Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
COUNCILLOR IAN
MEARNS, DR
PHILIP WEBBER
AND MR
OLIVER MYERS
12 NOVEMBER 2007
Q60 Chair: We take it as read that
there are lots of other things that need to be done apart from
the issue on existing housing but if we could try and focus only
on the issue of existing housing and climate change. Do the other
two gentlemen have another point of view?
Mr Myers: There are some authorities
who have been very active on energy issues for many years and
there have been various trigger points for that going back 20
or 30 years: the oil crisis in the '70s—and there has been
a bit of a cycle with expertise in local authorities dealing with
it. A key driver was undoubtedly the Home Energy Conservation
Act that came in in 1996. I think that led to authorities prioritising
some more of their existing resources on their own stock. Undoubtedly,
the most activity has taken place with their own stock. The next
biggest area of activity has been bringing in other funding to
their area, the Warm Front, previously the energy efficiency grants
and latterly the energy supplier industry funding through the
Energy Efficiency Commitment, and it is actually those programmes
which have unlocked the most resources, spend on energy efficiency
in local authorities' areas outside of their own stock, but some
of it within their own stock. They have been the main tools for
assisting with the other sectors.
Q61 Chair: The witnesses we have
had before you this afternoon have stressed that a major issue
is information and persuading people that there is a need to do
things. Do you have any examples of where councils have done that,
so it is not funding but persuasion or information?
Dr Webber: I could give examples
of that where we have raised awareness of the availability of
grants but, unfortunately, the latest low-carbon building programme
has made it rather difficult for people to take advantage of those
grants. It was much easier to get grants for solar photovoltaics
or solar water heating in the past than it now is. That is definitely
a problem. People like to be able to get grants but the current
grant system is not easy for people to access as a householder.
Q62 Mr Olner: Are there enough grants
in the system? Coming, in a previous life, from local authorities,
you try and persuade people to upgrade, particularly when they
get ill and what have you, various things in their homes. There
is always a huge waiting list to put a grant into being. Is that
a problem you are suffering from on giving energy grants?
Councillor Mearns: I would suggest
that at the moment, because of the weight of potential demand
out there, it is difficult for local authorities to advertise
greatly that there is a grant system available because we are
already swamped within the existing grant system, well oversubscribed,
with the grants we have available.
Q63 Mr Olner: To what extent?
Councillor Mearns: It is very
difficult to gauge. Because of the fact that we do not advertise
the grant system so widely, it is difficult to gauge what the
unmet demand would be but I think it would be quite vast, to be
honest.
Q64 Mr Olner: In percentage terms,
how overstretched are you now, considering you have not advertised?
Councillor Mearns: In my own authority
any grant that we have available is normally gone during the first
three-quarters of the financial year.
Q65 Chair: Can I pick you up on that,
Councillor Mearns. You were saying, because there is an unmet
demand out there for grants, you do not advertise them. Does that
not mean that the people who do not really need them and are really
articulate probably get them and they would do the work anyway?
Is that not why the Government is stopping the grants?
Councillor Mearns: We do try to
target grants to particular areas and particular types of households,
so we do have internal systems to make sure that the grant is
going to be best used but, in my own context, I am very lucky
because we have a Pathfinder so there is housing being upgraded
through the Pathfinder and in conjunction with the Decent Homes
standard, money for local authority housing, and we have the Warm
Zone, so I am very fortunate from that perspective. It is not
perfect but we are very fortunate.
Mr Myers: There are broadly two
different approaches the local authority use. With people who
are vulnerable there may be generic information campaigns but
what they tend to focus on is engaging with frontline service
providers who would have to be in contact with vulnerable households,
be they healthcare, housing practitioners. In terms of engaging
with the not so fuel-poor, as we call them, you are looking at
much more hit-and-miss marketing campaigns to people across the
community. There are some case studies of very effective take-up
rates and there is a body of work that organisations like the
Energy Saving Trust do on practical help and they have got case
studies on those kinds of effective approaches. Where that has
fallen down is we have been in the position of sometimes finding
those people and getting them to phone a helpline but that helpline
or advice centre would just send out information and then leave
them to navigate a route to contacting people, finding out costs
and in many cases not actually proceeding. There is a general
move at the moment to try and move away from just providing them
with information to providing a more tailored, customised, hand-holding
service, and a couple of places around the country are piloting
that but it is costly.
Q66 Chair: Do you know which two?
Mr Myers: There may be more than
a couple but certainly the GLA has got something called the Green
Homes Concierge Service which is really trying to get to the top
end, people who are asset-rich and time-poor, who are generally
motivated to do something but feel they do not have the time and
there are too many obstacles in their way. That is an LDA funded
project.
Chair: And the other one? If you think
of it afterwards could you let us know because specific examples
are particularly helpful.
Q67 Sir Paul Beresford: I was going
to follow on from that. The two previous groups of witnesses,
experts in the area, one of the points they made was that people
do not understand, they do not know what to do, they do not know
what is available, et cetera. Obviously local authorities
are the ideal vehicle for that, I would have thought, working
with the private sector to cut the expenditure. There are plenty
of people in the private sector who want people to take these
approaches because they have got a financial benefit in it themselves.
Surely the LGA should be picking this up and running with it rather
than just having two examples? If they are not, should they?
Councillor Mearns: Absolutely,
you are right. Individual local authorities have a duty to make
sure that the information about what householders can do can be
disseminated much more widely. At the same time, it would have
to be said that the awareness of all of this agenda has really
become much more into the public focus in the last year to 18
months and we are now at the targeting stage in terms of what
we do next as local authorities. I think it is quite clear, by
the way, that everybody is coming on to this agenda a little late
in the day probably but there are an awful lot of converts out
there and we really do need to make sure that the best practice
is disseminated as widely as possible. The LGA is a perfect mechanism
for doing that within local authorities, I do believe, because
we have an awful lot of expertise out there, but we do need to
pull that together. The Climate Change Commission which we have
established, and which is now independently looking at what local
authorities can do into the future, will be a very good vehicle
for doing that and they are going to report to us on 5 December.
Q68 Sir Paul Beresford: So we can
expect your board to come up with a policy to pull all this together,
bring in the private sector, bring in the experts and produce
the information on variations of actions that can be taken on
different types of houses sometime in the near future?
Councillor Mearns: That is fine
in terms of new development, but I thought we had to concentrate
on—
Q69 Sir Paul Beresford: I am concentrating
on that. I am talking about that. The point made by the previous
witnesses was that the information is out there and is available
but it is not seen by the public, the public are not getting enough
of it. There needs to be work done on it and we need to pick the
various types of houses, existing stock, and the different approaches
that should be made for the different types of houses. That is
not being done. Would the LGA environment board get on to this?
Councillor Mearns: Absolutely,
but there is an awful lot of work being done in particular areas.
What we have not got is that work being transmitted across the
whole of the piece. In our Warm Zone, for instance, we are doing
an awful lot of work and, as I said, 70% of the properties will
benefit from that. We do have a particular problem with very old
stock which does not have cavity walls, for instance, they will
be really hard to heat and hard to insulate, so it is a problem
we are trying to evaluate now in conjunction with the private
sector. We are working with British Gas and Scottish Power on
that in our own authority.
Dr Webber: I think it is worth
going over the Warm Zone mechanism because in my local authority,
Kirklees, we are knocking on every door offering a range of services.
There are low energy light bulbs, a free carbon monoxide detector,
water conservation advice, composting advice, fire safety benefits
and debts advice, so it is a whole package. If you do that comprehensive
offer ward-by-ward that raises awareness much more effectively
than putting out adverts and getting people to apply for money.
Q70 Chair: Absolutely, but the only
energy things in there are the light bulbs and possibly the water
conservation.
Dr Webber: Everybody gets loft
insulation or cavity wall insulation, and if they are eligible
for it they can get central heating improvements. In most cases,
that is the maximum uplift that is possible. In terms of emissions
reduction, composting is very important, as is water conservation
because there is an energy component there.
Q71 Chair: One of the issues that
was brought up before you came here was about Victorian homes
which do not have cavity walls, particularly in heritage areas
where you do not want to go slapping a load of pebbledash on the
outside, and whether local authorities would be a good mechanism
for targeting the information to owners of Victorian houses as
to what they can do as opposed to the generalised information
and then leaving those particular owners to realise that some
of it is not relevant.
Dr Webber: When you go to a property
with the comprehensive approach you are building up a massive
database and, as such, you will build up the database of the properties
that need doing in a follow-up. If we uplift the ones we can do
relatively easily then we could target the hard to treat homes.
That needs to be the next stage because the Warm Zone is good
but we need to do a lot more if we are going to deal with all
the stock. There are lots of hard to reach people and you will
not get to them and they will not respond to normal advertising,
but if they see other people on their street getting things done
word of mouth is considerable and that is a very powerful mechanism
to get people to take up all sorts of things. On top of that,
we are now looking at a renewable energy loan scheme, so zero
interest loans, and that is a retrofit.
Councillor Mearns: Additionally,
the systems of exterior and sometimes interior cladding for those
hard to heat pre-1919 homes are of mixed reception in terms of
the people who have actually had jobs done. It is going to be
a tough one.
Q72 John Cummings: What key themes
for local government action on the reduction of emissions from
housing have emerged from your Commission on Climate Change?
Councillor Mearns: The Commission,
as I said earlier on, is going to report to us on 5 December at
a conference in Leicester.
Q73 Chair: You have had an interim
report.
Councillor Mearns: We have had
an interim report. They want us to concentrate on trying to reduce
energy consumption obviously.
Q74 John Cummings: Who are "they"?
Councillor Mearns: The Climate
Change Commission. The Climate Change Commission has been set
up by the LGA but is independent of the LGA and is reporting back
to the LGA. Of course, what they also want us to do is to try
and make sure where we do have public money in our use that we
use that in the best way that we can to reduce emissions and use
of energy in any way possible, and that might be through the Decent
Homes standard, having a Decent Homes Plus standard, trying to
make sure that double glazing is—
Q75 Chair: Can I just clarify. The
interim report that you have had thus far, has it made any specific
suggestions or highlighted particular areas? Obviously you want
to reduce emissions.
Councillor Mearns: As I understand
it there are no direct recommendations of that nature in the interim
report.
Q76 John Cummings: When you are in
a position to provide information to the Committee, will you do
so?
Councillor Mearns: We will be
able to provide a briefing very, very soon after 5 December.
Chair: That would be extremely helpful.
Thank you.
Q77 Dr Pugh: In your evidence you
identify "household inertia", or rather, "householder
inertia" as one of the big problems you have to overcome,
and I think you have suggested some ways in which you are endeavouring
to do that at the moment. Is it fair to say that this area of
work is not normally considered to be the core business of local
authorities, you do not get chief executives tearing their hair
out because they have not prompted enough saving in their area?
Councillor Mearns: I think it
is mixed. You are absolutely right, it is very, very mixed. More
and more local authorities are thinking about this to a greater
extent. My own local authority chief executive is sitting on a
regional body to tackle climate change from a regional local government
perspective. There are a number of initiatives happening around
the country, possibly duplicating each other's work at the moment,
but it shows the level of interest which has been created to take
this whole issue very, very seriously.
Q78 Dr Pugh: When you are marked
as a good, fair or improving authority, and your profile is in
the national or local media, this is not an element taken into
consideration, is it?
Councillor Mearns: It will be
in the future.
Q79 Dr Pugh: It will be. In terms
of what you actually do to overcome the behaviour of the citizens
of your borough, all local authorities will do something and I
am fairly confident that if we went to the website of every local
authority in the land now we would see a little section on things
you can do, grants that are available—
Councillor Mearns: I wish that
were the case.
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