Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
PROFESSOR JOHN
CHESSHIRE OBE, COUNCILLOR
PAUL BETTISON
AND MR
PHILIP MIND
15 JANUARY 2008
Q1 Chairman: Good morning. First of all,
my profuse apologies that you have been waiting outside. Our private
session went on much longer than we anticipated. I understand
that Paul Bettison is on his way. As we are running a bit behind
time, I think we will crack on straight away. We know who you
are, so perhaps we could skip introductions. Could I start by
asking you why the Commission—whose report obviously we
have now seen and have hopefully absorbed—chose the five
major areas that it did as the key priorities?
Professor Chesshire: Good morning,
Chairman and others. Could I say, first of all, that I am delighted
personally that you are undertaking this inquiry because the more
momentum we can build up in this area the better, I think. Before
I answer that specific question, we focused a lot on the general
framework really: how could we seek assurance that there would
be a positive local government response, was that coming from
local government itself, by the various routes we have suggested,
and to what extent was it dependent upon more effective collaboration
between central and local government and reform of the strategy
process? But, to illustrate some of the issues, we then chose
the five areas, that is quite right. Adaptation was chosen because,
from the evidence we received, much less progress was being made
on adaptation. I will not say hardly any at all, because momentum
was building up during last year, partly in response to the floods
and the flood inquiry and measures from Brussels and so on, but
that is an ill-formed area of policy, I think, both centrally
and locally, and was one we anticipated before the floods occurred.
We thought that was an exposed Achilles' heel that needed urgent
attention. In terms of some of the other areas: transport and
housing were the two largest single areas of emissions and were
chosen for that reason because we had some expertise; planning
because we are looking long term, as it were, at how do we "green"
the built infrastructure within local government and via its leaders
on the wider community; procurement because I think there was
concern that there might be a response from local government that
it had no incremental resources to drive the agenda forward, so
procurement and the fuel poverty agenda were two areas on which
we wanted to focus. Perhaps I might add just one more thing on
procurement. I think procurement has been studied by others. My
personal impression, as Chairman, is that the bits are still on
the garage floor: we do not have a vehicle to drive out, so there
is need for more attention. I would emphasise its scale and its
weight, to conclude, Chairman. Procurement per se is about
£50 billion per year and capital spend is about £17
billion per year. Rounding those up to £70 billion over 20
years, we are talking about one year's UK GDP. If one uses the
role of local government, through local strategic partnerships
and so on, to engage with the police, education, fire, health,
other public sector players, we might be talking about two years'
GDP through procurement over a 20-year period. That is beginning
to have a major footprint, we think, on green supply chains. Those
were some of the reasons.
Q2 Chairman: Do you think that local
authorities have enough discretion to make a difference?
Professor Chesshire: I think they
have the discretion but they do not have the motivation. They
do not always have the expertise or the resources generally. Clearly,
from my experience evaluating Beacon councils two years ago, where
local authorities have seized the initiative in this area—and
I do not want to keep quoting Woking, but Woking and Leicester
and even unsung heroes like High Peak and the Cornwall Strategic
Energy Partnership—they have made quite considerable contributions
in specific areas, some in renewables, some in transport, some
in the procurement area, but that has not really permeated very
far and I am still concerned how long the tail is in local government.
That is my major concern. This best practice, despite Beacon toolkits
and many other toolkits, does not penetrate very quickly. My conclusion
is there has not been a strategy framework for local government
but, also, it is a question of motivation, to be honest. It has
not been a door-step issue, I am told by many councillors, until
very recently. Clearly the public expenditure settlements and
so on mean there is not a vast amount of money for government,
so they are constrained in what they do, but certainly where local
government has expressed an interest in this they have made rather
impressive progress I think.
Q3 Chairman: Where councils are shaping
up very well, and you have mentioned some of them, is that because
of the individual interest of either officers or members of those
councils? Is that the primary reason why some are so far ahead
of the others?
Professor Chesshire: The evidence
we had, certainly from the Centre for Sustainable Energy, suggested
that it was down to what they called "wilful individuals"—the
individual officer in a transport function, a housing function,
a renewables function who was driving this agenda forward. I think
that is true. But certainly from my Beacon council experience
I would also complement that by the important role of leadership,
either from the political leadership of the council or from an
active chief executive. I think both bottom-up and top-down can
be important, and most effective when they are combined.
Q4 Chairman: We have some that are
doing very well. How do we get to the point where that becomes
much more widespread mainstream practice?
Mr Mind: It is important to put
this into context. Most of the action that has taken place so
far in the exemplar authorities has been attributed, as John has
said, to wilful individuals. We have not had the kind of policy
drivers in place that encourage council action. A lot will change
over the next few years, as a number of policy drivers that have
been put in place at the national level start to be implemented.
For the first time, we will have carbon reduction performance
indicators in the performance management framework. The largest
local authorities will be subject to a carbon trading regime.
We have a sustainable energy measures report which brings together
best practice. There are a number of things which are happening
now, therefore, which will encourage local action.
Q5 Chairman: Paul, welcome. I gather
you have had some trouble getting here.
Councillor Bettison: Yes. Thank
you.
Chairman: We have not been going as long
as you might have feared because we were somewhat delayed ourselves.
We are delighted to see you. We have just opened the session really.
Q6 Joan Walley: You mentioned just
now about leadership and how this whole issue gets translated
into local action. Perhaps I could take that down to the housing
policies that local authorities have. What do you feel the main
action that local authorities should be taking on housing should
be? How do you distinguish between council housing and between
the whole housing sector, between managements. How do you feel
that a real difference can be made as far as the housing sector
and the housing functions of local authorities?
Professor Chesshire: I agree it
is a critical sector. My expertise is not particularly strong
in housing. My other colleagues might want to come in. One area
over which I have been very concerned over three or four years—and
not just wearing this hat, in this role—is the issue of
compliance. The problem of the housing sector, I think, is that
of sloppy standards and poor training and lack of skill on site,
as it were, so that, even when you have fairly tight specifications
for the envelope of the building, experience suggests that they
are not always put up to those tight specifications. As we are
going to place greater demands on the construction sector to improve
its thermal efficiency, to lower its carbon footprint, to familiarise
itself with a range of renewables and low carbon technologies,
unless we get compliance right we are going to start missing a
lot of opportunities, because, as the housing construction rate
increases, we are going to be left with opportunities which we
could have taken at a very low cost which if we have to go back
in, say, 20 years time to retrofit will be extraordinarily expensive.
I regarded that really as a kind of leading-edge indicator of
the role the local government can have. I realise competition
was introduced in these functions and, in my own personal view,
it was competition downwards rather than competition upwards,
so I would want to emphasise the role of building control. In
other areas, I would think in the planning function, for example,
it is going to be crucially important to ensure the use of access
to public transport in new housing developments—this places
an emphasis on brownfield developments rather than greenfield
developments—and, also, of course, the extension of rules
like the Merton rule to domestic and not just non domestic properties.
There is a very wide agenda.
Q7 Joan Walley: We would like to
press you a little bit more on the building control and planning
aspects of it, but, just dealing with the housing functions specifically
that the local authorities have, you are talking about non-compliance
presumably in relation to the construction of new properties but
there are whole programmes going on, with Warm Front, with Warm
Zone, with insulation. How do you feel that achieving greater
energy efficiency in carbon reduction is being hindered at the
moment?
Professor Chesshire: That topic
is close to my heart. I do see this as a rather crucial area but
also one where very significant resources are already available
and will become available. We were a bit disappointed—wearing
my Fuel Poverty Advisory Group hat—with the funding from
central government for Warm Front, which is going to fall a little
bit. But, as you may well know, through the Energy Efficiency
Commitment but particularly through the Carbon Emission Reduction
Target which comes in on 1 April next year,[1]
with £1 billion a year for CERT and £300 million a year
for Warm Front and Decent Homes and one or two other things on
top, we are talking about the best part of £1500 million
a year probably over each of the next three years. I regard that
as a major opportunity to begin to improve the energy efficiency
of the housing stock, particularly addressing it towards the fuel
poor, because I think there is a tension, as the Committee will
know, between rising energy prices and the impressive impact those
have on those suffering from fuel poverty.
Q8 Joan Walley: Do you feel that the
reduction there is in the Warm Front money is linked with the
extra money that is coming through? Do you feel that the extra
money that is coming through from the other sources is more than
compensating for the changes in the Warm Front scheme? Do you
feel there is enough co-operation on the ground between these
different schemes?
Professor Chesshire: I must answer
the first part of your question wearing my Fuel Poverty Advisory
Group hat, I think. No, I am very disappointed that government
has chosen to reduce government support, public expenditure, to
fuel poverty when there was a firm statutory framework in place
to remove the vulnerable from fuel poverty in 2010 and all others
by 2016 as far as reasonably practical. It certainly seems to
me in the Fuel Poverty Advisory Group that was not reasonably
practical. They had not applied the tests. Certainly recent statements
in the House by the relevant minister almost evaded reference
to the 2010 vulnerable target which government has.
Q9 Joan Walley: Do you think that
the 2010 target can be met?
Professor Chesshire: I do not
think so, with the sums of money now available, and the fact that
energy prices have risen considerably last year and are likely
to rise this year from the point of view of most commentators.
In terms of co-ordination, we will come back to the local government
Climate Change Commission. We did make some proposals—from
memory at pages 32 to 33 of the report, in the green boxes—on
ways in which local authorities and Registered Social Landlords
(RSLs) could work more closely with energy suppliers to maximise
the take-up of energy efficiency measures.
Q10 Joan Walley: Your report says
that all councils should contribute to the Home Energy Efficiency
Database and should have access to energy performance certificates
in their area so that they can build up a better picture of energy
efficiency of local housing stock. What do you think is preventing
that from happening at the moment?
Professor Chesshire: Parallel
to my work, I undertook quite a few meetings with CLG, seeking
to have access to energy performance certificates for local government.
Q11 Joan Walley: CLG is?
Professor Chesshire: Communities
and Local Government, the former ODPM as was. Communities and
Local Government is the lead department on measures of that kind.
It seems to me that we need to move towards a 21st century Domesday
book—I mean, nothing very clever—where we can quickly
categorise the housing stock: green because reasonable measures
have been implemented; amber where some of the basic measures
have been put in place but there is scope for more activity; and
red where a property was in dire need of refurbishment or application
of cavity and loft insulation or more efficient appliances. That
is a fairly simple kind of measure. The reason that is so important
strategically is that all of the evidence from BERR and Defra
is that the "lowest hanging fruit" in terms of pounds
of expenditure per carbon capture is in the housing stock. There
is a lot of low-hanging fruit there. This was a mechanism I was
hoping to see developed between Defra and CLG. It is a case of
providing as much information as possible to local government
in standardised form to develop this Domesday book over time.
Also, an alternative route would be to use the Energy Saving Trust's
Home Energy Efficiency Database. Again, that would require access
by local government to data. They need it operationally, do they
not, to implement programmes on the ground?
Q12 Joan Walley: What has happened
to stop that at the moment? Presumably local authorities which
have taken up energy efficiency carbon issues can do that themselves
at the moment, but you are saying that it needs to be done on
a national basis for the national framework.
Professor Chesshire: My colleagues
from the LGA can speak with more authority on this point but I
think that certainly some of the local authorities with housing
responsibilities are comparatively small organisations—you
know, district councils. I know from my work with the Home Energy
Conservation Association (HECA) that very often those are part-time
posts, maybe one afternoon a week, one day a week, one and a half
days a week. Those posts are under threat as a result of Defra's
review of HECA, and I think a consistent concern we had expressed
in the evidence from local government was the need both in qualitative
terms and in quantitative terms to improve the human resource
available to tackle this agenda. Some of it is a shortage of officers'
time, at a time when there are a lot of other competing claims,
but I would defer to Paul and Philip on that specific point.
Councillor Bettison: Of course
with a lot of local authorities having disposed of their stock
to RSLs, the former housing department in those authorities reverts
to being essentially a client role and there are just no spare
bodies around these days. Also, one must not forget that local
authorities themselves have been incredibly squeezed. I was saying
only the other day in my own authority that we now have many one-person
departments, which never used to be the case. For example, when
our "tree person" is on holiday, we are essentially
just not in the tree business.
Q13 Joan Walley: Finally, do you
have any comments on the Comprehensive Spending Review process
2008-2011 in respect of the shift that there is of the share of
funding? As I understand it, more now goes to the RSLs, something
like 69 per cent, as opposed to local authorities in the past
getting the largest share of that funding. Is that going to have
any bearing on this?
Councillor Bettison: It certainly
will do, yes.
Q14 Joan Walley: In what way?
Councillor Bettison: Not least
of which in terms of the provision of officers available. Because,
as John said, this sort of thing requires officer input. If local
authorities do not have the officers, then the likelihood of them
wanting to go out and create new posts against the background
of the most constricted settlement for some time is most unlikely.
I think over the next few months we are going to see local authorities
shedding posts rather than creating new ones.
Q15 Mr Caton: Could we come back
to planning and building control, which you have already referred
to, Professor, and in particular compliance. In your report[2],
you referred to BRE research showing that one-third of new homes
failed to meet building regulations. Can you expand on why you
think that is? Also, the Commission's report raises concerns about
the regulatory model associated with Part L of building regulations.
What needs to change to ensure we have something nearer 100 per
cent compliance and proper enforcement?
Professor Chesshire: My personal
judgment is that local authorities have taken their eye off the
ball in terms of this function. Much more emphasis has gone to
the health and safety aspects of construction in my view and less
weight has been placed on Part L. To be fair to the local authorities,
that reflects the fact that, by and large, there were not enormous
pressures on them to meet specific carbon targets. I chair something
called the Energy Efficiency Partnership for Homes. We funded
BRE on two occasions—I think four years ago and two years
ago—to undertake fairly modest surveys of newly constructed
properties. That is the reference that you have there. We found
a messy picture. It was not just that roof voids had not been
completely filled or bad workmanship on site and missed opportunities
and so on, but even light fittings had not been installed properly,
especially high efficiency light fittings and so on. We are in
the course of negotiating with Communities and Local Government
to jointly fund a study of homes via the Partnership over the
next few months, to see to what extent compliance with Part L
(April 2006) is now being met, so we will have a more sensitised
context, I think, both in local authorities and in the construction
industry and so on. I would hope that we can report in July or
September, something of that time horizon, to see whether there
has been any learning. As to why there is not compliance, we are
beginning the study I just referred to with a number of discussions
with stakeholders to see if there are underlying reasons why they
are unable to build, to plan, and are there some quick wins we
can identify, as it were, before we go on to measure the exercise
itself. I hope that will inform us a lot more than the two previous
studies, which were just doing the "pressure testing"
survey of houses.
Mr Mind: I am not an expert on
this but, if you want chapter and verse, there is an organisation
called Local Authority Building Control which represents building
control inspectors around the country. One important point to
make is that the building control function is not just delivered
by local authorities, it is also delivered by the private market,
so you have quite an unusual form of regulation where you have
a competitive market of provision of inspection, and I think local
authority building control, if they were here, would say that
has an impact on the quality of inspection. I think they would
also say, if they were here, that the Part L requirements are
relatively new. There is—and this goes right across action
on climate change—a skills capacity issue, in so far as
building control inspectors have had to up-skill in relation to
energy efficiency requirements as they have been raised by government.
Q16 Mr Caton: You have already mentioned
with approval the Merton rule. There is quite a bit of controversy
at the moment about how the Government in its planning policy
statement is addressing what the Merton rule does for those authorities
which follow it. Do you think the planning policy statement, as
is, is going to provide Merton on a wider scale?
Professor Chesshire: Again, I
do not know why there has been hesitancy in central government
on this. I would prefer to see scope for innovation. It seems
to me that in different areas of the country one has vastly different
opportunities to exploit renewables and the kinds of renewables
one can exploit. Clearly, in rural areas, there are opportunities
for ground-source heat pumps and for biomass combustion. A vast
number of technologies can be brought to bear. Even wind technology
may well perform better outside dense urban areas, as all the
scientific evidence is suggesting. On the other hand, inner urban
local authorities have different opportunities. I am concerned
with the impact of lobbying, really, from the construction industry.
I see that as being a significant brake, both on the compliance
issue and on debates such as Merton and so on. I appreciate that
the Government, coming under pressure from the construction industry,
says that there is a need for some certainty and you should not
have different standards being imposed in different locations;
on the other hand, many of the options are locally determined,
in my view, and therefore you need innovation. I would want the
planning guidance to provide a great deal of positive framework
and not to be too restrictive, as it were, as to how it is applied.
The building industry will just have to learn to innovate. It
is time we used a bit more of the stick and a bit less of the
carrot with the construction sector. That is my personal view.
Q17 Mr Caton: At the moment Merton
tends to be 10 per cent across the whole authority. The Government
seems to be resisting that. How is that going to be resolved?
The Government says it is going to improve things; others certainly
think they are going to get less of that sort of action.
Councillor Bettison: I have concerns
that if Merton were to become a site-by-site negotiation it would
put quite significant strains on planning officers, who are in
short supply anyway, and that, in turn, would make the planning
process less efficient. I think it would also lead in some cases
to certain developers doing better than others because they were
able to lean more effectively on the local authority. I do not
think that is what the essence of the Merton rule is. As the professor
has indicated, there are different opportunities for renewable
energy sources in different parts of the country, but I am not
sure that we are ready to say that there is a different opportunity
at one end of the street from another or on different sites. I
do have concerns about the deliverability of that in local authority
terms.
Q18 Caton: Do you think more renewable
energy applications could be regarded as permitted developments?
Councillor Bettison: You mean
in order to speed up the process? My initial response to that
would be yes. I think the LGA would want to look at that a little
more closely to make sure the law of unintended consequence does
not arise.
Q19 Mr Caton: I am thinking in particular
of micro-generation.
Councillor Bettison: Certainly
micro-generation, yes.
Professor Chesshire: And some
roof-mounted panels and so on, subject to basic standards. I think
that is disruptive. I do not want to be too critical of local
authorities, obviously. There is a whole range of technologies
becoming available—many of them oversold by particular installers,
particularly as to their output and performance in specific urban
circumstances. I have chaired for the research councils, a group
of universities (Imperial, Southampton, Sussex and others), looking
at the performance of wind generators in urban areas, for example,
and their sensitivity to the wind speed: output is the cube of
the wind speed. It is incredibly difficult to measure, as it were,
and that level of knowledge and expertise has not cascaded down
into the planning system of local authorities as yet. It will
do and quickly. I have one final thing to say, if I may, Chairman,
in response to Merton. I would also want to insist that, before
the renewables were taken up, all cost-effective energy efficiency
measures were first installed, because the way you increase the
share of renewables is by lowering demand for the output of those
renewables.
1 Note by Witness: The Carbon Emission Reduction
Target will come in on 1 April 2008. Back
2
http://campaigns.lga.gov.uk/climatechange/home/ Back
|
