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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 1688-i House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE ENVIRONMENT, FOOD AND RURAL AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
Climate change: the "citizens agenda"
Wednesday 25 October 2006 MR PHILIP SELLWOOD and DR NICK EYRE CLLR PAULA BAKER, CLLR TONY NEWMAN and MS CHRISTINE SEAWARD Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 116
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee on Wednesday 25 October 2006 Members present Mr Michael Jack, in the Chair Mr David Drew Patrick Hall Lynne Jones David Lepper Sir Peter Soulsby David Taylor Mr Roger Williams ________________ Memorandum submitted by Energy Saving Trust
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr Philip Sellwood, Chief Executive, and Dr Nick Eyre, Director of Strategy, Energy Savings Trust, gave evidence. Q1 Chairman: In the words of the famous radio programme, if you are all sitting comfortably then we will begin. Can I welcome everybody to this the first evidence session of the Committee's inquiry into climate change. We have called it "the citizen's agenda" in an effort to discover how we can get more of our fellow citizens involved in this very important area of work. We are taking evidence this afternoon from the Energy Savings Trust and the Local Government Association, and I would like to formally welcome the Energy Savings Trust and their Chief Executive, Mr Philip Sellwood, and their Director of Strategy, Dr Nick Eyre. You are both very welcome. Can I thank you at the outset for your very comprehensive written evidence and, also, the information that was attached to it. That is very much appreciated. It may well be that with the constraints of time there are questions that we are not able to put to you orally on which we will want to write to you in order to tease out some more of your views. With that, I want to start by saying that your evidence is quite interesting in overall terms in that it sort of contains a certain amount of frustration, a certain amount of aspiration and hope that things will be done; quite a lot of indication as to things you would like to have happen but, perhaps, not going hard at the barriers to progress. In other words, who actually is stopping a more aggressive stance being taken on the whole subject of energy saving. Mr Sellwood, I do not know whether you would like to comment on my overall impression of your evidence by way of starting? Mr Sellwood: Yes, thank you, Chairman. I think it is fair to say that we have been, in our written evidence, stronger on the analysis in some respects than on the solutions, but on your specific question about the barriers, I think it is really quite important because there may be others who come before you who talk almost exclusively in terms of the lack of resources, for instance, as being a key barrier. Clearly, we would not be saying anything other than "more resources would be terribly helpful" but one of the things that we feel does need addressing, probably even over and above that issue, is the whole question of each and every government department, whether here in Westminster or beyond, actually taking full responsibility for not only energy saving but sustainability generally. What I mean by that is we sense, at the moment, that there is still very much a case of it being led by Defra with other departments coming along behind. It is not necessarily a matter of "Is government joined up"? It is a matter of whether or not sustainability is seen in the DCLG or DfT or the DTI as central to what they are about as opposed to being an add-on to their daily business. We think that is a very, very important issue that needs to be faced. Q2 Chairman: Let me ask you a simple question because this reflects on comments you made in paragraph 2 of your evidence, where you say " ... improve the cost-effectiveness of Government activity on climate change initiatives by joining up the investment in the separate behavioural change activities of Government departments." Who do you think, in an ideal world, ought to be in charge of this area and achieving the points you have just made? Mr Sellwood: In terms of within government, I think the creation of the climate change office, effectively, within Defra, could - and I emphasise "could" - become the organisation that joins up government across government in terms of those individual activities because there are many activities that are taking place in each individual government department but, too often, they are not seen with any sense of synergy from the point of view of the audience. So the average citizen is often seeing things coming from different directions, from different government departments, and we think that just means that they are much less effective than otherwise they might be, and certainly a lot less cost effective than they could be. Q3 Chairman: However, you hope that the new body will take control. Do you actually see any evidence already within government of the kind of co-ordinatory activity that you have just outlined? Mr Sellwood: I think it is a mixed picture, Chairman. I think it is fair to say that, in recent times particularly, Defra have definitely been seen both at official level and ministerial level to be taking a very strong lead on the issue, but if you actually quickly review the other government departments that have a key role we sense that the newly created DCLG has certainly demonstrated a great appetite, at least in the rhetoric to date, for the whole of the question of the sustainability agenda, the DTI and Defra work quite well together, but it is also fair to say that there are other government departments - and we would note we are not entirely convinced yet the Department for Transport have really got the message in terms of sustainability across government. So our response would be that we think it is a mixed picture. Q4 Chairman: Would you like to see, if you like, the ball resting firmly in Defra's court? Do you think that they are actually being proactive enough and focused enough on the whole question of energy saving? In some of our other reports we get the impression there is a great deal of ministerial rhetoric but we do not always get the impression there is the hard slog behind it. Mr Sellwood: I think it is fair to say that one of the criticisms we quite often have is that when any minister stands up to talk about this particular agenda they normally start by saying how important energy efficiency is and then - somewhat churlishly, you might think, perhaps, on our part - spends the next half-an-hour talking about renewables and more exciting areas of technology. So there is no question, we believe, of a gap between that which is talked about and that which needs investing in in terms of resources and, indeed, in terms of Parliamentary/ministerial air time for this particular topic. It really still is somewhat of a Cinderella subject. Q5 Chairman: In the establishment of the Office for Climate Change (I do not know how far that has actually got but if it is moving forward), have you been invited to make recommendations as to how your area of activity should be developed? Mr Sellwood: Yes, it is literally in its infancy. I think it has one person currently constituted within that office. It has literally been a matter of the last couple of months. We have indeed been asked and I personally have actually gone along to make some recommendations as to how we think that office should operate. Indeed, one of the recommendations I have made is that that should become central to helping not only join up government departments in terms of its thinking but preventing duplication in terms of effort because it is not entirely uncommon to come across different government departments doing very similar things, particularly in the area of citizen engagement. Dr Eyre: Can I just add to that, Chairman? My Chief Executive does not even know this yet because it only happened about an hour ago: I have arranged a meeting with people at the Office for Climate Change at their request ---- Q6 Chairman: Does that mean there is more than one ---- ? Dr Eyre: I believe that is the case, yes. Q7 Chairman: So you are going to meet with all two of them. Dr Eyre: I am going to meet with at least two of them. Chairman: At least two of them. Well, you heard it here, folks; we are absolutely up with the news of the latest developments. Q8 David Lepper: Can we just check, Chairman: are those one or two people currently involved in Defra or are they from other departments? Mr Sellwood: The individual that I was referring to, which obviously is now history, was on secondment from the DCLG. Dr Eyre: It is very clearly a Defra focus. Q9 Chairman: That is good and that is something that we can follow up. Resources are inevitably going to weave their way through some of the things we will be talking about this afternoon. Much of the pump-priming money for work in this area is often demanded of the Government or local authorities, but the whole area involves government and commerce, non-governmental organisations, but if we are looking at the people who have got money then clearly climate change has, for example, an effect on insurance companies and retailers (to name but two) and energy service providers. Are all of the partners making a contribution, if you like, over and above selling their commercial services to encourage the evolution of the ethos of energy saving which is very much underpinning the kind of work that the Trust does? Mr Sellwood: I think the answer is, again, that it is a fairly mixed picture. If you look at it by sector, if you look at the energy suppliers, they, for instance, through the energy efficiency commitment, will be spending or at least will be committing somewhere between £350 million and £400 million annually in the quest to encourage and work with their consumers to implement energy efficiency saving measures in the home. So I am sure if you talk (and I am sure you may) to the big energy utilities they would say they are certainly doing their bit in regard to this agenda. Similarly, retailers, particularly retailers in certain sectors - white goods, electronics and so on - would "protest" (probably would be the word I would use) that they are doing a great deal in this regard with labelling, information schemes and so on. It would be our judgment that in all of these sectors, probably with the exception of the energy utilities because of the obligation that is placed upon them, the market leaders tend to be heavily involved. So, if you look at the white goods area, whether it is a machine manufacturer like Bosch or Siemens, they would be very much at the forefront of this agenda. If you look at retailers, the John Lewis' and so on would actually be very much at the head of this queue in terms of this particular agenda. However, what we are not seeing is that consistent throughout. So you can go into some retailers, as I am sure you are aware, today and purchase new electronic items - plasma TVs and DVDs - and you would be forgiven for thinking that the energy debate had never happened; they are not labelled, the staff are not trained, they are not interested, actually, in talking to the public and engaging the public on this agenda. The reason we think this is so fundamentally important is that the scale of the growth, for instance, in new electronics coming forward between now and 2015 according to people such as Sony, will actually dwarf the energy consumption that we currently have on the entire white goods industry. So this is not a small problem, and it is one of the things that we think both the private sector working with government has to pay much, much more regard to. Q10 Mr Drew: Just before we move on to this area of Personal Carbon Allowances, just to be clear in my own mind, in terms of the supply side pressures, where there is this notion you are moving away from supply per se to energy services, is that how you see it? Mr Sellwood: We actually see, conceptually, it is a very attractive option, but we believe it has one fundamental problem that has yet to be addressed, and there is no kind way of putting this. Customers do not trust the suppliers. Why is that important? It is important because, for years and years and years, energy suppliers have been intent, very open, about the need to sell more energy to their consumers, and the consumers know this. What the energy services model seeks to do is to turn that on its head, effectively, and persuade the consumers of the product that the suppliers wish to sell them less. Given the distrust that exists between many consumers and the brands, that is going to be a very, very difficult thing to pursue. Having said that, you would expect me, as the Head of the Energy Savings Trust, to endorse any initiative that is likely to reduce considerably energy demand. Q11 Mr Drew: If we are talking about reducing energy demand are we talking about reducing energy or reducing carbon use? Mr Sellwood: I think we are talking both. One of the things that we emphasise here is yes, of course, for instance, energy efficiency is important but, actually, what we need to do going forward is not just to be more efficient but actually reduce our overall usage and, therefore, our carbon footprint. So those things are really, really important. Energy services could deliver that. Q12 Mr Drew: As a technical issue, where do you start and end in comparison to the Carbon Trust? That is why I asked that question about the relationship between actually reducing carbon and reducing energy. Mr Sellwood: There is a very clear division of audiences. The Carbon Trust predominantly works with large public sector utilities, such as hospitals and universities, and large (and by "large" I mean the 900 largest) companies in the country in terms of their energy use. The Energy Savings Trust, essentially, works with communities, local authorities and 28 million consumers. We are very, very clearly segmented in terms of our audiences. That, I think it is fair to say, had not always been so, but I think we are very, very clear now about where we are operating and where the Carbon Trust is operating. Q13 Mr Drew: Finally, the notion of "cap and trade". Why do we not just talk about "cap"? Let us be honest, we are trying to invent market solutions to situations that are beyond that. We need people to reduce their usage. We should just put a cap on them. Mr Selwood: Could I defer to my expert on the left on trade? Dr Eyre: There are two areas of cap and trade, or just cap if you want to discuss that, currently being talked about. The first is migrating the Energy Efficiency Commitment away from what it is now, which is a scheme that promotes and incentivises (and does so successfully) energy efficiency projects, towards being a cap and trade scheme, ie, a scheme in which suppliers are essentially incentivised to sell less to their customers. The Committee suspended from 3.54 pm to 4.06 pm for a division in the House Q14 Chairman: Dr Eyre, the floor is yours. Dr Eyre: Thank you, Chairman. I concluded what I was saying about the option of capping supplier energy use. The other option which is being discussed is capping energy use at the level of the individual, so-called personal allowances. We see that as certainly a very interesting policy option but one for the future. There are a number of very major challenges before this could be put in place around the information needed, the infrastructure needed, the enforcement, the market, et cetera. We would see the key barrier to this being the need for people to understand what carbon is, how much they use of it and what they can do about it. Q15 Chairman: If I may just interject, you would see this as a personal carbon allowance and not a personal energy allowance? Dr Eyre: It could be either. There is not a great deal of difference as far as the average citizen is concerned because if they are using gas or oil that has got a fixed carbon content that is where most of their energy is being used, so if they do not have a realistic option for fuel switching it is much the same thing. As I said, we see it as an interesting option for the future but people would really need to understand what their budget is and what the currency is if they are to operate successfully in a market, so we would very much urge that citizen engagement comes first and potentially opens the way for personal carbon allowances in the future, but we certainly should not be waiting for personal carbon allowances before we are doing something to address our individual carbon emissions. As far as the specific question is concerned about why cap and trade rather than just cap, clearly the environmental benefit comes from the cap, not the trade. I think there are two arguments for allowing trading. One is an economic efficiency argument, that it is more efficient to allow people who can reduce emissions more cheaply to do so and allow people to trade amongst themselves. We think there is a second more important one which is linked to that. If you imagine setting a cap, for example, per household on energy use you would have to set it at a level that a large, solid-walled, electrically heated home could hope to achieve, and that would be far too high a level to be any use at all in providing an incentive for somebody in a small gas-heated, new, well-insulated flat, so allowing trading allows us to set the cap much lower and that will get more significant environmental benefits. Q16 Mr Drew: But is this not all a bit slow and late in as much as if these interventions are going to be really meaningful we just have to get them in place now? That is why I say concentrate on cap. The trade is going to be, as always, a minefield of complication and detail. Just tell people they have got to use five per cent energy less every year. It will shock people, you will lose elections, but they will understand that for the first time they might be able to do something to save the planet. We need to chase up these issues with the general public, so they really do see what a crisis we are now in, and this is the way to do it. It is like anything: suck it and see. I am sure there will be huge arguments advanced against it but somebody somewhere has to provide some leadership. If they can do it in places like California and be quite vigorous in the way in which they are pursuing not just market solutions but, as you said, real interventionist solutions ----- Dr Eyre: Far be it from me to tell politicians how to lose elections, Chairman. I do not think that is our role. Q17 Chairman: You can; most people do. Do not feel you have to stay out of the fun. Dr Eyre: What I would say is that we agree that there is a need for political leadership here and what we are saying is that that can be done without having a cap and trade system in place because that will take time. That leadership needs to come from government and others in leadership positions persuading individuals that the 50 per cent of emissions that they as individuals are directly responsible for is something they can do something about. Most people know that climate change is an issue but they themselves are doing little or nothing about it, in many cases because they either do not realise they can do something about it or because they do not know what they can do about it. There are some real challenges we can address before we get onto the issue of capping emissions. Chairman: I hope in the remainder of the replies you give you underscore your practical suggestions as to how we can address the agenda which you have very clearly outlined. Q18 David Lepper: We are halfway through the tenth Energy Saving Week, I believe, and I am sad to see that up to yesterday only 33 Members of Parliament had signed up to the Early Day Motion supporting Energy Saving Week, but there we are. During this week the Energy Saving Trust is encouraging us all to think about what we do in our daily lives, from the small changes like switching off lights and only putting enough water in the kettle to fill the cup that we need to switching the kind of boiler we use or deciding not to use a car or to use public transport. The Energy Saving Trust has been around since 1992 and I just wonder if you can say what you feel over that period of time, and particularly more recently, has been the government intervention that has done most (if there is any at all) to encourage those kinds of behaviour changes, whether they are the small ones or the big decisions about capital expenditure. Mr Selwood: In recent times there are two things that stand out. One is around what one of your colleagues on the left there mentioned, state intervention, effectively. One of the single biggest impacts in the last two years has been the Government taking the decision that, from 1 April this year, if you put a new boiler into your house as a replacement you have to put in a highly efficient condensing boiler. On its own you might think that is a very small thing but one and a half million boilers are replaced every year, and in terms of carbon reduction the market for condensing boilers moved from about five per cent to about 15 per cent over the previous 15 years. In the last figures I saw for the last quarter condensing boilers were 89 per cent of the market and, just to give you an illustration of how efficient they are in relative terms, they operate at 92-92 per cent efficiency compared to most average boilers operating at anywhere between 75 and 80 per cent if you are lucky. Mandatory regulation is one example of something very significant in terms of efficiency and carbon reduction. The other one, which we have already referred to, is the development of the Energy Efficiency Commitment, which is a single measure, an obligation measure, working with the energy utilities. It saves somewhere in the order of 300,000 tonnes of carbon every year, is highly cost effective and an obligation but, interestingly enough, an obligation that now appears almost to have become part of the metabolism of energy utilities such that I suspect that even if it were not an obligation many of those utilities would now choose to continue with that activity. The reason that has also been important, and not just in carbon reduction terms, is that it has led them to think seriously about the development of the Energy Services Model which was mentioned earlier. One regulatory, one more market-led mechanism are just two examples. Q19 David Lepper: Would you make a recommendation for the next step in mandatory requirements, whether it is at the level of the householder or the supplier? Mr Selwood: There is one, which is not EST policy currently but could very well be. If you are asking me for my personal view, we currently have eight million cavity walls uninsulated in the UK. It is economically and environmentally a complete no-brainer with regard to whether or not people should do this. It not only reduces carbon dramatically; it also pays back its capital cost within about 16-18 months and then continues to pay you a premium every year thereafter for between 25 and 40 years. Currently this is a voluntary mechanism but if you were looking at a household measure that would yield singly the largest carbon reduction to the greatest benefit of both the householder and UK plc I would say it would be cavity wall insulation. Q20 David Lepper: And yet you say it is not a policy of the Energy Saving Trust. Mr Selwood: No, it is not policy because we believe that at the moment we have within the Energy Efficiency Commitment the ability for suppliers to deliver and they are delivering. The concern we have, as you will be, I am sure, aware, is that the current commitment is out to consultation for the next round from 2008 to 2011 and that will require, if it is to deliver on its targets, a step change of insulation in domestic properties from round about this year 400,000 properties each and every year to a minimum of a million properties. I think we are probably moving, which is why I say it is not currently policy, from a mechanism that currently is a market-led mechanism to one where we will have to think very much harder about whether we can meet that step change and, if not, do we have to bring in regulation? Q21 Lynne Jones: Would you explain how the Energy Services Model could ensure over a very short time, and we are talking about short timescales for what we need to do, that those 800,000 or however many you mentioned cavity walls get insulated? Mr Selwood: As the regulation and the framework are currently constructed I do not think it could if you are talking the short term that I think you are talking because the essence of the Energy Services Model means that the current regulatory framework has encouraged, and we believe appropriately so, that if a consumer is unhappy with their energy supplier they can walk away. In order for some of these more expensive capital up-front costs to be recouped by energy suppliers they would argue, I am sure, if they were sitting in this chair that in order to do that they must be able to lock in their customers in the way, for instance, that you might through a mortgage or a financial product. That is not currently available. If that were available then I think there would be a possibility that they could get enough sign-up but at the moment in terms of the time frame you are talking about I think that would be quite difficult. Dr Eyre: I think that is right. The Energy Services Model is very attractive and from a theoretical perspective we have been trying to encourage people to go down that route, both energy suppliers and other players, including local authorities, for the last ten years with some success in some areas where there is, say, a district heating scheme, a CHP scheme, but where you are talking about individual households with individual boilers it is not currently an attractive business model, which is why it is not happening in the market. Q22 Lynne Jones: We went to California and there they have massive programmes of photovoltaic installations with the energy companies and energy efficiency measures for businesses. The energy companies come in, do the work and say, "You will pay for it through your bills because you will have reduced consumption and therefore your bills will not be any higher. You will just be that much more energy efficient". We could not have that model here, you are saying? Mr Selwood: As a business model you could because there are very good examples already where large businesses working with the private sector, local authorities working with the private sector, do exactly as you have described, but if you are talking about engaging 26 million households, which is where the problem is, ----- Q23 Lynne Jones: They do it street by street. Mr Selwood: You could not do that here as we currently are constituted. I am not saying we should not; I am just saying that we could not because we have got a different market structure. One of the things that we are very anxious to do is to get other players involved in this market place, and one of the initiatives that the EST has brokered with the Treasury is working with our major retailers to see whether or not retailers might get involved in the business of selling energy on an Energy Services Model, because frankly there is, to date anyway, very little appetite being shown by the incumbent utilities to change their market model because they are doing very well, thank you. Q24 Lynne Jones: If you wanted to have cavity insulation at that level over a short period of time what order of magnitude might you need to put in in terms of grants to support those developments? Mr Selwood: At an individual household level, if you want to go and put cavity walling into an average home today, you will pay anywhere from £200 to £250. That is a subsidised price and probably the economic price is about £400, but, interestingly enough, we have done quite a lot of market research over the last four or five years and one of the biggest barriers is that individual citizens think it is considerably more expensive. They usually start with four figures in front of it, so there is a real education role, which obviously we, working with our network and with local authorities and ----- Q25 Lynne Jones: You are not answering my question. What sort of cash are we talking about that the Government might need to put up? Dr Eyre: I think it is a related question because the Energy Efficiency Innovation Review that Defra and the Treasury did last year showed that an information campaign on its own could deliver about the same amount as the current subsidy regime of about a one-third subsidy within the Energy Efficiency Commitment but that the best way to go forward would be to have both and that that could give us perhaps 50 per cent more activity. The cost of the advice programme is an order of magnitude smaller than the subsidy cost within the Energy Efficiency Commitment. Q26 Lynne Jones: What proportion of people who get advice actually do something about it when they have to arrange for it themselves? Mr Selwood: It depends entirely and it comes to the heart of one of our strategic initiatives, if I may be so bold as to put it forward. The answer is not enough but there are certain circumstances, one around the offering of fiscal incentives, and your colleague over on the right asked about practical measures. I will give you a really good and current example. Normally the conversion rate for advice to action might be typically, for any one individual, anywhere between ten and 20 per cent, which actually is not bad, but if you start attaching a credible fiscal incentive to it --- and many of you may be aware of an initiative that is being currently run by Centrica based on an innovation model that we developed about three years ago, and it runs like this. The energy utility with the local authority have constructed a scheme whereby, in return for implementing energy efficiency measures in the home, so loft insulation, double glazing, cavity walls, people get a rebate on their council tax. There are two staggering facts about these schemes. I think they are currently running in 18 local authorities. One is how small the rebate is. It is somewhere between £50 and £100, depending on the local authority and the scheme, but probably more important and staggering is that the conversion rate from attitude to action is about 60 per cent. We have trawled back in the mists of time and we cannot find another single initiative that has delivered that level of conversion. We put forward a paper to the Treasury last year. We think it is credible with £100 million of public money to run that scheme throughout the local authorities in the land, and again we just think that this is one of those things that stops short of regulation but would, because of the cost effectiveness of insulation measures, pay back in a very short space of time and obviously help very quickly, in the time frame that you are talking about, to deliver on the carbon projections that need to be delivered if we are going to meet the target. Lynne Jones: It shows how people hate council tax! Q27 Chairman: In that context, and I do not know how close you have been to the Stern Review, is that going to help, do you think, in the type of area it has been looking at, to give an underpinning and a justification for the use of public money in this area? There is a phrase I keep seeing in official papers which is called "the social cost of carbon" and I have yet to find out what this phrase means but it somehow suggests that society should value saving carbon at a certain rate. There should be some imputed value, in which case the Government would take collective justification for reordering its spending priorities to reflect the value that society puts on saving carbon. We have just discussed the juxtaposition between a commercial model for the saving of carbon via insulation as opposed to the use of public funds to respond to the council tax reduction programme which you mentioned. Are we going to get any nearer what I might call a rationale for the expenditure of public monies in this area? Dr Eyre: The social cost of carbon is broadly speaking what you have said it is, Chairman. It is calculated by assessing the damage to the economy and to society globally that might result from climate change and essentially scaling that back to responsibility for emissions from the UK economy. From memory the current value that is recommended by Treasury is about £80 per tonne of carbon, and that number is being used. For example, it was used in calculation of the new building regulations that came into force this year. They did assume that the building regulations are calculated on the basis of what is a cost effective level to insulate a building to and "cost effective" was taken to mean at current or expected energy prices plus £70-£80 per tonne of carbon, so it is already being used in policy, and in that sense is reordering government priorities. You asked about the Stern Review. We do not know what it will say any more than you do. I understand that it will be published next week. Our expectation, from its terms of reference, is that it will focus very largely on the international dimension and we think that is appropriate. What has already been in the media from a speech that Professor Stern made in Mexico a couple of weeks ago indicates that they are likely to be saying that now is the time for action, that the benefits of doing something to reduce climate change certainly justify the current costs, and we would very much endorse that, particularly from our point of view, because most of the current costs are negative. For every tonne of carbon that is saved as a result of our activities it costs the Government £6 but it saves the country as a whole £180, and the same is true for most energy efficiency programmes. Q28 Chairman: Is that using the social cost of carbon model in the UK? Dr Eyre: That is not using the social cost of carbon model at all. We are saying that even if the social cost of carbon was zero we should still be doing this. Q29 Chairman: But when you quote a ratio of £6 to £180 where does the £180 come from? Dr Eyre: What I am saying is that for every pound the Government spends we save a tonne of carbon, but associated with that tonne of carbon are wider benefits in the economy, mainly through homeowners making savings on their energy bills which add up to £180. Q30 Chairman: If the trade-off is that good why throughout your evidence are you in many cases flagging up a lack of resources to take forward the kinds of programme that deliver such a fantastic rate of return? Mr Selwood: Because unfortunately the great British public are not familiar with classic endogenous economic theory and do not act like rational beings. The reason why we believe the council tax thing has worked is that it does three things. It brings very firmly the understanding to the end consumer of the real benefit to them, not just in terms of the council tax but also in the fact that it is going to save you between £160 and, in today's prices, over £200 every single year for the next 25 years. That is a pretty compelling argument. However, the reality is that most people do not know that and, bearing in mind that they also think that the cost of the solution is roughly five times that which it really is, it is not surprising that they do not queue up to do cavity wall insulation. When you bring them together with the right actors though and the people who can implement it and you explain the economics of it, you can then explain, which is increasingly what we are doing, that that has a social benefit as well in terms of the environment and, hey, presto, you have got a 60 per cent conversion rate. The problem is that there is a huge market barrier between people's understanding, not just from an environmental point of view also but from an economics point of view, but as soon as you point that out to people you have no problem selling the product. That is the reason why we have resources to do that, because all the evidence says that if you do not invite people to make that judgment, if you do not give them the information, if you are not out there with 46 energy advice centres telling people, they do not do it. If we could find a way of doing it without the resource then we would be as happy as anybody. Q31 Chairman: Where does the £100 come from? Mr Selwood: In this instance it is coming from a fund between the utilities and the local authorities because they are sufficiently convinced, and I am sure you may hear it from the following witnesses, that this is something that works because, of course, there are spin-offs for local authorities too in terms of reducing fuel poverty, improving houses to a decent home standard, et cetera. There is a whole host of compelling reasons why people want to do this. At the moment, we will be perfectly honest, we have been singularly unsuccessful in persuading the Financial Secretary of the Treasury that this is something that we should be putting public money into, but we are convinced that if we really want to get speedy resolution in this very difficult area where market failure is taking place it is a very appropriate use of public money. Q32 Patrick Hall: We have talked about local authorities and the powers they perhaps ought to have. The Budget this year allocated £20 million, I think, to help local authorities promote home energy efficiency and I think in your evidence to us you point out that 25 per cent of that has already been diverted to the trials into smart metering. Is that a good use of those resources, do you think? Mr Selwood: I am saying two things. First of all, the £20 million that you refer to was additional money announced in the Budget which was essentially to deliver on energy efficiency in local authorities and in the domestic sector. We would not say that money devoted to smart metering trials, or indeed to renewables, was a bad thing, clearly we would not, but equally we would say that there is still at the base of the pyramid an absolute requirement to get basic energy efficiency into local authority housing, and I am sure colleagues behind will reinforce that. Until you do that, frankly, putting wind turbines on public buildings and the like is a great symbol but actually, if you find that the building is not thermally basically efficient, if it has not been lagged, if it has not been insulated, you are wasting public money not investing in it. David Taylor: This includes Notting Hill Leaders of the Opposition houses as well, I understand. Q33 Lynne Jones: It depends whether their house is well insulated. Mr Selwood: I could not possibly comment. Q34 Patrick Hall: We have been talking about clarity of information and people becoming aware and making the connections. You will know that the Centre for Sustainable Energy has said that Defra and yourselves have "not invested in establishing an academically robust body of evidence that demonstrates the energy and carbon savings benefits of providing individuals with advice ...". Do you accept that point and, if so, what are you planning to do about it? Mr Selwood: We accept that there is no academic institution that you can go to that will be able to say, "If you do the following things we will be able to draw a line of sight between this and the saving incurred". We fully concur with that. Q35 Patrick Hall: I did not ask about an institution; that is quite different, is it not? The point being made by the Centre for Sustainable Energy is the need to try and establish some evidence; "an academically robust body of evidence" is the way that organisation puts it. I was simply asking you do you accept that there is a need to do that? Mr Selwood: In some areas, but basic energy efficiency, no. We are very clear what we invest and what your return in carbon saving is. If you are talking about new technologies, for instance, I would absolutely subscribe to that view. With some of the new technologies that are coming to the market place now there is as yet insufficient underpinning, academically, commercially or otherwise, that these products will do what they say. Q36 Patrick Hall: I am sorry: that was not my question. I will try again, should I? What the Centre for Sustainable Energy has said is that yourselves and Defra have not sought to establish a robust body of evidence that demonstrates the energy and carbon savings benefits of providing individuals with choice, with information, with advice; right? Do you accept that point? Do you understand my question, because you have not answered it at all? Dr Eyre: I understand the question and I think the answer would be no, I do not agree. I find it rather curious because one of the organisations which provides energy saving advice for us is the Centre for Sustainable Energy, and I have to say they do it very well. All our Defra funded programmes are regularly evaluated. Those include the advice programmes. Those evaluations were scrutinised in the analysis which was done by Government with independent consultants for the Climate change Programme which was published earlier in the year. That is where the figures that I quoted of £6 of government money being required for one tonne of carbon saving came from, so they have been thoroughly scrutinised by Government as far as we are concerned. They have been published and the publication is on the Defra website. Q37 Patrick Hall: So the money spent and the effort made to provide people with advice does not have to translate into being able to demonstrate that that has had carbon savings benefits? Dr Eyre: Yes. The way we evaluate our advice programmes is to ask people who have received the advice what they have done and to estimate - there is some estimation involved - the carbon savings that result from that, but those estimations are based on very well established models of how homes behave. It would not be cost effective to go out and physically monitor every house to whom we provide advice. Q38 Patrick Hall: So you can tell the Centre for Sustainable Energy that you are indeed already doing that and you are doing that through your own resources? Mr Selwood: Yes, we have a fully constituted evaluation group. We would be very happy for anybody to come and look at its results and it is thoroughly independent and very robust. Q39 Patrick Hall: Obviously, the Centre for Sustainable Energy does not realise that. I would like to move on to your own evidence now on this subject of availability of information and awareness of climate change, which is on page 10 of your evidence. You say in a nutshell, and I think I am summarising it fairly, that there is a pretty good general level of awareness of climate change but people do not link that general awareness to their own behaviour, and you go on to say at paragraph 39, "There is a mass of information on home energy efficiency available to consumers through different channels, but this can be confusing and inconsistent". So, presumably, you would like to see clarity and light shone upon these matters. You go on to cite from the IPPR's publication Warm Words, which talks about the discourse on these matters being confusing chaotic and unproductive. You say at paragraph 41 that you have already adopted "detailed market segmentation techniques based upon a combination of attitudinal and socio-demographic variables". What does that mean? Mr Sellwood: What that means basically is that, for the first time (which is actually recognised in the IPPR research), an independent body has actually cut up, so to speak, the UK population into recognisable social groupings and their attitudes and, indeed, their behaviour with regard to energy efficiency and other areas of sustainability; so it is the first time we have tried to get to grips with an evidence base that is based on something rather more robust than, "Would it not be nice if people actually took this advice and did something with it." It is based on the very well-known Experian model, which is, in fact, a private sector model based on all of the post codes in the UK. So, for the first time, we can start (and I emphasise start) to recognise, for instance, on a geographical, a social basis where those homes are, where those families are, where energy efficiency has actually taken place, where it has not taken place. So, it is a first real attempt to underpin what probably some might describe in the past as a feeling with some real evidence in terms of market research, and that, tied up with the output which you referred to earlier, hopefully means that we are aiming at the right social groupings and we are also measuring the right output in terms of our evaluation, because, you are right, we are very clear, and we were quite pleased that in that document they said this was looking like the best segmentation model around in this particular area. Q40 Patrick Hall: How do you communicate with the people within the segment? Mr Sellwood: Through basic marketing, classic marketing. Q41 Patrick Hall: Such as? Mr Sellwood: It might be direct mail; it might be through local authorities, a whole host of marketing techniques. What you do not do, or you do not do very often, is attempt to do a mass marketing campaign and hope that a lot of people turn on the TV and hear about energy efficiency. What we are trying to do is to look at those segments and to look at particular ways of reaching those segments. It might be through communities, it might be through faith groups, it might be through the church, there are any number of channels to those individual consumers and communities, and it is a highly complex and complicated exercise, but we think that is what we need to do. Q42 Patrick Hall: More complex than it needs to be. This is just like political parties nowadays. They use these sorts of techniques of trying to identify all kinds of socio-economic factors that they do not verify by going out and doing the one thing that really matters, which is to knock on doors or telephone people and speak to them. Why do you not just save a lot of time and energy by going and knocking on the doors of people and talking to them and following up with them for the next six months so that they know the cost of cavity wall insulation? Mr Sellwood: Could I talk to that, because that is exactly what we do. Once we have used the segmentation model, once we have found those customers, we have 46 energy advice centres up and down the country, which may be based in local authorities, may be based in stand alone areas, and they are literally going out knocking on doors in certain circumstances, working with installers, working with double-glazing organisations to identify consumers who have that need who have been found by those marketing and segmentation techniques so that we are talking to the people who need it. There is no point in knocking on a door and finding that actually they have done all this stuff; we obviously want to direct our resources as effectively as possible. Q43 Sir Peter Soulsby: Can I take you to the part of your evidence where you tell us about the new initiative on sustainable energy networks and perhaps ask you to say a little bit more about those. You are telling us that they will become the key local delivery element of our carbon saving activities, et cetera. Can you say how they will be different from what you are doing at the moment? Dr Eyre: Yes, and in fact it picks up very well on a point from the last question. One of the things we do try to do is analyse our own weaknesses in organisation and what we could do better. We have had an energy efficiency advice centre network for many years which, as we have emphasised, is cost-effective but we still want to do better. We found two weaknesses in it. Firstly, it was only talking to people about home energy efficiency, it was not talking to them about the new agenda of microgeneration, it was not talking to them about what they can do to reduce carbon emissions from their travel choices, and that is a missing piece of the jigsaw that we wish to fill. The second thing we found was that too often we were just giving a piece of advice and then leaving and not going back to the customer in some months time and saying, "Okay, six months ago you told us you were going to install some new glazing. Have you done it? Can we help you, advise you on the right sort?" So, it is an attempt to build a much better relationship with customers. Admittedly, that takes a little more resource. We are piloting this concept in three parts of the UK, in Northern Ireland, in the North East and in part of East Anglia. We are finding that the carbon emissions reductions we are getting in those areas are twice as big as in the other parts of the country; the cost-effectiveness is still very good; so we are convinced that this more holistic model, which also involves building a better relationship with the customers, is the way forward. We are in the process of putting that information in front of government in the hope that they will be prepared to support the roll out of this development across the UK. So, this is an idea that came out of the 2003 Energy White Paper, we have not rushed at it, we have piloted it, we have evaluated it, we are now convinced it is the right way to go forward. Q44 Sir Peter Soulsby: I heard there your description of the gaps in what you are doing at the moment. What I did not understand from what you said there is quite how this new approach will fill those gaps. Can you explain? Mr Sellwood: It goes to the heart of the two questions. One thing that we will be doing much more of is much more outreach activity. So, rather than waiting for customers to come to us, this will be a much more proactive means of actually reaching communities, reaching individual householders; so it literally will be working with local outreach groups, local faith groups the Women's Institute, you name it, getting the message across, and then picking off individual communities and householders and actually following them up literally on a six-month basis, because at the moment it is a one hit. We come along, say, "Do you want loft insulation? Yes, you do. Good." You have done loft insulation and then traditionally the relationship is ended. What we are trying to do is say, okay, you may not be able to afford to do all of these things at all once, but have you thought about the next step of cavity wall insulation, or microgeneration, or whatever it might be. Q45 Sir Peter Soulsby: That sounds like something that is going to require a tremendous number of people. Do you have the resources to do that? Mr Sellwood: Interestingly enough, it will not require very many more people at all, because what we are trying to do is leverage off the individual groups in the community. So, we will be using our staff to effectively leverage going along to a community, creating a situation where they are then taking the message back into their own community. We are trying to, in a sense, get more than matched funding. We are not talking about developing a network of hundreds of people - that is not what we are about. In fact, we are not talking about expanding the numbers at all; it is just about how effectively we use them. Dr Eyre: There is also another element we also see can improve our cost-effectiveness going forward, which is that some people, not all but an increasing number, are looking to get information from the web rather than by phone, and that is a more cost-effective way for us to provide it. So we are doing more web-based activity. Q46 Chairman: What would be the roll out cost to do this throughout England? Mr Sellwood: We think probably about 15 million. Q47 Chairman: In total? Mr Sellwood: At the moment the network costs about 10 million annually. We think probably it would cost 25 million annually to roll this out nationally. Q48 Chairman: So an extra 15 million? Mr Sellwood: Yes, and to give it some perspective, that is to reach five million customers by the means that I have just described, and to save, remind me Nick, in terms of carbon. Dr Eyre: We would look to be saving something like a million tonnes of carbon by 2010. Q49 Chairman: Let us just be absolutely clear. You said there was a difference between, was it five million and--- Mr Sellwood: The advice network currently costs about 10 million annually, and what we are saying is that for £25 million annually you could get this deep service model rolled out nationally. Q50 Chairman: So, for an extra 15 million, you could cover the whole of England? Dr Eyre: The UK. Q51 Chairman: The whole of the UK. If it is that good, why is not the Secretary of State for the Environment at the moment beating a way to your door with a cheque for 15 million quid? Mr Sellwood: It is a bit like the question around: if cavity wall insulation is so good why are the consumers queuing up? Our frustration, I assure you, Chairman, is greater than yours. We are not suggesting it is perfect - I hope I did not give that impression - but we believe that this is a combination of solutions matched with a combination of audiences out there. For a relatively small amount of money we can deliver a very substantial carbon hit, and it is equally frustrating to us that at the moment we are not successfully getting that message across. Q52 Chairman: If the nation values carbon at £80 a tonne, does that not, extrapolated by the number of tonnes that we have to save, represent a compelling case for this money to be made available? Dr Eyre: We believe that, Chairman, and I can assure you that we will be putting that case very strongly to both Defra and to the Treasury? Chairman: I know there are appendices to the information you have sent us on this, but if you wanted to expand a little bit more about the rate of return on that I think we would find that very useful information. Q53 Sir Peter Soulsby: I am sure we would. I note from the evidence that, as things stand at the moment, you are waiting for the pilot to be completed and then perhaps, if you convince the department, you are hoping to roll it out from April 2008. That is quite some way away and then there is the process of rolling it out beyond then. If it is so evidently a good thing, surely you want to be getting on with it. Dr Eyre: Yes. There clearly are time constraints, but we would be happy to look at rolling it out somewhat earlier than that. Q54 Sir Peter Soulsby: You drew attention to the lack of specific funding, the transport element in this. Would you like to expand on that? As I understand it you do not have any particular funding for that at the moment, and that is something you do feel would pay dividends if it were funded? Mr Sellwood: Essentially, we have managed to persuade the DTI, Defra and DCLG that this initiative is a very cost-effective use of public money in terms of both carbon-saving and delivering on the Energy White Paper objectives. I have to say, we have been, to date, unsuccessful in persuading the Department for Transport that engaging with the consumer in this way represents a direction of travel that they necessarily wish to take. Q55 Chairman: Or not take, as the case may be. Mr Sellwood: Or not take. I can only give you my view of their view, but my view of their view would be that the two areas that they wish to concentrate on are technology and fuel development and mass market campaigning around transport. To your colleagues' earlier question, we have looked at mass marketing, we have been there, done that; it is not a very cost-effective way of reaching consumers; you have to get to them where they are. We are very disappointed, but we continue to work hard with the DFT to persuade them that this is the right way to go. However, we have a reserve position in that we have already suggested to Defra that, as the network is developed, people are already asking us for this information. If the Government is to present a credible face on the whole question of sustainable energy, including transport, perhaps Defra would like to fund it. Chairman: Maybe Defra can arrange a public expenditure transfer from the Department for Transport so that they can fund that. Q56 Lynne Jones: You have said that we could generate 30-40 per cent of our energy needs through microgeneration by 2050. Should we be prioritising such developments now, given what you have said earlier about the importance of energy efficiency? Dr Eyre: One slight correction, 30 to 40 per cent of our electricity needs, not our energy needs. I think we should be prioritising, developing, demonstrating the technology. For some of these technologies it is too early for them to be rolled out as mass market technologies. Of the particularly important technologies, micro-scale combined heat and power, essentially a combined heat and power station scaled down to the level of the individual dwelling, are just beginning to enter the market. We need to see how well they work in real homes. They have been tested in laboratories, they work fine in laboratories, but do they when the kids kick them is the sort of question that needs to be addressed. The other technology we would have high hopes of is micro-wind turbines, which have already been referred to. They are certainly a very exciting technology. What we find we do not know, and it may be surprising to the Committee, we do not know how windy it is at rooftop height in this country - people have never gone around measuring wind speeds at that height - and the output of micro-wind turbines is very sensitive to wind speed; so there is some more work to be done before we can assess quite how effective these technologies will be in different locations, and they are likely to have very different effectiveness and cost-effectiveness in different locations. So, our assessment of 30 to 40 per cent was based on best guesses, but best guesses are not good enough if you are going to put technology in somebody's home and give them a reasonable assurance about how much energy it will produce, that it will work when they need it. All those sorts of real issues need to be addressed. So, we are very much still saying, yes, basic energy efficiency technologies first, but also let us get on and demonstrate some of these new technologies so that there is another generation of technologies available when we have filled all the cavities and insulated all the lofts. Q57 Lynne Jones: Would these kinds of developments depend on substantial government support, and is the Government going about it in the right way? Mr Sellwood: I think some will. It is important to clarify that, although we talk about it, there is no such thing as the microgeneration market. There are a whole series of technologies that are at different levels of development and maturity. For instance, some of those, like solar PV, unless we see something dramatic, possibly from the other side of the world, will remain cost ineffective for many years to come without public subsidy. However, there are others like micro-CHP, potentially small wind ground source heat pumps that already are just about near the commercial market. I think the answer to your question is that we have to be very selective about those technologies we continue to support. We operate a sort of market transformation curve, effectively, and the key judgment is when to advise government to stop supporting a technology and reinvesting those funds in technologies that are further from market. Clearly, if you are in the industry, you may have a desire to see your technology continuing to receive subsidy beyond market entry, and it is part of our role to hopefully advise government when, as an independent organisation, those technologies should or should not be supported. So, yes, they should be supported where it is appropriate, but we should not be thinking that we have got to support some of those technologies for the next 20 years with public money, because the answer is we do not. Q58 Lynne Jones: To what extent is factored into your assessment the importance of increasing volume, because obviously the cost of these technologies would dramatically be reduced if there is a demand there? Mr Sellwood: Volume is important, but actually one of the key issues that perhaps does not get the airing that it deserves, which is probably as important and, in some technologies, more important, is the ability of the individual householder to get what we call export equivalents of energy. For instance, at the moment if you buy energy you might be paying nine or ten pence a kilowatt. If you tried to export it, you would be lucky to get one or two pence. What we are saying is that if you as a consumer were guaranteed the same price in selling it as you were in buying it, that would absolutely dramatically reduce the economic viability of some of these technologies. Q59 Chairman: Just fill in why cannot that occur? One of the things that is a bit odd in a situation where electricity is a homogeneous commodity and you may have your electricity supplied by supplier A, how does supplier A get your electricity to knock it off your bill when it goes back into a great big pool? Mr Sellwood: The answer is it is all technically possible, but we do not have a sort of feeding tariff, for instance, like they do in Germany, so there is no real requirement for individual companies to deliver export equivalents because we have got a liberalised market. In Germany they say, if you encourage householders to implement microgeneration, you will give them - not only, interestingly enough, in Germany - equal equivalents but actually a greater sum of money because you are actually, by receiving that generated electricity, not having to make investment in large-scale plant. Q60 Chairman: Why is it not happening? Mr Sellwood: Because at the end of the day the individual suppliers would see that at the moment they have got a great deal currently: because they are selling at ten pence and they are buying at one. Q61 Chairman: You have just described the commercial reality. You have not actually answered the question why or, turn it round the other way, what in policy terms has to be done to make it happen? Mr Sellwood: It is exactly as I have described, and it is one of the recommendations we make in the Strategy Review we did for DTI, which is that if you want to seriously reduce the route to market, there are two things you need to do, one is to drive up the volume and the other is actually to guarantee export equivalents. Q62 Chairman: If it is such a good deal, and it has worked effectively in Germany, why is not our DTI doing it? What is your assessment of their inability to transform a good idea into reality? Dr Eyre: To be fair to the DTI, as part of their microgeneration strategy, they did essentially put electricity suppliers on one year's notice: "Come up with a scheme which is acceptable or we will to look to change the regulations so that customers do get at least a fair price, something approaching the value of electricity for exports." Q63 Chairman: Do you sense that the supply side is working to try and find a way round this problem? Mr Sellwood: I think they are, for two reasons. Firstly, they are under threat that if they do not do something voluntarily to suit perhaps their commercial requirements it will be legislated and it might be a bit more painful; secondly, to the earlier questions, some of the suppliers, although obviously it is commercially confidential, we know, are working around this issue as part of their energy services package. Clearly, if you are looking to sell a micro CHP boiler at three thousand pounds, you are not going to sell it under the same sort of financial and business model that they are currently operating. So, they are using these sorts of things as a means of creating a package, and I think there will be, before the year end, one or two of the suppliers coming forward with proposals, but I think at the moment the best deal you can get is about three and a half pence from Powergen. Q64 Lynne Jones: I find all the Government schemes very confusing. We have got the Low Carbon Buildings Programme, the Environmental Transformation Fund (that is on microgeneration) and then we have got energy efficiency funds. What could be done to cut through this confusion? I believe somehow the Government actually wants to confuse us because they can announce all these initiatives, 10 million a year, and they put extra money for microgeneration and take it from energy efficiency. How can we cut through all this so we can see clearly what is going on and whether there is a consistent plan that prioritises investment where it needs to be prioritised? Mr Sellwood: There is no question - and I will ask Nick to add to this - that there is huge complexity. I would not, however, think that you could probably have a single suite of policies that would cover all of the ground, because the Energy Efficiency Commitment covers different things to that which the Microgeneration Strategy covers, but, having said that, there is, in our view, real opportunity to reduce the number of those initiatives. You refer to the Environmental Transformation Fund. It has been announced, but actually we do not know what it is. The reality is that a fund has been announced, we do not quite know what its output is going to deliver and we do not know how it is necessarily going to impact on existing policy instruments; so that is an example of where we could certainly see greater clarity. That is fair to say, is it not, in terms of the Environmental Fund? Dr Eyre: Yes. I think it is probably helpful to distinguish between policy instruments that support established technologies and policy instruments for new technologies. We would see the Energy Efficiency Commitment being the policy that supports cost-effective energy efficiency in the household sector. The Renewables Obligation does the same for large-scale renewables, in theory for all renewables, but has not been very well designed for the micro-renewables. We think there is a weakness in policy for supporting micro renewables which we would like to see addressed by the sorts of means that Philip has been talking about through changing the tariffs, but there is also a need for grant support for the new up and coming technologies. I think we agree with you; there are too many bits and pieces of grant funds. There is the Low Carbon Buildings Programme One, the Low Carbon Buildings Programme Two, the separate schemes for biomass. We are not saying that the same rate of support is needed for everything, but packaging these together in a more sensible way would mean that more than three people understood the full policy architecture. Q65 David Lepper: You have just mentioned the Environmental Transformation Fund. It was launched, I think, earlier this year, but, am I right, it is not going to announce the full scope of its work until 2008? What do you believe is the reason for that long gap between fanfare launch, presumably, and knowing exactly what it is going to be about? Mr Sellwood: All I can say about the fund is we understand that its goal is to support investment in low-carbon technology. We believe that a core part of that should be around energy efficiency. I can absolutely say to you with certainty, I have no idea what is in the Government's mind in terms of postponing its delivery as opposed to its launch to 2008. We are as much in the dark as you are. Chairman: Gentlemen, thank you very much indeed. You have set our inquiry off, I think, in a very good way, you have given us a lot of stimulating things. There may well be some further questions that we would like to pursue with you. If, on reflection, there is anything else you would like to contribute, please do not hesitate to let us know in writing. Thank you very much for your contribution. Memorandum submitted by Local Government Association
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Councillor Paula Baker, LGA Environment Board Member, Councillor Tony Newman, LGA Environment Board Member, and Ms Christine Seaward, Environment Futures Manager, Hampshire County Council, Local Government Association, gave evidence. Q66 Chairman: Can I now welcome as witnesses representatives of the Local Government Association. Before introducing them, may I apologise for the delay in bringing you on, but I saw you in the audience enjoying the last evidence session, so I hope you do not feel your time has been wasted and we did have a division which slightly slowed thing up. We have Councillor Tony Newman from the Local Government Association, who is an Environment Board Member, Councillor Paula Baker, who is also an Environment Board Member, and from Hampshire County Council the Environment Futures Manager, Christine Seaward. For the record, Councillors Baker and Newman, which are your respective local authorities? Cllr Newman: The London Borough of Croydon. Cllr Baker: Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council. Q67 Chairman: You are very welcome indeed. You have probably got a flavour already of the type of area of our inquiry. We are looking very practically at matters that can take forward the people that you and we represent in Parliament and the Local Authority areas to become more involved in this whole area of carbon and energy saving. The Government is very fond of making lots of great declaratory statements about this whole area and your evidence attests to lots of good messages and requirements for local government to take various aspects of energy saving into account in terms of your policies, but do you really think that Government are absolutely serious about the role that they want local authorities to play and, in that context, do you see any signs that Government are giving you adequate resources to play that role or that part? Cllr Baker: First of all, thank you for the opportunity to come here this afternoon. Clearly, as I hope you will see from our evidence, we feel that local government takes a really serious view of the issue and the part that local government can play in trying to deal with mitigation and adaptation to climate change, but, as we have indicated, we do feel that we would very much welcome a clear statement of the trajectory that we should be moving in from the Government and, as always with local government, talking about issues such as this, we would also welcome greater and more consistent resourcing. I think this picks up on some of the issues that you were just hearing evidence from the Energy Saving Trust about. We have a multiplicity of different levers in play that, particularly for smaller councils, makes it very difficult for them. The highest part of their expenditure is on their staff costs and they really need to have certainty and sufficient resources to have a dedicated officer resource to be able to make the most opportunity and to recognise the various opportunities that there are to use some of the schemes that have been coming forward and continue to come forward. Q68 Chairman: I notice in your evidence you give examples of a number of authorities who, if you like, are seen as the market leaders in this field. I suppose, inevitably, Woking has to be amongst the most prominent. Hampshire, indeed, has done good work and there are others that are listed here. It is very impressive. The question I kept asking myself (bearing in mind there is a range of large to small authorities in this examples) was: why is it that some have been able to resource going out ahead of others when there is an underpinning flavour through this of lots of good intention but, for the reasons that you have mentioned, Councillor Baker, perhaps a reluctance to engage? What motivates the market leaders? Cllr Baker: Leadership. I think a lot has depended on where there are key individuals in local authorities who take the issue of being of high importance and have had the ability to lead their communities: because inevitably the priorities within different councils are different and are led by their local communities. Cllr Newman: If I could add to that, in recent years, as this whole area has rightly shot up the agenda, local authorities, through the Local Government Association, are doing a lot more work now pulling together that best practice so that we do not have to rely on every single councillor in the land, however large or small, having the expertise but are bringing it together, using the LGA and other mechanisms, in terms of best practice, in terms of getting the council to sign up to things like The Nottingham Declaration and others, so that councils can share that best practice and perhaps can accelerate the process in those councils that have not embraced the agenda. So it is not just an issue of resource; councils do recognise we can do more collectively. Q69 Chairman: One hundred and forty councils, am I right in saying, have signed up to The Nottingham Declaration? Cllr Newman: Yes. Q70 Chairman: Who monitors what they do, having signed up? You mention the more involved role of the LGA. Do you have any kind of feedback arrangement to know, having signed their piece of paper, what they then do? Cllr Baker: Hampshire have signed up. Ms Seaward: Yes. I think in the first round of The Nottingham Declaration it is correct to say that there was no formal audit of what people were doing. It was very much up to the commitment of the individual organisations to ensure that actually what they promised to do they actually did do. I know in Hampshire we have set that up ourselves and we are monitoring it and making sure that we are delivering it. I am sure that the second round of The Nottingham Declaration has addressed itself to those issues, because it is perhaps easy sometimes to say that you are going to do something, have the intention to do something and then not be able to follow through. Q71 Chairman: You mentioned that the LGA were monitoring and collecting examples of good practice. How do local authorities access that? Is it on some kind of web-based system for open access or do you have a publication? Cllr Baker: That is available, but also we have recently launched a Planning Policies for Sustainable Buildings guide - that is a paper document - and we have a pack of information called the Greener Communities Pack, and one of the strands within that relates to energy and climate change, and within that there is a whole suite of documents relating to different areas. So, that is the kind of work. We have conferences and we have also just announced that we are establishing a new independent commission to boost local action on climate change which will be gathering information about best practice and also looking at barriers and disseminating good practice and, hopefully, shaping future policy development. Q72 Chairman: That is something that you are doing as an association, but, going back to the point you were making with particular reference to the smaller scale local authorities, can you give us some examples of where funding issues conflict, if you like, with the good intentions? Clearly, you cannot achieve what some authorities have already achieved without some use of their resources. Can you give us a flavour of the kind of programmes that have been followed and how much they cost authorities? Cllr Baker: Some are able to invest and to recycle the money, but that relies on having that initial investment to make. I believe Leicester is doing that with offering loans for solar panels, interest-free loans, and, as they get the return, that is used to offer further loans. So, there are schemes so that the money can be recycled to overcome the lack of resource issue. Q73 Chairman: The thing that I was grasping at was that throughout the evidence you discussed the interrelationship between government identifying the crucial and central role of local government in helping to deliver a climate change agenda locally and the problems that authorities, particularly the smaller ones, face in responding to that, because at the moment it is not a statutory requirement to do it, if I have understood things correctly, but it does require something. You mentioned 'officer time' for example. Do you have one specific--- Cllr Baker: I cannot off the top of my head, but we could probably come back to you with that from evidence that we have from local authorities who may have submitted bids that have been unsuccessful, and that may be the kind of information that you are looking for, where councils wanted to do a piece of work but actually did not have the funding available to do it. Q74 Chairman: What I think we would find particularly interesting is to find out what are the barriers between responding to the rhetoric and actually delivering a locally based programme, because on the one hand you have helpfully given examples of local authorities who have reordered their priorities to deliver a range of energy saving programmes within their borough, but clearly there are a number, again, as you indicated to me, who signed up to The Nottingham Declaration in a spirit and frenzy of good intention but who are now struggling to say, "What shall we do?" In my own borough of Fylde, I have been trying to run an initiative with the ambitious strap-line of making us the most energy efficient borough in the country and I found it singularly difficult to get this baby off the ground, partly for the reason, Councillor Baker, you indicated, that our authority is restricted in how much resource it has to be able to help us with the administration of the initiative. There are no lack of supporters. We are making progress because we have now got monies from various public bodies and private bodies to get it off the ground, but I have noted how difficult it is to actually do it, and that is the kind of first-hand experience that we could do with feedback on so that that, when we write our report, we can highlight to government where improvements need to be made so that we can liberate local authorities to play a full part in this exercise. That is what we are after. Ms Seaward: I was going to say something from Hampshire's experience. What has made a difference for us is when we have had external funding to support work that we have wanted to do, and we have been quite successful in doing it that. Q75 Chairman: Where has that money come from? Ms Seaward: Usually from European funded programmes, and we have had some money from government on one particular project that we are running. Q76 Chairman: I believe in Hampshire you have got some officer time which can be put to the rather complex business of filling out the forms and getting the project under way? Ms Seaward: We have some, but it is very limited. What we are pleased with is that we have support to do that because it brings benefit further down the line. Certainly with The Nottingham Declaration we looked at what we had committed to deliver and actually, from the resources that we had in-house at the time, it was very obvious that we were not going to be able to deliver the full range, so we put that into an external funded bid. That is where you get a pioneer, that is where an authority can step out and be a pioneer, but what I think you are considering is, beyond the pioneers, how do we get the rest who are not able to attract external funding because they are not doing a pioneering activity, they are doing something themselves. Q77 Chairman: For example, Defra, in a great blaze of publicity, earlier this year launched a six-million-pound information fund and, by the time those who had heard about it got their act together, all the money had gone. It sounded to me as if they knew at the beginning who was going to get it, advertised the fund and then dished it out. I do not know whether you have monitored the way that these initiatives operate. Do you think that they have been fairly administered, giving people a chance to prepare their projects, or has there been an element of a predetermined agenda that you might have found? Cllr Baker: In a sense I would not want to comment on a predetermined agenda, but certainly there are limitations for small councils being able to divert the officer time to put forward a credible bid for that kind of funding stream, and that is one of the things that can hold the council back. Q78 David Lepper: Just a little question, Chairman, on perhaps a different kind of frustration that some local authorities might feel. I gather, for instance, that Cambridge City Council wanted to write into its local plan a requirement in terms of minimising energy consumption, maximising energy efficiency, and so on, that went beyond the Building Regulations and was criticised by the Government inspector for trying to do so. Is that a common experience of local authorities, where there is an aspiration, leaving aside the issue of resources, at the local level that comes up against a bureaucratic obstacle? Cllr Baker: Some local authorities have been successful in getting policies in, for example, to require a percentage of renewable energy on new developments. There is a very grey area between planning policy and building regulations which is referred to at some point in this document for exactly the reason that you have just raised. I do not know whether you would like to speak about your own borough's experience. Cllr Newman: Yes, there are individual planning inspectors out there, but, as this becomes good practice - briefly to talk about Croydon - it is now a requirement for any residential development over ten units that at least ten per cent of the energy that is used will be renewable, and there is a will to do that. It is not a party political issue in Croydon, it is a cross-party view, and that is very much now part of the local planning policies. I know, coincidentally perhaps, the neighbouring borough of Merton, ahead of Croydon, did that around industrial units over a certain size and expected a certain amount of energy to be renewable. As this becomes practice, as it becomes written into local planning policies across the country, it will be more difficult for perhaps individual planning inspectors up and down the country to take differing views, but we are in that grey area at the moment because a lot of this is relatively new. Q79 David Lepper: You have both said this grey and difficult, and yet planning, as your evidence attests to, is a potentially very valuable tool in building in, particularly for new premises, some energy saving potential. Is Government aware of this problem? Is it taking any action to resolve these difficulties that you are aware of? Cllr Newman: My own experience is that Government are aware that the planning process needs to be refined to reflect the priorities that we are now talking about. Some of the planning regulations do not. There is an awareness there that this needs to be done. I think it is the role of the LGA and other local government associations, encouraged by the likes of yourselves and other perhaps, to drive this forward so it does become rapidly the way to do things and not a block to doing things. Q80 David Lepper: There is lots of awareness but no action. Is that fair summary? Cllr Newman: No, I think there is some action, but they could be doing with some more action. Q81 Sir Peter Soulsby: Councillor Baker, when you were answering earlier about what has held councils back from dealing with this, you identified the need for there to be dedicated officer resources. Can you tell us something about how the Local Government Association is set up and what dedicated resources you have got to deal with these issues? Cllr Baker: We are a membership authority representing local councils and are funded through their membership subscriptions to us. We have recently reviewed our staffing structure to try and ensure that we can always deliver the most that we can for our member authorities. We have a officer corps, but it has to be quite restrained, and one of the reasons it is restrained is to ensure that we have available to us sufficient resources to be able to commission one-off pieces of work for our respected leaders in particular policy spheres, as we feel that that is a good and useful resource for our member authorities. We also work in partnership with people such as the Energy Saving Trust, who help us to resource our officer corps. Q82 Sir Peter Soulsby: I take it from what you are saying that at this present time you no longer have people who are specifically dedicated to these sorts of issues? Is that what you are saying? Cllr Baker: No, we do have a team of officers who are covering the work of the Environment Board. It is smaller than it used to be, because that is the way that the LGA has chosen to work for the future. You may be aware of the report on transport, the Travers Report, that we published earlier this year. We see the way forward as being able to commission individual pieces of work like that. Q83 Sir Peter Soulsby: Perhaps my point is that not having people officer support, people who are dedicated to this sort of work, must significantly limit the extent to which the Local Government Association is able to exchange and promote good practice? Cllr Baker: I was not perhaps making myself very clear. We do have an officer corps that supports the whole of the areas of work that the Environment Board covers, which therefore includes climate change, but when we are producing pieces of substantial work such as this one, then we do work very strongly with people, in this case WRAP, the Planning Advisory Service, the Planning Officers Society, the Sustainability Forum. Q84 Sir Peter Soulsby: What about the member structure? Do you have a group of members who specifically focus on these climate change issues? Cllr Baker: Yes, that is the two of us who are here before you. Cllr Newman: The member structures in the LGA were slimmed down a couple of years ago. I am not an expert on the internal workings of the LGA. There were about 16 committees, I think. There are now far less focused boards of which the Environment Board has specifically been brought together because this is one of the key areas, although it does continue to cover other areas like housing, but then they tend to feed into the work of the Environment Board anyway. Q85 Sir Peter Soulsby: This comes within the work of the Environment Board? Cllr Newman: Yes, the Environment Board covers issues such as housing, which obviously does have a key role to play. Q86 Sir Peter Soulsby: Can I ask you about the background to The Nottingham Declaration. Was that something that the LGA initiated or was that something done by Nottingham or some other local authorities? Cllr Baker: Nottingham were the clear leaders. Again, I will turn to Christine for her experience of Nottingham. Ms Seaward: I am actually not an expert on The Nottingham Declaration, but I know that it was an initiative that was set up and led by Nottingham and that it was presented to a board, a forum of local authorities. It now actually is working. You can find out more information through the website. There is a corps of officers working on it at Nottingham, but I have a feeling that in the beginning there was only one. Perhaps we ought to get you some more information on that. Chairman: We would be particularly interested. If you look at the Declaration, what it asks local authorities to do, I think we would be interested in some feedback on this question of how far down the track they have got in the section which says, "We commit our council from", to find out what they had actually done. If they had signed it and found it difficult to make progress, then it would be helpful to know why. As we have seen, some have made remarkable progress. What we are trying to establish is what are the barriers to progress and, equally, what has worked. So, if you have a team of people who are looking at this area, perhaps this is helpful, in this evidence session, to get a clearer idea of what we are after. We would be very grateful for some supplementary evidence. Q87 Sir Peter Soulsby: Following the issue of what actually happens after these things are signed. It does occur to me that there is one outside body that does come in and look at that as part of the comprehensive performance assessment of local authorities. To what extent have the LGA been involved in trying to ensure that local authorities' performance, either against the Declaration or more generally, on issues of climate change are a part of that comprehensive performance assessment? Cllr Baker: Certainly one of the concerns that we have is to ensure that climate change and the environment in general is central to the performance framework that we have to report to. A concern we have had with the early rounds of local area agreements, where we felt that that was not happening. We have been working, as has the LGA overall, not simply from the Environment Board, with Government to look at a slimmed down number of targets that local councils should be reporting on, and we are concerned to ensure that climate change and any environmental issues are within that. Cllr Newman: We certainly also have been involved in some civic discussions with the Audit Commission that this needed to be slightly more sophisticated then it was when it started. If you take something like recycling, that is a much harder to achieve target if you are talking about an inner-city area compared to perhaps a rural area, and work has been done to try and get a greater understanding of the challenges. I am using that as just one example. You cannot just have a flat national target that reflects what is happening, because you can have a local authority in a city area working very hard in terms of what it is doing in terms of recycling, but if you are collecting that recycling from 15 tower blocks that is different from what it is in a rural area. That work has been useful, but the Audit Commission and others need to do more to understand that you cannot just have some very broad targets in this area. Q88 Sir Peter Soulsby: Seeking to ensure the inclusion of appropriate challenging targets for local authorities, is this a matter where it is for Government to put the pressure on or for the Audit Commission to be persuaded that the targets ought to be modified? Cllr Newman: The Government have put pressure on in a sense through the landfill tax. That is a big impact on local authorities and the penalties there if recycling is not dramatically increased. The Audit Commission, I think, have a role in this, but I think local authorities also. What the LGA has been seeking to do is to ensure that local authorities working together and using best practice, through the many examples you have got there, is the preferred way forward and also local authorities perhaps increasingly working together in terms of resources. I know that in London we are looking at a number of boroughs working together to collect waste and recycling. On that area you were touching on earlier, if it is too expensive to do something across one local authority area, if you can get two or three local authorities working together, perhaps on a waste contract, you can drive down the cost of that contract and, therefore, include the collection of recycling on other things you may not previously have been able to look at. When you talk about barriers, sometimes that requires the will not to just be in one local authority but to be in a series of neighbouring local authorities so that the political will, in every sense of the word, is there, perhaps even for local authorities of different party political persuasions to work together because they will get a better deal for people locally. Cllr Baker: But the Local Government Association is working with Government to try and reduce the number of targets that we have to meet because, clearly, within any local authority there is a wish and a drive to ensure that they do their best to meet Government targets. What we would seek to do is to have a much smaller suite of perhaps 30 key outcomes set before us so that local councils can be much more responsive to their local communities. Q89 Sir Peter Soulsby: Amongst those, are you pressing for there to be targets that specifically relate to the issues we are talking about today: climate change issues? Cllr Baker: We have said that we would welcome having not just a power to ensure the environmental well-being of the area but, indeed, to take a duty, and we would like that duty also to be on those partners that we work with in our local area. Q90 Chairman: Can I go back to something you touched on a moment ago, which was the Climate Change Fund. Are you able to give us any feedback as to the number of local authorities who have benefited from this? Was it easy to access the funding? What kind of programmes have qualified for help? Cllr Baker: I would need to check whether I have got that information. I have got a couple of examples that I could give you, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, who were successful, and another London Borough not that far away from you, which was the London Borough of Bromley. It is easier for us to have information about those who were successful and what they have been proposing to do. Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire have said that they found that the process was clear and straightforward and the guidance was well thought out and comprehensive. So, although they said it was a complex bid to put together, the clarity of the guidance helped and, of course, they were successful with their bid. Q91 Chairman: Do you have any details of what they were bidding for? What have they actually used the money for? What was the size of the grant that they got? Cllr Baker: I do not think I have got the size of the grant. It is a communications grant for targeting householders, school children and staff from the local authorities and large companies. Q92 Chairman: Would it put you to an enormous amount of trouble to go back to your respect authorities who have been successful and ask them - I think it would be helpful for us to know - how much money they got, what they planned to do with it and whether they are able, even at this relatively early stage, to give any kind of commentary on successes and failure in implementing the programmes that they bid for, because it may be that some have very targeted ideas, for example, to deal with fuel deprivation, fuel poverty issues, others might have different aspirations, but it would be helpful for us to know? Cllr Baker: Indeed. We would be very happy to gather that information for you, Chairman. Some of these schemes have not yet started. Although they have the money, they may not be starting until next year. Q93 Chairman: So there is a delay in the money reaching them then? Cllr Baker: There may be a delay in us being able to give you the information. Q94 Chairman: Whilst I am on an information quest, let me pick out from the evidence that you kindly supplied one or two things. Whilst we have Chris Seaward here, perhaps in a second you could say a word or two about this Interreg European ESPACE project, because that adds a new dimension of a local authority working within a European context to find a way of funding a programme. I will come back to that, but I notice that you next mention in your evidence that Oxfordshire County Council has a programme run by contractors to provide energy education in around 55 local authority schools seeking to reduce the use of energy in schools. Again, it would be very useful to have some commentary on exactly what the contractors provided and whether, again, there is any monitoring as to how successful this type of programme had been in terms of delivering the objectives set for it. Christine Seaward, perhaps you could just say a word or two about the Hampshire experience with this European programme? Ms Seaward: We are leading a partnership of four or five different countries, partners from different countries, Holland, Belgium, Germany and the UK, so it is countries within north-west Europe. We also have an extended partnership which goes beyond that. It is looking specifically at the adaptation issues for planning policy and we are trying to develop some outputs from the project that are going to be practical outputs. What can we do that is the right thing to do in an adaptation policy response? Q95 Chairman: Can you give a for instance? Ms Seaward: I can give you a for instance from the Hampshire work which is quoted in the report, and that is the work we have been doing on behaviour change. There are two main tools that we have developed as part of the project, and that is one of them, and it is looking really at the difference between communications and behaviour change and what the link is particularly with climate change. For example, there may be an assumption - I would suggest that there is an assumption - that more information equals a change of behaviour. We have unpacked those issues for our own needs and shared those amongst the partnership, and actually that is not the case. Greater awareness does not necessarily lead to change; in fact sometimes it leads to denial. Q96 Chairman: Have you discovered what does lead to change as a result of this work? Ms Seaward: Yes. I think there is a package, and this is informing the way that we are developing our own climate change policy for the council. Yes, you need some awareness. We know that about 90 per cent of people in the country are product aware; they know what climate change is. What we need to get to is a deeper level of awareness of what climate change requires us as individuals to do. That is possibly at about 15 per cent. So, we need to find something that we can meaningfully do as individuals, not just be aware of--- Q97 Chairman: How do you define this nirvana of perfection and communication? Ms Seaward: Well, it is actually quite simple because you have an awareness, you then need to have what they call association: you need to work with other people who share the problem that you have got, and then you need to have something meaningful that you can do together. Q98 Chairman: Are you going to translate that very clear statement of the intertwining of the problem and the solution into a tangible programme? Ms Seaward: Yes. Q99 Chairman: Do you know what that programme will look like? Ms Seaward: Yes. Q100 Chairman: Could you tell us, share it with us? Ms Seaward: For us at Hampshire it will be an action plan, but it will be built up from those people who are working around the county council coming together and realising they have a shared problem. So, they talk each other and develop issues around climate change that are not necessarily just environmental, perhaps they are economic or social issues. Q101 Chairman: This is within the local authority network? Ms Seaward: Yes, within the county council we have run a workshop for officers who are involved, and out of that we are getting together a list of meaningful actions that we can take together, and, because people are talking about it, not in theory but in practice, what will come out at the end is an action plan that people will actually do. Q102 Chairman: But this action plan does not exist at the moment? Ms Seaward: No. Q103 Chairman: If you could help us perhaps to get a bit more of a practical feel of some of the issues that are being debated, that would be helpful: because, if think if I have understood you correctly, this is a matter that is being discussed amongst representatives of authorities, local authorities with which you deal, but it has not yet got down to the level of the citizens in Hampshire, or maybe I have misunderstood. Ms Seaward: No, you are right. We not yet got to the level of dealing directly with citizens, although one of the models that would perhaps be helpful to explain is our sustainable schools forum. Q104 Chairman: Yes, do tell us about that. Ms Seaward: We are working with schools who have come forward to us (they are volunteer schools) on sustainability issues, and we have set up what is called a Sustainable Schools Forum, which then becomes a forum for them to take action either as individuals or together. They share information, they talk to each other about what has been successful, what has not been successful, and then they can go away either knowing where to get additional support to take action or with some actions that they had not even thought that they might do. Q105 Chairman: This is designed to reduce a schools' level of energy consumption? Ms Seaward: It is. There are two elements to it. One is to look at the school itself and how it is consuming energy, and the other is to look at how the school can outreach into the community, so how they become champions for energy efficiency. Q106 Lynne Jones: A lot of what you have just been talking about seems to replicate what the Energy Savings Trust were doing. Do you want to comment? Obviously you have got to do that at the end of the process (you have got to do the work within your organisation) but all the background sounds just to be replicating what they were talking about? Ms Seaward: I do not work directly with the Energy Saving Trust - that is not a "get out" but it is a get out, because I do not know exactly how they work - but we are certainly looking at a slightly different model as to how to communicate with people in a meaningful way, because it is that whole issue of: does awareness equal action? Q107 Lynne Jones: That is what they were talking about, and they then went on to talk about the incentive schemes. Perhaps you would like to comment on what they were talking about, the Council Tax rebate, I think, at Braintree? Does at the LGA have a view on these? Are there any other incentives that you can introduce and do you need any additional powers that you think you might need to be more active in these areas? Cllr Baker: We certainly support households getting a discount for introducing energy saving measures. We have some concerns about using the Council Tax as a way of delivering that, partly because it removes, as it were, the link between the discount and the energy issue and, perhaps, because it may blur the direct relationship between the Council Tax level and the services that the council is providing, but we will be gathering information from the councils who have chosen to take that on board to see what lessons we can learn and how successful they feel it can be, but sometimes we do need to cover in different ways areas that other agencies such as the Energy Saving Trust were covering. For example, my own authority took a very typical home in a very typical Basingstoke street and they used it as a demonstration project to improve the energy efficiency of this individual house and got good publicity for what they had done and exactly how much it was saving before opening the house for six months as a public exhibition and encouraging people, particularly in the almost identical houses round and about, to come in and see what the changes were and how well they worked, how much it had cost and how much it was then going to save. There was no way we could afford to keep that as a permanent demonstration site, so, after the public exhibition period, the home was added to the housing association we had been working with and it simply went back into the pool of housing stock within the area. Q108 Lynne Jones: How did you know what the impact of that was? How many people adopted the ideas? Cllr Baker: That is difficult to measure because the uptake of additional energy saving measures are not necessarily reported to the local council. So, householders up and down the street could all have been taking many of those measures on board, or not, but not telling us. We would like to be in the loop of information, for example, for the future on home energy ratings. At the moment local councils are not seen as being bodies who would have access to that data, but for the purposes of targeting examples and encouraging people, it would be extremely helpful if we were in that, and that is something we would welcome. Q109 Lynne Jones: Can I ask Councillor Newman about your policy on sustainable buildings' planning requirements. Why are conservation areas excluded from the requirements? Cllr Newman: In terms of where the planning law is, which I am not an expert on, it has been introduced on new-build. Q110 Lynne Jones: Why not in conservation areas? Cllr Newman: You have got information that I have not got, if you are talking about Croydon, or are you talking in general terms? Q111 Lynne Jones: It says Merton. Cllr Newman: Yes, Merton. Q112 Lynne Jones: "In all new industrial warehousing, office and live work units outside conservation areas"? Cllr Newman: I cannot actually answer that, unless the answer is they are not putting those units in conservation areas, but that may not be the answer. Q113 Lynne Jones: You do not know whether it is a requirement in Croydon. Cllr Newman: No, we would need to get back to you on that. I know the requirement in Croydon is on new-build wherever it occurs. Lynne Jones: In terms of other information, would it be possible to get more information about Kirklees Council involvement in emissions trading schemes? Also, you have mentioned the Planning Policies for Sustainable Buildings, if we could have a copy of that document? Chairman: One final question from David before the bell goes. David Lepper: The issue that Lynne has raised is one I have
asked ministers on a number of occasions and am told it is something that they
are looking at and hoping to make an announcement about, but when I do not
know. Could we just clarify a little
more the relationship between the Energy Saving Trust and its work with local
authorities? Chairman: You have got that question in mind. Sir Peter wants to ask another question. I am going to ask you to take them together in the remaining four minutes before the bell goes, probably at six. Q114 Sir Peter Soulsby: I would like to come back to my earlier questions. I would just like to know, in the view of the Local Government Association, whose responsibility it is to identify good practice amongst local authorities in the field of climate change, to disseminate that good practice and to promote that good practice. Whose role is it? Cllr Baker: It is something that the Local Government Association is certainly doing, because we do see that as a good role for us to take. I am not quite sure what you might be getting at there. As far as working with the Energy Savings Trust, yes, that can be at local council level, and the way it happens at local council level can vary in different areas. I know that is probably not as clear and helpful as you would like. Q115 David Lepper: At national level between the Trust and your association is there any direct liaison? Cllr Baker: Yes, we have good national liaison with the Energy Saving Trust and do a joint working programme between us. Q116 Sir Peter Soulsby: You say that the identification, the promotion, the dissemination of good practice is something the LGA does, yet you have told us earlier on that you do not have any resources dedicated to that, that it is part of other work that is done. Can you give us a flavour of precisely what is done by the LGA in the identification, the promotion and the dissemination of good practice? Cllr Baker: The website, the planning policies, the sustainable housing, the new independent commission that we have just launched are very current, very recent examples of ways that we have been disseminating good practice to local councils. Cllr Newman: Certainly the view of the LGA is that that is the way to go and the Audit Commission and others should be there with the stick if somebody is not doing the best practice, and getting that information out to every local authority in the country is the way that it goes. There is a lot of good practice out there; it is about sharing it. Chairman: On that very positive note, I will draw this session to a session with thanks to all three of you for your contribution, and thank you in advance for the further information that you are going to be kind enough to provide us with. As I said to our previous witnesses, you cannot undo that which you have said but if, in addition to the specific items that we have requested some further help with, if there is anything else you wish to send us on this subject, then we would be delighted to see it. Thank you very much for you contribution. |