that, it was on television, it grabbed the imagination of the public - then yes, there is some evidence to show that people will pay that.

Q129 Chairman: What changes would you like to see to Building Regulations?

Ms Brownhill: We believe Building Regulations is a good mechanism for having some statutory minimum level that is a level playing field. In terms of sustainability in the round - which is what we try to address with our label EcoHomes - because it is such a broad subject we think it would be difficult to encompass everything within the legislative constraints of Building Regulations. For example, the building control officer at the moment can only look at that individual house; he cannot consider whether there are local facilities close by or whether it is well served by public transport. His legislative remit does not allow him to do that. We believe that a number of extra indicators could be included in Building Regulations to set the minimum, but on top of that a voluntary label that goes further or, if you want to make it more mandatory but not via regulation, would be a mechanism to address all these other aspects which are quite often difficult to build into Building Regulations.

Q130 Chairman: I think the Egan report recommended that Government should aim to achieve carbon emissions and waste minimisation standards consistent with a sustainable one planet level within eight years. Do you think that is feasible?

Dr Crowhurst: I think that may well be an optimistic target, but setting targets that are optimistic are a good way of driving improvement so one would not want to downplay the importance of trying to achieve that and apply any sort of guilt if we do not actually achieve it. We need to work towards that sort of level but whether it is really achievable within eight years I would suspect that is being optimistic.

Q131 Chairman: What are the principal reasons why it might not be achieved?

Dr Crowhurst: I think there are practical considerations. The public would need to be engaged in that aim. The design considerations in terms of reducing waste would need to be engaged so there are many, many different factions that need to be engaged if that process is going to be achieved. It would be a significant effort in order to engage all those that need to be involved in that process.

Ms Brownhill: Especially in house building. It involves a significant change of operational procedures which traditionally have been quite slow to change. Even with full fiscal incentives and everything else we reckon it is about a twenty year timescale to get anything moved significantly in the housing industry from start to finish, to get, say, eighty per cent penetration of any particular activity even when that is well-funded and well-publicised. The time lag to get it in there is quite long in our experience.

Q132 Chairman: Are you talking there about technological barriers?

Ms Brownhill: No, I am talking about skills barriers, attitudinal barriers, practical barriers of the manufacturing process; people are used to working and the way manufacturing works and what happens on sites with on-site processes and skills that people have at every level. At every level there would need to be a lot of re-training and a raising of the level of skills particular in the housing market. You asked about the construction market, that is split into the construction and the housing market and there are quite different skill levels in those two parts of the construction industry.

Dr Crowhurst: I think it is probably the attitudinal aspects which are harder to fix and as important. It is an objective that we need to move towards.

Q133 Mr Thomas: In that context do you have a vision of how things might be in, say, 20 or 25 years' time? You have talked about now and eight years which seems to be problematical. Do you have, as an establishment, a vision of where we could be getting over that slightly longer timescale?

Ms Brownhill: We do have visions about what we think sustainability is for housing or for building. We obviously do not get involved in the same level of master planning that the Local Government Association would but we also have a vision on how we think planning could be improved to help the processes and we have definitions and tools of how to measure sustainability - for want of a better word - that we would like to see implemented in a whole scale way. I think to say that anyone has the one answer to sustainable development is a bit of a tall order.

Dr Crowhurst: If I have a vision - I suspect this is a personal one rather than a BRE one - it is that when establishing plans for future development that we first of all make sure that there is that need for development - there is a societal need for that development - and when we do do that we make it environmentally sound so that we are mitigating the environmental impacts and use of resources to achieve that and but also taking account of the economics through looking at that sensible through whole life cost measures rather than the narrow capital first cost measures. That is the sort of model of sustainability which takes into account social, environmental and economic needs.

Q134 Mr Thomas: That is a bit attitudinal again.

Dr Crowhurst: There is a lot to change in terms of both attitudes of professionals but also attitudes of the public. Whilst I think the public are increasingly aware of environmental issues, how effectively to deal with them is not always necessarily within the public grasp or one might expect every member of the public to have the same grasp.

Q135 Mr Thomas: To get to that stage - whichever that vision may be - surely one of the key things that we need to be dedicating some resources towards is research into sustainable construction. How much are we in this country dedicating to sustainable construction? How much money is being allocated either by yourselves or government towards research and how does that compare with other countries? Are we doing enough?

Mr Warriner: I do not think we are doing anywhere near enough. One of the problems at the current time is that there has been a reduction in the available funding for research into construction generally but sustainability in particular.

Q136 Mr Thomas: Is that a recent phenomenon?

Mr Warriner: Yes, relatively recent; over the last three or four years.

Dr Crowhurst: Four years ago we had a programme which, over time, would have been of the order of a million pounds - slightly more - of government funded research and some policy support. Over that four year period that, I am afraid to say, has dwindled to nothing.

Q137 Mr Thomas: Nothing at all?

Dr Crowhurst: A few thousands of pounds. That is not to say that there is not government funded work being done from various agencies in support of the environmental impacts and issues that might broadly be included in sustainability. It does seem to me that that approach has become particularly fragmented since the responsibility for areas in terms of sustainability were seemingly separated between what was the old DETR and has now become DEFRA, ODPM, DTI and probably a number of other departments.

Q138 Mr Thomas: Is your impression that the overall global standard has decreased or is it simply fragmented and it is in a lot of different places and maybe not being as effectively used in that way? Or is it that they have simply shifted the funding from yourselves and given it to another wonderful body that can do this work just as well?

Mr Warriner: I think our impression is that the money has dropped.

Ms Brownhill: Programmes have been dropped.

Mr Warriner: There is no longer a specific construction related programme and our understanding is that that money has been absorbed into the broader DTI programme and therefore is probably being spread across a wider range of industrial sectors rather than focus on construction.

Dr Crowhurst: Also perhaps a different emphasis on the research that is needed in support of the construction industry in terms of acceptable, making it more profitable, more productive but not necessarily directed towards achieving objectives such as overall sustainability in construction.

Q139 Mr Thomas: What about training?

Dr Crowhurst: I think my colleague mentioned earlier that training is a particular issue. I know that the skills councils are looking at the training needs of the construction industry and those related to the construction industry. The skills need to go right through, not just the contractors but also into the planning departments and the building control so that they can adequately assess the solutions that are being put forward to them. There is work being done to look at ways to address that skills shortage but there is still some way to go.

Ms Brownhill: We have trained about a thousand building professionals so far on a two-day course to either look at EcoHomes which is the environmental rating for housing, or BREEAM which is the environmental rating for commercial building. There are training programmes going on from our side and they are always full at the moment. Every course we run is full so there would be plenty of material for wide scale training programmes to happen if there were sufficient push from government or whoever.

Q140 Mr Thomas: The capacity is there.

Ms Brownhill: The capacity is there, yes.

Q141 Mr Challen: Is that capacity just in the building industry? What about local authorities that monitor Building Regulations and so on? I was reading recently that the policing of regulations is a big issue; not enough is being done. We can train these people but do they actually implement it?

Ms Brownhill: That is one of our concerns about Building Regulations ever being more than a mandatory baseline level. BRE has carried out research that shows that the Building Regulations system overall is not well equipped to police the environmental standards that are currently in Regulations so to actually keep increasing them, unless we address the fact that the building control officers are not really trained nor do they have the resources to check on the environment aspects, you are not going to achieve anything; you are going to have legislation for legislation's sake. Through a mechanism like EcoHomes or BREEAM which is, if you like, funded by the industry, that puts more money in the system, better databases, better checking up facilities, one is more confident about the results of the certification.

Q142 Mr Challen: With all these new houses that are being proposed, how many extra people would we need to effectively implement proper enforcement of Regulations particularly affecting environmental issues?

Ms Brownhill: Obviously I have not worked out the answer to that one in advance, but there are precedents within Building Regulations, for example a Sack Rating which is the energy rating is carried out by a competent person (someone who is deemed to be competent), it does not have to be carried out by the building control officer. EcoHomes works in the same way: a certificate can be issued by a competent person (a structural engineer would do the structural calculation) and that is acceptable by the building control officer. He does not really have to go around and check then. There are mechanisms that would enable other organisations to help with that burden on building control. Building controllers comes from a background concerning themselves very much with health and safety issues and it is true that not too many complaints come from home owners just because their home is a little bit cold or draughty or uses a lot of water or whatever it may be. Traditionally they have always had a slightly different focus. There is more than one way to address that. There are already something like 180 organisations trained to deliver EcoHomes which is just a method that we licence broadly across the whole of the construction industry. Anyone can train to deliver this; anyone can have a licence provided they show competence on the examination and training course.

Q143 Mr Challen: Are they independent of the house builders?

Ms Brownhill: Totally independent of the house builders.

Q144 Mr Thomas: I want to ask about alternative construction methods. We have talked a lot about things that could be add-ons to make things better, but there are also alternative ways. If you look at the Centre for Alternative Technologies, for example, you see rammed earth buildings there or straw bail buildings or passive heating and all the rest of it. One of the concerns must be that these construction methods firstly are not widely available - or the skills are not widely available - and it is also very difficult for the consumer to decide whether such a house would be sustainable in the long term, would they stand up for fifty years or whatever it may be, how could you benchmark a house or a building like that against a similar, more traditional type of construction. Do you have any thoughts on how we can get alternative methods out there and whether you even have experience of what methods could potentially be used?

Ms Brownhill: You have to be a little bit careful because your assumption is that some of the houses that are built using the rammed earth or using some unusual technology are necessarily more sustainable than can be built in the traditional way. There is an awful lot that can be achieved with what you would call your standard house types and assumptions that windmills and photovoltaic cells are necessarily increasing sustainability can be incorrect. You have to measure things like the embodied energy in the production of the PV's, say, and put that into the whole equation which is what we try to do to actually get an answer. We do research into modern methods of construction and obviously we keep a close eye on the alternative technologies. We have a Faraday partnership programme that looks at building in renewables so we are very supportive of all those things. However, they are not necessarily required to increase standards from where they are now to a much higher level.

Q145 Mr Thomas: Is there a particular method of alternative construction that you think may come into play over the next ten or twenty years or whatever, or do you think on the whole we would be better off concentrating on the traditional but improving that and making it more sustainable?

Dr Crowhurst: I think before we embark on any one particular technology whether it is new or traditional - particularly if they are technologies which may be seen as fringe - we have to do a proper evaluation of their performance under real conditions whether it be straw bales or rammed earth. The research to establish that needs to be done; it would not be sensible to go down a route which favoured a particular type of construction without some reasonable research.

Q146 Mr Thomas: Is anybody doing that research?

Dr Crowhurst: Not that I am personally aware.

Q147 Mr Thomas: Would you do it if you had the money?

Dr Crowhurst: If we had the money, yes. We have particular facilities in a number of our laboratories that can look in an accelerated way at ageing effects on building materials, climate effects on building materials. The capability is still there; resources would be needed to utilise that capability.

Q148 Mr Thomas: I can understand your caution about alternative methods and saying that we need to be sure, but on the other hand the Government is introducing new methods of construction like off-site pre-fabs. As far as you are aware has the Government done any benchmarking on whether those are actually going to be sustainable homes? They seem very keen on them; about a quarter of new homes are supposed to be constructed in this way.

Dr Crowhurst: Again there are good reasons why modern methods of construction may provide advantages in construction. Not least there is the potential for reduced waste because of factory construction. There is also potential for savings particularly in health and safety in terms of the ability to build and the skills required to do that more safely. We know that the construction industry does not have a good record amongst industries of health and safety. I think there is still work to be done in order to establish whether there are true and tangible environmental benefits from the use of modern methods of construction.

Q149 Mr Thomas: Are we about to embark upon a massive support for these types of construction and yet you are saying that we do not really know if they are environmentally any better; they could be worse.

Dr Crowhurst: That is possible.

Q150 Mr Thomas: Is anyone doing that work?

Dr Crowhurst: Not to our knowledge.

Ms Brownhill: Not in any great quantity.

Dr Crowhurst: There have been some case studies where some of those issues were looked at, for example, was the energy performance substantially better? That still comes down to design. If you design a traditionally built house well then it can perform as well as a system built house. There were distinct benefits in terms of time on site and safety issues associated with that, but I think some of the wider environmental implications - possible of transportation - have not been fully investigated.

Q151 Mr Thomas: I have a concern there because on the one hand you are saying there needs to be some caution for alternative methods; they look wonderful but are they really, over the long term, going to be an improvement and yet we seem to be seeing governments and housing corporations and so forth encouraging new methods of construction when we really do not know whether they well be in the long term actually more environmentally beneficial. Whether it is traditional houses or new methods of constructions or alternative houses, are we building houses that are really sustainable? In year terms, are they meant to last as long as they should be lasting in that there is a huge environmental cost in putting houses up in the first place?

Dr Crowhurst: Are we building volume housing in a sustainable manner now, regardless of its modern methods or traditional? I would say, no. I think the fabric and form of the housing that we do in the majority of cases could not, under current circumstances, be considered sustainable. The performance in terms of insulation and energy levels - air tightness in particular - much can be lost in the fabric and form and the insulation and thermal form of a building if it is built in such a way that all of that is lost by the fact that it leaks badly because it has been badly constructed. Those are the sorts of issues that need to be adequately addressed whatever the form of construction.

Ms Brownhill: It is true that the environmental performance of MMC in our experience has not been widely researched but most MMC does have to go through a kind of formal certification as fitness for purpose and I suspect in some cases that is what is lacking. The environmental performance is demonstrated but the fitness for purposes is not demonstrated so the insurers like NHPS who insure 85% - or whatever it is - of all new homes would be reluctant to accept that sort of thing without the fitness for purpose certification, so you really have to have it all before you can say to the industry, "This is what you should deliver in every way". We do seem to have bits of it in some places and bits in others but not the whole picture overall.

Dr Crowhurst: There is no evidence that modern methods of construction are not better; work still needs to be done.

Ms Brownhill: Case not proven.

Q152 Chairman: There seems to be a woeful inadequacy of information. If we are, as Mr Thomas said, going to embark on a massive house building programme in this country it is essential that that work is done first so that we know what we are building and what the impact on the environment will be, not only the immediate future but in the long term as well. Do you not yourselves professionally feel a sense of failure that these sorts of concerns that you have been raising for a very long time are simply out of the equation.

Dr Crowhurst: Building Regulations and the changes to future Regulations that are envisaged now have moved the goal posts a long way. One would not want to step back and delay those improvements that are already in train by saying that we have to stop now and re-assess all the various methods of construction. We need to build to higher levels of performance; to some extent we know that some of the traditional methods can have longevity. I think there are parallel tracks that we need to pursue in that context. In a sense we cannot afford to stop the building programme dead while research is going on, but it is important that the research itself is undertaken so that we can build better in the future.

Q153 Joan Walley: I think you were in here when we had the previous witnesses, when Councillor Sparks began his comments by talking about learning the lessons of some quite big mistakes that had been made in the 60's. In view of what you have just said and the really bleak picture that you are painting, do you feel your institution or organisation should have some input into avoiding those mistakes - not the same mistakes but mistakes we could be making now - and what mechanism is there for feeding through because we are just about to be embarking on one of the biggest building programmes that we have seen in our life times.

Mr Warriner: Traditionally BRE has had a very strong role in that sort of activity, particularly looking at issues of durability and the like.

Q154 Joan Walley: Has your changed status had an effect on that?

Mr Warriner: There is clearly a change in terms of the availability of funding for some of the traditional areas of research that BRE would have done. I think we need to be careful not to get too despondent about all this. We are building to a much better standard now than we were in the past and the capability, I think, is much greater than it was. With issues like modern methods of construction there are approaches through formal certification schemes - as Deborah said - and BRE has set itself up to promote and offer that type of service that can give the industry confidence that particular methods are better than others or will meet particular standards. I think the widespread promotion of formal certification for this type of system is definitely to be encouraged. The capability exists to do that.

Q155 Joan Walley: Is the certification happening at the moment?

Mr Warriner: Some manufacturers see the value of that and see the benefit of being able to demonstrate that they have done it and some do not. Across the whole industry you get that spectrum of some who are leading the way and seeing the benefit and some who do not think it is necessary.

Q156 Joan Walley: When you talk about that are you referring to the EcoHomes code?

Mr Warriner: Not specifically, no. Certification is a much broader issue than just working out the environmental performance. It would incur fitness for purpose, durability, safety, fire safety, the whole range of things you might want to include; the sort of things that would give you or I confidence as a purchaser that this thing was going to perform over a long period and needs to be safe and durable. EcoHomes is specifically looking at the environmental performance of housing.

Dr Crowhurst: We also have tools and methodologies that can be used to assess the environmental impacts of construction components and materials through their life time so the tools do exist and some companies are taking advantage of those tools early; some are not pursuing that with quite the same vigour.

Ms Brownhill: At the policy level we are commissioned by English Partnerships to help them devise the briefs for their developments, review the sustainability standards that are being used on developments and also consider things like modern methods of construction. They do ask BRE for advice in a lot of cases when they are encouraging developers to use modern methods of construction. There are bits of government that are in isolation; some are coming to us and asking for specific pieces of advice. English Partnerships has set mandatory standards using BREEAM for all developments on their land - the land they own - and they have to meet a standard of either a very good or an excellent on flagship schemes. They are already delivering across the sector of housing; it is not just social, it is all the private sector housing as well. The LGA were a little bit negative about what was going on in private sector housing, but actually private house builders have accepted that they need to do this so they are taking it on board.

Q157 Joan Walley: Do you have figures of the take-up of that?

Ms Brownhill: We will soon issue certificates on 20,000 homes.

Q158 Joan Walley: Out of how many? What is the percentage?

Ms Brownhill: They are only building about 100,000 a year at the moment I suspect.

Q159 Joan Walley:

Ms Brownhill: It will be a fifth in about a year's time I would say. EcoHomes was only invented in the year 2000 so in terms of a product it has not had long to be out there. We are regularly getting 10,000, 20,000 homes pre-registered on our database. We could certainly find out more figures and give you further information on that as and when you require it. It is not happening in ones and twos now; it is happening in thousands and that will roll on. The Housing Corporation has also set standards using EcoHomes and that will ultimately lead to about 20,000 or 30,000 of their homes every year having higher environmental standards than Building Regulations.

Q160 Chairman: I still do not understand the excuse for it only being such a small number of the total, particularly in relation to the Housing Corporation. Why can they not do better?

Ms Brownhill: They only build 20,000 homes a year. That is all of the ones that they build.

Q161 Joan Walley: So it is the private sector where it is not being applied.

Ms Brownhill: Both are having to take it up. All social housing is having to do it because of the Housing Corporation initiative and a number of private sector builders are having to do it either because planners - like the ones you were just talking to - have tried to implement it by the Section 106 agreement which, in our opinion, does not give them clear legal remit to do that but a lot of them are trying nevertheless. They are also trying to include high environmental standards in supplementary planning guidance which again, if challenged, they would feel a little bit vulnerable over but nevertheless many developers are understanding that if they can demonstrate their sustainability credentials they will get an easier passage through the planning process and that is worth an awful lot of money to them.

Q162 Mr Savidge: This week the Energy Savings Trust called the Sustainable Communities Plan a massive missed opportunity and reckless, and accused the Government that by concentrating on building housing as quickly and cheaply as possible it was reneging on its environmental commitments. What is your view?

Mr Warriner: We are not aware of the details that led the EST to make that comment so presumably they were privy to some information about the fact that they were going to be built as cheaply as possible. Clearly we would support the EST in their view that this is an opportunity where housing that is going to be built should be built to higher environmental standards. We certainly support them in that, but I have to say that we are not familiar with the underlying reasons that led the EST to make those comments so I cannot comment on them I am afraid.

Dr Crowhurst: Our own view is that we would want to see housing built to the appropriate and higher environmental standards and not to see that, in sustainability terms, compromised purely on economic grounds and building as cheaply as possible.

Ms Brownhill: Have things like the whole life costs been taken into account? For example, we would think that if we had access to do the proper calculations we would be able to demonstrate that the extra environmental benefit could easily be paid back over the life of the homes. We do not know.

Q163 Mr Savidge: When you talk about whole life, presumably the new construction programme could potentially have a considerable effect on greenhouse gas emissions because some of the houses that are being built today, one would assume, would still be in use in 2050 by which time we are supposed to have got our sixty per cent reduction in the carbon dioxide emissions. Do you feel that the Government has taken sufficient account of that in relation to building standards or, indeed, has related emissions to housing developments in any way?

Mr Warriner: I think you have put your finger on one of the key issues in that most of the environmental impact of housing is from existing houses. Today that is certainly true; we only replace about one or two per cent of the stock every year. Initiatives to improve the standards of the existing stock would be incredibly beneficial if we could do that. You are right, whatever we are building now we have to remember that it will be at that standard if it is not improved as time goes on. I think Deborah's point is the key one that in looking over that sort of period you can justify additional extra costs at the beginning which will pay back handsomely in terms of reduced running costs throughout the life of that home, irrespective of the environmental benefits that it will deliver.

Q164 Mr Savidge: Have you actually done any research yourselves on the potential impact on climate change of the building programme?

Mr Warriner: We have certainly published guidance alerting the industry to the impacts of climate change and some of the things they will have to do in terms of modifying or adapting construction for that. We have done that through self-funded research funded by our foundation.

Ms Brownhill: I do not know of anything specifically relating to the Communities Programme. I know that a kind of environmental assessment was carried out by Entec and Richard Hodkinson Consultancy for DEFRA about the environmental impacts of this particular building programme and as far as we are able to consider from being on the outside of that report, we have looked at the fundamental assumptions in that report about CO² emissions for housing and we think they are broadly based on a reasonable basis. We would have done a similar kind of model ourselves if we had been looking at that.

Q165 Joan Walley: We have covered some of the work you have done on the EcoHomes standard, but I just wondered where the code actually came from and how it came about in the first place. It would be helpful to have that background.

Ms Brownhill: BRE has always been ahead of its time so in 1990 we launched an environment assessment method for homes which was universally not picked up by the market and the time was not right. We spent quite a number of years twiddling with it; it was very cumbersome and onerous on the house builder and demanded that every single piece of timber, for example, was FSC certified down to the last door knob. Not surprisingly there was not a huge take up by the market. By the year 2000 we had understood a little bit more about the market for such products as EcoHomes and we got together with the NHBC and decided to fund the development of EcoHomes and its sister publication which is called The Green Guide to Specification for Housing. This is a guide which gives a simple A, B and C rating on different construction types - straw bales may not be in there as a wall type but they could easily be - in terms of how you build your walls, roofs, floors, windows, et cetera; how you can choose the most environmentally friendly elements to put together your house. Since then we have had support from a number of government agencies in terms of their policy to specify EcoHomes, but EcoHomes have had to be funded by industry and BRE as best it could so it has been quite a tight programme in terms of being able to deliver. However, it has been picked up by the market; it has been picked up by the Housing Corporation. Most house builders accept it; they do not necessarily agree with every aspect of it; it covers a broad range of issues which would be hard to cover in terms of Building Regulations. This is the sort of spectrum of issues that it covers: energy and transport count for thirty per cent of the marks, if you like; pollution, fifteen per cent; materials, fifteen per cent; water, ten per cent; land use and ecology, fifteen per cent; and health and well being, fifteen per cent. It goes from everything from the embodied energy that is used to build the house, the energy used throughout the life of the house, the likely savings on transport energy that you can get by providing cycle sheds through to providing the waste bins to separate recycling items for the householders to use to make it easier for them to recycle thereafter, water effective appliances, better use of the land, protection of the features that are there, increasing the ecology value by quite simple measures that house builders can do even within their own small site boundaries right through to health and well-being of the occupants (better noise protection, better daylighting et cetera). It covers a whole gambit of issues and gives scores to the developer on a scale up to excellent.

Q166 Joan Walley: What single thing do you think would help that become more readily adopted by house builders other than the Housing Corporation or English Partnerships?

Ms Brownhill: Certainly if it became easier for local authorities to make it a requirement of planning or a Section 106 then I think house builders would have to deliver it.

Q167 Joan Walley: Are you having talks with ODPM on that because there has just been new planning guidance issued, has there not?

Ms Brownhill: We are not having talks with them at this moment in time; they are aware of EcoHomes and BREEAM. It has been suggested by the Sustainable Buildings Task Group that a national standard code for sustainable buildings is devised based on BREEAM and EcoHomes. At the moment the focus of our negotiations if with ODPM over the recommendations of the Sustainable Buildings Task Group which are talking about having a national building code. I am not quite sure where that would fit in terms of planning.

Q168 Joan Walley: What timescale do you think would be realistic for that to be introduced and how would that tie in with the forward programme for the new Sustainable Communities Plan?

Ms Brownhill: It could be introduced very quickly if it were picking up EcoHomes, certainly for the basic building type like houses, office and retail for which there is already a standard label largely produced.

Q169 Joan Walley: So there would be time for the Government to do it now if it chose to?

Ms Brownhill: Yes. The Sustainable Buildings Task Group gave them a very short timescale in which to try to respond to something, three or four months I think.

Dr Crowhurst: I think it would be fair to say that government policy in respect of its own construction and the approach adopted by English Partnerships and others has been leading the way in some respects. Individual departments have commissioned their own bespoke versions of the BREEAM schemes to address their particular construction needs and that is moving forward and being implemented. That is not housing, but it is a fairly large proportion of the construction market that is out there and it would be reasonable to say that government departments have moved. That is helping to drive the market.

Q170 Joan Walley: We have talked a lot about sustainable issues and environmental issues but in terms of building design what is your assessment of the way in which homes are designed at the moment and how could we be improving and better designing homes so that we are not just looking at the space outside a house but looking at everything that goes into the design brief internally which presumably, as we touched on earlier, would help with a much longer life of that particular home.

Dr Crowhurst: In thinking about any designs we would have to think about the user and their needs and what their expectations are. If you want longevity in something then you have to think about the people who are going to use it for that length of time and I think all too often the disasters of the past have not taken into account the likely impact of that; the users' needs have not been addressed. I would say that before commissioning designs an evaluation should be done of what the community's needs are in terms of housing design, presenting them with the designs and explaining them.

Q171 Joan Walley: Are you involved with that? If you are not, who is?

Mr Warriner: We have been involved in a number of studies through the housing associations, particularly where we have spoken to focus groups that the housing associations have set up in order to evaluate particular aspects of design and feed that information back to the housing associations so that when they do designs those benefits or desirable qualities can be built in. The other side of that is actually learning the lessons from what we have done in the past through post-occupancy evaluation and again we have been involved in that to a certain extent in some types of construction where the lessons learned are then able to be translated into future design.

Q172 Joan Walley: So you are doing work on that currently.

Dr Crowhurst: We have worked on things like the design quality indicators, housing quality indicators. There is a variety of work that has been done by BRE in support of improved design.

Q173 Mr Challen: I assume you were at the Better Building Summit in October last year organised by the ODPM which led to the Sustainable Buildings Task Group, but you were not represented on that. That seems a bit surprising. Is there any reason you are aware of why you were not on that?

Ms Brownhill: We were represented on one of the sub-committees; Professor Strong was on the Energy Sub-Committee but we were not invited on to the main committee.

Q174 Chairman: Do you know why not?

Dr Crowhurst: We have no idea.

Q175 Chairman: You were not invited to be on the main committee.

Dr Crowhurst: No.

Q176 Chairman: Did you ask to go on it?

Mr Warriner: I think we made fairly rigourous attempts to get on, yes.

Q177 Chairman: Did you complain when you were not?

Mr Warriner: I think various people were spoken to but I would not say that it was a public complaint because that is probably not particularly helpful in that sort of context.

Q178 Mr Challen: Was that a representative kind of task group in terms of the kind of things that we have been talking about? It seems to be very surprising that you were not actually on it and that you were not automatically on it in terms of the main thing rather than just a sub-committee.

Mr Warriner: In certain people's minds there were issues about BRE's role as a potential supplier of the solution in the end. You could look at it and say that that is the way it was probably going to turn out because they recommended that there be a code for sustainable building and they have strongly recommended that it be based on BREEAM and EcoHomes. I think one can understand that there may have been some reservations in certain people's minds about a potential conflict of interest there. As things have turned out we have a result that gives us a very good way forward without it being coloured by any suggestion that we might have influenced it for our own commercial ends. I do not think the outcome is one that we are particularly concerned about; we support the outcome of the Task Group.

Q179 Mr Challen: Do you think that code is an improvement on EcoHomes?

Mr Warriner: As we understand it at the moment the intention is that it will be based very firmly on EcoHomes. One of the things that has been raised is that the individual groups were keen that there be floor levels of performance of certain things; water and energy were two that were picked out. There is not a fundamental problem in doing that; we are already doing that in some cases where particular developers are setting up a minimum standard that they want to achieve. There is a discussion that we need to have with ODPM on this.

Q180 Mr Challen: Is it correct that the code is only applicable to the public sector? If that is the case, why is that?

Dr Crowhurst: I am not aware that the code as such exists. The suggestion of the Sustainable Buildings Task Group is that a code be developed and it be broadly based on BREEAM and EcoHomes as the basis for the development and implementation of a code. You may be confusing it with the European legislation in terms of the energy performance directive in buildings which, in itself at the moment, would only apply to public buildings as I understand it. I do not think there was any suggestion from the SBTG that such a code for sustainable buildings would apply purely to the public sector.

Q181 Mr Francois: If you were not on the Sustainable Buildings Task Group - which I must say I do find quite amazing actually - were any developers on it?

Dr Crowhurst: Ian Coull who is the chairman of the Sustainability Forum which is sponsored by DTI was a member of that group and I think there may well have been other developers. We were asked and did submit evidence to the Sustainable Buildings Task Group. I have copies of that evidence which the Committee may wish to have. It was specifically in relation to BREEAM as a scheme and how that operated and could be operated more widely for the implementation of improved environmental performance.

Q182 Mr Francois: So one or more developers were on the Task Group but the BRE were not.

Mr Warriner: Was the House Builders' Federation represented on it?

Ms Brownhill: Yes, I think so.

Dr Crowhurst: I am not certain.

Mr Warriner: The list is available; we can certainly make sure you have a copy.

Q183 Mr Francois: The point I am seeking to make is that it does strike me as rather extraordinary, given what this Task Group has set out to do, that there was quite a heavy representation of developers or people involved in the industry but you were not on it. That suggests to me that someone was looking for a particular outcome before they began.

Dr Crowhurst: I think you may need to address that question to the people who selected the individuals to be on that working group. I do not think it is something we can really comment on.

Q184 Chairman: That is something that we would like to take up with the minister.

Ms Brownhill: There were a number of people on that group who were pro-environment like the WWF. There were a number of people that we have been working with on the one million sustainable homes initiative, including representatives of the Environment Agency, English Partnerships, who were very supportive. The actual outcomes was very pro the environment and I think if there had not been some developers on the Committee giving it a rubber stamp then it could have been criticised the other way as well. In terms of how we develop EcoHomes and BREEAM we always like to have a healthy representation of the industry there so that that aspect of it is also covered. The Committee did seem to have a balance at least.

Mr Francois: I will not do this to death, but I am just looking at the membership of the body itself and balance is not the first word that springs to mind.

Q185 Joan Walley: If I could just pick up on one of the comments that was made in the last series of exchanges about your non-membership of the Sustainable Buildings Task Group, a comment was made about you not being there for commercial ends. I just wonder whether or not I am wrongly interpreting that, whether that relates to the change in status that BRE had and whether or not you feel that there was a conflict of interest in terms of the whole way in which you get your funding. Could you elaborate a little bit for me, please?

Mr Warriner: I do not think that we felt there was any conflict of interest. The whole investment we have made in BREEAM and EcoHomes is not just us, it is the industry as well. We have taken a long term view; BRE is not a money spinner, it is something that ultimately will become self-sustaining which it needs to do if it is going to continue to support itself. What we have not touched on is the model by which BRE was privatised which means that we are actually owned by a charitable foundation and any profit which we make is actually vested to the charitable foundation which is then spent on education and research.

Q186 Joan Walley: So your status is not a hindrance in terms of developing this whole agenda further forward.

Mr Warriner: Certainly not, no.

Dr Crowhurst: Not at all.

Ms Brownhill: We do not think so.

Chairman: Thank you all very much indeed. We are grateful to you and thank you for your evidence.