Green Jobs and Skills - Environmental Audit Committee Contents


Memorandum submitted by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE)

  CABE is the government's statutory advisor on architecture, urban design and public space, sponsored by the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Department for Culture Media and Sport.

  The global environmental crisis we face is, in large part, a planning and design crisis. It is a consequence of how things are made, resources are used, land is developed, buildings are constructed, services are supplied and places are connected. So tackling climate change involves thinking hard about the design of towns and cities and how we live in them, and developing the knowledge, skills and jobs to respond, adapt and innovate. The UK's environmental industries can be a world leader in helping to reduce greenhouse gases without hampering economic growth.

KEY RECOMMENDATIONS

    — The definition of "Environmental Industries" should include the built environment and green space sectors in recognition of the contribution they make to meeting the Carbon Reduction Commitment as stipulated in the Climate Change Act 2008.

    Government has made commitments to delivering a low and zero carbon built environment. In addition, the Planning Act 2008 imposes a statutory duty on local authorities to deliver good design and sustainability, which has a direct impact on skills for both the built environment and green space sectors.

    — Skills in the built environment trades and professions need to be supported in order to ensure that the carbon reduction commitments outlined in the Heat and Energy Strategy and Low and Zero Carbon Building strategies are delivered.

    In particular training for architects, builders, and engineers to take a "whole house" approach to retrofitting existing properties with low and zero carbon technologies, as well as efficiency measures.

    — Green infrastructure is vital to mitigating and adapting to climate change through providing a natural systems approach to alleviating the urban heat island effect, reducing flood risk and other important functions.

    The green space sector is facing a chronic shortage of people with the skills to deliver the well designed and maintained green infrastructure. The sector must be supported to provide further skills development and routes to entry into the industry.

    — Financial instruments promoting uptake of low/zero carbon and efficiency technologies should be explored and implemented, these could include the reduction of VAT to 5% on all refurbishment costs and/or council tax rebates to property owners. This would create further certainty in the market for the development of these new technologies.

THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT AND GREEN SPACE SECTORS: ENVIRONMENTAL INDUSTRIES

  It is important that the built environment and green space sectors are included in definitions of environmental industries in any low carbon economic strategy, as they are critical to delivering carbon reductions and adapting to the impacts of climate change. The construction and use of our homes and other buildings produces approximately 45% of the UK's carbon emissions. Around 75% of the current building stock will still be standing in 2050. Progress on energy efficiency—the cheapest way to reduce carbon emissions—has been slow but the UK government is now moving fast to catch up with other northern European countries.

  The Heat and Energy Strategy recently published by the Department for Climate Change and Energy (DECC) has set a target for a near zero carbon built environment by 2080. If this is to be achieved then we must create the skills base and industry certainty to support this objective.

  CABE is committed to working with Government to find environmentally and economically viable solutions to creating a low or zero carbon built environment. This is one of the reasons why we have created www.sustainablecities.org.uk an online resource for local authority leaders to gain access to expert advice and guidance on creating a more sustainable built environment.

  The built environment offer exciting new opportunities for energy efficiency, generation and distribution. The delivery of community energy systems can only be led from a wider town planning and masterplanning level and local authorities are therefore well placed to lead on thermal masterplanning. There are a number of northern European examples of such approaches including Hammarby SjÃstad, and Copenhagen, and all have been initiated and led by the local planning authorities. Individual site scale developments are normally too small to make these systems financially viable.

  Green infrastructure ranges from parks to play spaces, from cemeteries to allotments. As well as being vital in creating healthy, cohesive and sustainable communities, providing recreational space and contact with nature, this green infrastructure encourages more sustainable travel, acts as a carbon sink, and can reduce energy use by buildings for heating and cooling. Green spaces help to manage the effects of extreme weather conditions caused by climate change.

  Increasing tree cover by 10% can reduce the surface temperature of a city by between three and four degrees centigrade. The prediction of hotter, drier summers means that it is vital to protect existing trees and prioritise the planting of new ones. Larger tree canopies contribute hugely to the shading and cooling of streets and buildings.

  It is not only heat that is a dangerous effect of climate change. Flooding too is a serious concern. The most economically damaging aspect of climate change to date has been extreme wet weather. The UK summer floods in 2007 caused 13 deaths, flooded 48,000 homes and 7,300 businesses, cost £3 billion and for a time left several urban areas without drinking water or power. Although the potential impacts of extreme weather are inherently uncertain, they can be substantially reduced.

  One of the best ways to mitigate the impact of flood risk is by restoring flood plains. These spaces can be used for recreation and wildlife habitats. Creating green corridors along rivers on the flood plains, with storm water lakes for fishing and boating, picnic sites, trees, and cover for wildlife, are an efficient, environmentally sound approach to flood prevention. The Milton Keynes flood plains forest involves the restoration of a site adjacent to the River Nene to create a new landscape with much greater flood storage capacity.

  Green assets, whether on or around buildings, must be managed at a strategic level in order to provide the best results. For developers and building owners it is important to recognise the benefits of using ecological processes to achieve a more economically and environmentally sustainable built environment.

THE JOBS AND SKILLS CHALLENGES

  Proponents of the Green New Deal argue that massive public investments and fiscal incentives can lay the foundations for the private sector to develop new industries and create millions of jobs in the short term, and protect the environment in the medium term.

  The Homes and Communities Agency Academy's Mind the Skills Gap (2007) report assessed the gaps in supply and demand of the skills required to deliver sustainable communities. The study concluded that there weren't enough people with the right skills in the right places to deliver the government's ambitious agenda for creating sustainable communities across England.

  The report analysed skills gaps by occupation. Landscape architects, urban designers, and architects were considered together as being concerned with the design and management of buildings and the public realm. Labour shortages were forecast to increase significantly up to 2012 for urban design and landscape architecture as a reflection of the growing demand for design skills and the lack of increase in supply. This was, of course, before the credit crunch and the redundancies which have followed. An action plan to support skills development and address labour shortages in key occupations is currently being produced by the HCA Academy in partnership with key built environment and green space organisations.

  Future skills development and training will need to be driven by technological advances, and ever tougher carbon/energy efficiency standards, and issues around place-making and community cohesion. There is evidence of some difficulty or resistance among education providers to get up to date experience and knowledge, and develop their work quickly enough, to keep pace with change. Students need to be prepared for the challenges they will face. As they move into professional life, they will find themselves in roles that involve delivering a step-change in the design quality and management of our towns and cities.

  Achieving tougher environmental standards will form an important aspect of professional life. Practitioners are already expected to play a proactive role in achieving government objectives for reducing carbon emissions from the built environment, through the zero carbon homes programme (Building a greener future: policy statement, CLG, July 2007) and programmes relating to new non domestic buildings and existing homes and buildings, including historic environments (Climate change and the historic environment, English Heritage, 2008). The skills and learning gained at undergraduate and postgraduate level needs to provide a sound foundation to meet these challenges and proactive approaches to life-long learning. More effort and investment is needed to meet this challenge.

BUILT ENVIRONMENT SKILLS

  The built environment sector will have an important role in laying the foundations for the emergence and mass roll-out of a set of resilient low carbon interventions—mitigations, adaptations and innovations—rich in new jobs and based upon independent sources of energy supply. However this requires an investment in the skills in the sector to ensure the right workforce is in place to deliver.

  There are two main skills shortages within the built environment sector that we are primarily concerned with in the context of delivering a low carbon built environment: planning and implementation.

  The CLG Planning matters inquiry (HC 517-I, July 2008) concluded that England's planning system underpins the country's economic growth and development, but there is a significant risk that that major Government targets for housebuilding and regeneration will be missed because the system is unable to manage the volume or variety of tasks required between now and 2020. Lord Stern's report on Climate Change also pointed to the strategic importance of planning in coordinating a response to climate change adaptation and mitigation.

  Wider economic well-being and delivery of the Government's environmental priorities could well be hindered simply because the system cannot cope. Two linked and chronic problems need to be urgently addressed to prevent this. There is a drastic shortage of planning officers, estimated to affect 46% of local authority posts by 2012. There is also a significant and growing skills gap among those planners who remain within the system.

  These problems have been recognised for more than a decade, but in spite of continued pressure for change, planning departments remain short of staff and likely to be so for the foreseeable future. The CLG committee concluded that government needs both to raise the general status of planning within local government structures and to provide means by which planners can widen and improve their skills to obtain the greatest benefit from developments for the localities they serve.

  The independent report for the Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) on The credit crunch and regeneration: impact and implications (January 2009) examines economic and financial impacts on the regeneration sector. The report notes concerns that if regeneration activity is halted now, a generation of skills and capacity which has been built upon during the last decade may be lost.

  CABE and RIBA recently produced a briefing, Skills for Low Carbon Building. In the briefing we suggested that by developing their low carbon skills rapidly, practising architects and built environment professionals may gain competitive advantage from niche specialisation in low carbon design. Alternatively, simply having a stronger skills base and deeper knowledge of climate change and low carbon design issues will bring opportunities to build wider ranging relationships with clients and stakeholders who have an active interest in environmental issues.

  The message emerging from CLG and CABE is that, despite pressures of reduced planning fee income and development activity, now is a time to retain planning and design skills, to focus on strategy and plan making, and to ensure the conditions are in place to expedite sound development decisions when the upturn occurs.

GREEN SPACE SKILLS

  The successful planning, design and management of parks and the wider network of green infrastructure draws upon the skills of people working in a broad range of specialist occupations, from landscape architects to horticulturalists. The green space sector also requires management expertise, including skills such as advocacy and community engagement, in order to instil the public with motivation and confidence to use and enjoy green spaces and influence local authority decision making.

  As we have seen above green infrastructure is vital in both mitigating and adapting to climate change, and so is likely to become an even more important sector in future. There are not enough people with the right skills to fill existing jobs, and at the same time green space departments are chronically under-funded and under-staffed.

  We know from the research and consultancy that have informed our Skills to Grow strategy that there is some fantastically innovative and exciting work going on in the sector. There is, however, no single organisation that represents the full range of occupations that play a role in delivering high quality green space.

  Local government is the principle employer for the sector, but green spaces management within local authorities is facing serious skills problems. CABE surveyed 54 green space managing departments in a range of local authorities. The findings highlight a number of common problems.

    — 68% of authorities said a lack of skills in horticulture was affecting overall service delivery.

    — 40% of departments said "lack of capacity to deliver" was the reason for not providing apprenticeships—however we also know from the survey that volunteering contributed an average of over 420 days per authority per year, or the equivalent of an extra two staff in person days. This demonstrates that there is significant interest in the sector and potential for growth.

  People employed in the green space sector often have lower pay and status in comparison with other sectors. This is a key driver for the decline in green space skills which leads to poorer quality green spaces and low public expectations. In brief the issues facing the sector are:

    — Problems with recruitment and retention of staff.

    — Lack of workforce diversity.

    — The existing range of skills is too narrow.

    — The shortage of green space management and leadership skills.

    — Lack of co-ordinated working across the sector.

  Our Skills to Grow strategy outlines ways of meeting these challenges through an action plan. Already, in response to our strategy, the Government has committed to a £1 million "Green Apprentices" scheme. This will help with the costs of training and employing 60 new apprenticeships in deprived urban authorities across the country.

  Similarly the Government has committed investment in developing new parks and green spaces. CABE is now seeking to ensure that we have the necessary people with the right skills to implement these ambitions.

4 June 2009






 
previous page contents next page

House of Commons home page Parliament home page House of Lords home page search page enquiries index

© Parliamentary copyright 2009
Prepared 16 December 2009