Examination of Witnesses (Questions 320-339)
MR JON
PRICHARD, MR
SEAMUS HEFFERNAN,
MR LOUIS
ARMSTRONG AND
MR MARK
GRIFFITHS
22 NOVEMBER 2006
Q320 David Taylor: My colleague referred
to possible backward steps since the time of the first Queen Elizabeth,
five hundred years ago, and I want to put to you that one of the
impacts, one of the effects of the now accepted Part L changes
has been the death of the British chimney on small to medium size
houses, which is not a risible issue. I think in terms of aesthetics,
in terms of economics—and I declare an interest here—in
the minerals extraction area there is a chimney and builders'
material firms in our area have been severely hit by that and
they would argue that we are looking at the position where houses
and other forms of domestic property will be hermetically sealed
living spaces, almost cells, which may well be efficient in an
energy consumption sense but are both less attractive as buildings
in their own right but, more importantly, are less healthy places
in which to live because of inadequate ventilation and things
of that kind. Do you accept the point which was put to me very
vigorously and which I put to the Minister over the months but
despite what I have said the regulations are now in place? Do
you accept what I am saying?
Mr Armstrong: It would be wrong
for me to express a view. I think one could cure the cosmetic
one by putting a false chimney on and making it look better aesthetically,
if that is what people felt was appropriate. I am not qualified
to comment, I am not a chartered surveyor myself, on the quality
of air which has to be balanced by, as you say, a hermetically
sealed house for energy efficiency purposes.
Mr Prichard: There are methods
and there is technology you can use through forced air ventilation
systems which can, with heat exchangers in place, be energy efficient
and provide a flow of air, and I think we do have to move more
towards that regime in order to maintain the air flow available.
Interestingly, if you install a gas appliance in a domestic property
you have to install the air bricks in the room to the outside
world in order to allow that free ventilation. So there are some
contradictions within the system.
Q321 David Taylor: My final additional
question is, taking all these things into account, the changes
which have been made by the reform of Part L of the Building Regulations,
do you feel that was the best method of upgrading thermal performance
of the housing stock, or are there things which were options not
pursued or which could be pursued now which would give a more
effective movement forward on energy conservation?
Mr Prichard: If we are only talking
about a small percentage of houses, new build—
Q322 David Taylor: I understand that.
They are not fitting these things, I understand that.
Mr Prichard: —but Part L
is not a retrospective assessment and therefore it does not really
have an impact on the vast majority of UK housing.
David Taylor: I think it is a bit higher
than 0.2%, but nevertheless it is a very low figure.
Q323 Sir Peter Soulsby: I think you
made reference earlier to building schools for the future and
the investment is going into those schools. It has been suggested
to me that some big opportunities are being missed as part of
that and that in fact energy efficiency is not being given the
consideration that it ought to be. Is that something you are aware
of, and is that the responsibility of central or local government?
Mr Armstrong: I was certainly
conscious of that in hospitals. I am not sure about schools. It
is part of the PFI process, I suspect it is part of the compromise
process which has been gone through with PFI being very often
the way in which a lot of the schools and hospitals building programme
has been achieved. There are clearly lessons to be learnt. I suspect
when the original spec was done the climate change debate was
not as vociferous as it is now and that in balancing out different,
possibly mutually exclusive, issues and deciding what to build,
at what cost, what it would look like, what functions it would
fulfil and what its whole lifecycle costs would be over thirty
years, my guess would be that the climate change issues now would
have a much greater weighting factor in the decision-making process
than they had perhaps five years ago when these projects were
conceived. But I take the point. I agree, I think there is probably
a number of issues there which for costs reasons, or for other
practical reasons, because of competing priorities, did not make
schools or hospitals as climate change friendly as they ought
now to be demonstrated to be.
Q324 Lynne Jones: In relation to
new build, Mr Armstrong, was I correct in gathering from what
you said earlier that from next year all new house building will
be at an energy efficiency level which is as high as the best
in Europe?
Mr Armstrong: My understanding
is that the Home Builders' Federation and the Minister, Yvette
Cooper, have agreed between themselves that they will all abide
by what I think is going to be a voluntary code to start with,
which will bring new house building up to I think probably an
acceptable European standard which will be very much better than
it is now. Whether it actually is the best in Europe, I am not
sure, but they have been trying to come up with as ambitious a
formula as they could—
Q325 Lynne Jones: You mean as they
could afford commercially?
Mr Armstrong: Well, as perhaps
they could get voluntary agreement to. I am not close to the negotiations.
Q326 Lynne Jones: It would be interesting
to know if you have got any comments on what ought to be done
because we do have a very poor history in this country in terms
of the quality of the energy efficiency of our stock. I do not
know whether the engineers wanted to comment on that?
Mr Armstrong: Perhaps we could
come back to you with a written view, if that would help, on what
we think is the gap between—
Q327 Lynne Jones: Because if we were
in a war we should be going for the best that we possibly can
achieve, not what is an acceptable compromise.
Mr Armstrong: Indeed.
Q328 Lynne Jones: In relation to
existing housing, if I could put up the hypothesis that I think
there is a lot of people in existing housing who could afford,
without any subsidy, to do the most effective first stages, because
putting on a wind generator or even photovoltaics is not the most
important thing, but unfortunately it is the sexiest thing at
the moment and a lot of people are perhaps spending money on that,
whereas they should be spending money on other things, but what
is inhibiting that is the hassle factor. We were talking earlier
about the complexity of actually knowing what the best thing is
to do, but even when you have decided what to do, actually having
that new boiler installed and messing up your kitchen. Have you
got any ideas of how we should address that, how we can take the
hassle out of that so that somebody can say, "Look, I can
come and do it for you"? That is what I would like. At the
other extreme we have lots of people who, even if they were prepared
to put up with the hassle, could not afford it. We have a lot
of our social and council housing in very poor condition in relation
to energy efficiency. What should the Government be doing about
that? Are they doing enough about that, and what about that element
of existing housing which will never really be brought up to a
reasonable standard, and about new building for poor people? Where
is the resource for that going to come from?
Mr Griffiths: Firstly, I do not
think that it is a case that nothing is being done. My own council
in Hampshire actively write to all residents offering significantly
subsidised insulation and actually doing loft and wall insulation,
as you rightly point out, is far more effective in the first instance
in reducing energy consumption than going for micro-generation.
Q329 Chairman: Could I just ask in
parenthesis, is that out of Hampshire's own budget or is somebody
else funding that?
Mr Griffiths: When I say "Hampshire"
I am specifically talking about the district of Winchester and
I do not know the answer to your question, but I will be happy
to find out for you.
Chairman: Thank you.
Q330 Lynne Jones: It will be Warm
Front probably.
Mr Griffiths: So if one is trying
to think strategically, you have to produce a list of targets
where you are going to get the most bang for your buck, and you
have to start with these very simple measures as opposed to micro-generation,
or what have you. You make the point there are plenty of people
who actually could afford to do these things, but for one reason
or another it is not made easy for them. I actually think Winchester
City Council are making it as easy as it possibly could be. They
will supply the materials, they will supply the labour, all you
have to do is write the cheque. The biggest problem is clearing
your loft before you actually get round to doing it.
Q331 Lynne Jones: Will they do that
for you?
Mr Griffiths: They will not, and
that is often the practical obstacle.
Q332 Chairman: There will be a 300%
increase in car boot sales!
Mr Griffiths: I think one of the
things about climate change is that it starts off on a very grand
scale. You have Kyoto, then you have your national energy review,
and so on. I would personally like to see a lot more empowerment
of local councils, local communities driving their own initiatives,
giving them some flexibility to do this, deciding how they will
spend the money and as part of that process increasing awareness
of how people are wasting their money. We have mentioned this
in terms of energy. We have discussed the bills. Another aspect
is what that means in CO2 terms. The RICS ran a conference last
year where a member from its geomatics division, which is the
division which deals with information technology as it relates
to geography, did a fascinating presentation where he claimed
that the technology was available now relatively simply whereby
you could produce infra red photograhy from the sky of a whole
street or a whole district and from that image you could see which
buildings were emitting the most heat.
Q333 Chairman: You might have done
it!
Mr Griffiths: So my question is,
if we go back to what I regard as a very elementary thing about
having decent information with your electricity bill or your gas
bill, along with that bill, why do you not only get your pie chart
but why do you not also get your satellite image which shows how
bad you are in relation to your neighbour? The shaming effect
of that alongside the trade information I think would do more
for our reduction of energy consumption than any massive energy
review right across the country. It is information that people
want and they need peer and financial pressure to act.
Q334 Lynne Jones: Nobody has mentioned
social housing.
Mr Prichard: No. First of all,
dealing with the people who can afford to make the changes, clearly
they are not valuing the resources, whether that resource is energy
or water, which clearly has an energy component because all the
water people get at home is treated water and therefore it has
had very high energy inputs into delivering that water. So there
are options which can be done, grey water recycling and the like,
which perhaps more could be done about. I certainly have seen
no domestic literature coming out in that respect and making that
happen. People do not value the resource, so the price of the
commodity at the point of use is too low, then people make the
value judgment, "I don't need yet to do this because it is
not going to be cost beneficial to my domestic tariff." I
think in terms of social housing it is a much more difficult agenda
because it can be, as you say, quite an intrusive experience.
So if you are imposing it, then you risk being very intrusive,
so I think you have got to go through the information exercise,
making the information available in a readily understood format
such that people can perhaps request that they have their house
surveyed. I know Ofgem has encouraged them and British Gas has
done trials on making that survey free of charge, but there still
is not sufficient take-up from those who are in that social housing.
Q335 Lynne Jones: Should not the
landlords helped to do more?
Mr Armstrong: I think it is an
important area. I just think it is just not in the registered
social landlords—I am thinking of the big social housing
operations and indeed those still left in council ownership—but
also it may be down to some tax incentives, which will not be
popular with the Treasury, but I cannot see any way in which,
if I was a landlord, I could be prevailed upon voluntarily to
upgrade on energy efficiency grounds my premises if it was easily
lettable as it was. It is just a market force, if no one is going
to rent it because it seems cold or badly heated or cost a fortune
in the running costs. I think you need to concentrate attempts
on incentivising landlords, maybe in the tax payable on their
rent, something where you would have to do that.
Q336 Lynne Jones: Just very quickly,
the Home Energy Certification process. There are now people being
trained up to be inspectors. Do you think the level of their qualifications
is adequate for them to be able to do this work effectively?
Mr Armstrong: This is a difficult
issue, which I have been discussing a lot with Yvette Cooper,
largely because it would be better to have someone trained to
do a home survey evaluation and an energy performance certificate
all at the same time, one visit, a separate visit for an EPC.
Using a car is not a good idea anyway in symbolic terms. So the
answer to your question is, it is not rocket science and should
quite easily be able to be done. The real question is, are there
enough of them in the right places to do it quickly and efficiently?
The answer is that by June 2007 there will not be, but the EU
Directive allows us to, I think, by 2009 have this in place. But
I think it is potentially an important weapon. As Mark said, if
you have got the information readily available and you know how
your house stacks up and you know what it was like 10 years ago
when it was last done, progressively we will get a database which
helps to show the progressive trends.
Q337 David Lepper: Mr Griffiths talked
about the work Winchester Council are doing, and that was interesting.
We hear about Woking and about Leicester, and so on. I just wonder
whether either of your two organisations has a view about the
role of the Local Government Association in promoting this kind
of work amongst its members, and whether you have a view about
how proactive or not it is, spreading good practice, and so on,
or indeed in lobbying on behalf of its members? I think both organisations
have talked about the importance of local councils and what they
do.
Mr Griffiths: Potentially, clearly,
it could have a very important role. What it is actually doing
at the moment I have no knowledge of at all, but it could be a
forum for establishing best practice.
Q338 David Lepper: Miraculously from
the sky, the Local Government Association's Breathing Communities
Campaign Kit, Ideas Into Action, has appeared before me. So they
are clearly doing something! But you were not aware of this?
Mr Griffiths: I was not aware
of this.
Chairman: A piece of good news!
Q339 David Lepper: I suspect that
might say rather more about the Local Government Association than—
Mr Prichard: The ICE has a Municipal
Engineering board and they would be aware, I think, of that information,
but as I do not attend that, I am not.
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