Where have all our targets gone?

The Code for Sustainable Homes has come in for a lot of stick over the years. This blog hasn't spared the boot. But one thing the Code did achieve, when it was first introduced in 2007, was to make us aware of targets. The Code is split into six levels, each one being more demanding than the preceding one below. And, coupled with this, was a ratcheted timetable which suggested that we would all move up, level by level, until we reached Level 6 in 2016. Level 6 was the fabled state of Zero Carbon.

Now it was pretty clear from the start that Zero Carbon was never going to be much more than an aspirational target because it was so damned difficult to build. To get Level 6, a house had to supply all its own energy needs without recourse to fossil fuel. That meant it had to be loaded to the gunnels with PV on the roof and often this wasn't enough. There were many sites where it simply wouldn't have been possible to build a Level 6 house as it was originally envisaged. Only a politician could have dreamed this up.

So almost as soon as the Level 6 Zero Carbon target was conceived, moves started to water it down. First the definition changed to exclude certain forms of energy usage. Then allowable solutions were conceived to make it possible to offset some of the energy production. Then cunningly the actual definition of what zero carbon really meant was postponed indefinitely and eventually it became a mythical non-target, shunted into the long grass.

All along there has been this tension between energy saving and low-carbon energy production. They are quite different beasts and yet many of these eco-targets such as the Code conflated the two, so that you could save less energy if you produced more renewable power. Some saw this as a neat trade-off, others as a cop out.

And then along came Passivhaus which became fashionable in the UK after the Code was set up in 2007. Passivhaus is a target that concentrates solely on energy saving, and eschewed any additional green bling required to make a low energy house a zero carbon one. Most of the leading lights in this debate came to see the sense in separating energy consumption from energy production and the whole drive towards the Level 6, zero carbon target started to come off the rails.

It hasn't been helped by having a Tory party which has undergone a painful recasting of its green credentials and now seems to believe that energy targets and environmental regulations are not business-friendly or are, to turn a phrase, just expensive green crap.

So as we approach 2016, what has happened to our targets? If the Code is to be abandoned, and Passivhaus is still a long way from becoming mainstream, do we have any other environmental building targets to aim for? Well there are other candidates: Rory Bergin gives a good summary here of what he calls the rating tools. And there is good old Part L of the English building regulations which is neither a target nor a rating tool, but a standard which everyone has to adhere to. That's just been upgraded a little and is starting to look a bit more like a Passivhaus-verylite standard. But even Part L has become a political battleground now and it's not clear if it will ever be toughed-up again, or parked as another piece of green crap.

Scotland sings to a different hymnsheet. The Code has never been applied here and instead they have more measured reports, usually chaired by the esteemed Lynne Sullivan. She first did one in 2007 and it was a breath of fresh air compared to what was happening in England at the time. Recently, she has been called in to chair an update and it manages to cover all bases without committing to a target anytime soon.

But the issues don't go away. Should we be saddling new homes with renewable energy at all? Should we allow offsetting or allowable solutions? Shouldn't we be concentrating on building better homes instead? Should we be trying to close the performance gap between how a house is designed and how it is actually built? What about all the other environmental factors — water, drainage, ecology, materials? How much should these be targeted or legislated for? Should we have targets at all, or just basic ground rules also known as building regulations.

The short answer is that we don't know and the arguments go round and round the same circles with advocates of every avenue pushing home their own viewpoints. Against such a background, it becomes increasingly difficult to set targets as there is no longer any general agreement about what they should be.

In the meantime, Europe is coming up with a directive which requires each member state to have a  nearly zero-energy building standard in place by 2020. The working definition of this is that the nearly zero or very low amount of energy required should be covered "to a very significant extent" by energy from renewable resources. But it is up to member states to define what these terms mean.

In other words, it's not so very different from the Code for Sustainable Homes, only it's unlikely to set such a demanding target as zero carbon. The clue is in the title: nearly zero-energy. That can be as tough or as easy as you like.

Target culture is all very well as long as the target is far into the future or costs very little to achieve. But the demise of the Code — it's not yet decided but it now seems likely that it will disappear soon — shows that when the targets get too tough, it's our resolve that weakens. This mirrors the process which has gone on behind the scenes at the various climate summits that have tried to update Kyoto. Targets are fine as long as they only apply to others, or are far out into the future.

Collective Custom Selfbuild. What is it?

Short answer is I'm not sure. But something is happening here and I want to find out more.

There is a three and a half minute cartoon you must watch. Link is here. I'm not quite sure I agree with every sentiment but it's nothing if not interesting. And whilst it might come on a bit preachy (reinforced by the music which makes it sound like a wartime information film), there's an awful lot packed into it. It ends with the prophetic words "an idea whose time has come." Cliche? Maybe, but I think it might just be so.

Many of the new policies of the coalition — Community Right to Build, Localism, NPPF granting status to selfbuild for the first time — seem to be combining with grass roots movements like Community Land Trusts, Custombuild sites coming on stream and cohousing developments. And it's all pointing us somewhere a bit different to what we have grown used to, the usual diet of spec built apartments and houses, a little social housing and a small amount of individual selfbuild.

Critics will say it's just the Guardian-reading, Waitrose-shopping middle classes looking for something more interesting than another pilates class or a new farmers' market. But volume housing as practiced in the UK is so damn miserable, and its outcome is so damned expensive that it's about time we found some half-decent alternatives. Not everyone can afford a Grand Design and, even if they could, not everyone wants to live in a five-bedroomed detached house in the countryside. Maybe the answer is lurking in the thought processes behind this video.

It was certainly enough to draw a crowd of 50 or so people to a soft-launch event on Monday night at the offices of AshSakula in London. Lots of movers and shakers in the selbuild world took the trouble to turn up and the enthusiasm was infectious. So much so that I found myself volunteering to organise a tour to Berlin, spiritual home of this sort of thing — baugruppen they call it. They not only do it but they provide guided tours.

Anyone interested in coming along, email me at markbrinkley@mac.com and I'll keep you informed as to dates.

Pandora's Promise

On Friday evening, I went to see what I believe is the first screening of Pandora's Promise in the UK. It's a movie concerned with nuclear power and the only other movie I can think of that touched on this subject was the China Syndrome which, perhaps not surprisingly, featured a little bit in the commentary. The two films take diametrically opposed standpoints.

The China Syndrome was a big Hollywood production starring Jane Fonda, Jack Lemon and Michael Douglas and its central premise was that the nuclear power industry is very bad news. It introduced the world to the idea of a meltdown and the very name, China Syndrome, referred to the depth of the hole which would result — i.e. one so deep it would go right through the Earth and emerge on the other side. The film premiered on March 16 1979, just 12 days before the Three Mile Island reactor accident. What timing! Even more coincidentally, one of the actors actually suggests during the film that a China Syndrome-style meltdown would render "an area the size of Pennsylvania uninhabitable." Three Mile Island is in Pennsylvania. You couldn't make this up.

The fact is that the Three Mile Island accident didn't burn a hole deep into the ground and that Pennsylvania is still inhabited. Life around the stricken plant carries on pretty much as normal. Since then there have been two more iconic nuclear accidents, Chernobyl (1986) and Fukushima (2011), and just the mention of these names is usually enough elicit a shimmer of trepidation from most educated people.

Pandora's Promise takes this particular bull by the horns and starts out in Japan following Mark Lynas on a journey to the stricken Fukushima plant. What's it like? How frightening is it? How much radiation is there? Is it dangerous? I'm just watching and I feel nervous. He dons a protective overall, though it looks about as much use as a chocolate teaspoon to me. And we follow Lynas and director Robert Stone as they get closer and closer to the plant, armed only with a neat little geiger counter which gives them a reading of the background radiation. In fact, if there is a star in this film it is this device which demonstrates simply that there is background radiation everywhere in the world and that it varies significantly from place to place. The radiation levels do increase gradually as they approach the Fukushima plant, but nowhere do they go off the scale and by the end they are standing happily on the beach next to the reactor, apparently in no peril at all.

They take the geiger counter around the world and most tellingly onto Guarapari Beach in Brazil which is known for its radioactive sand in which people immerse themselves as a health cure. They may be nuts, but they are not falling down dead three days later. The natural radioactivity on Guarapari Beach appears to be an order of magnitude larger than that found in the exclusion zones around Fukushima and Chernobyl. Something funny is going on here: it's not what the makers of the China Syndrome wanted us to believe.

We follow the nuclear power story around the world. Much of it is shot in the USA, the cradle of the industry, and we get a potted history of the technology and the people who worked it out. There is footage from Chernobyl and there is lots of footage of various anti-nuclear protests around the world, including the veteran anti-nuclear campaigner Helen Caldicott strutting her stuff. In many ways, the film works a similar pathway to Gwyneth Cravens's book Power To Save The World. Cravens features in the film too. It is good to see women involved in this almost entirely male-dominated debate.

I found the film totally absorbing but then I'm a self-confessed energy wonk. It could have dug deeper. France was touched on but only to say how successful their nuclear programme has been. In the discussion which took place afterwards featuring Lynas, Stone and Brian Eno, it was pointed out that the French are under pressure to close down their fleet of 40 nukes to be more like Germany, which has turned its back on nuclear power altogether. The fact that the anti-nuclear meme is still so strong is therefore bound to make Pandora's Promise controversial. It's not light entertainment, for sure, but it's a very easy watch and whatever your views on nuclear power, you are bound to learn something new.

Go see.

Eric Pickles and me

Speech by Secretary of State Eric Pickles to the Policy Exchange on 14/10/13. Commentary in italics by moi.

"We all recognise that the nation faces an acute housing shortage, with too many young people unable to flee the nest and too many families stuck in homes they’ve outgrown after the collapse in housebuilding [policital content removed]

Yes, you did read that correctly. Someone has gone through this speech and redacted anything that might be deemed party political, such as that Ralph Miliband was a pinko, or words to that effect.

which pushed prices far beyond the reach of too many hardworking families.

Not to mention all the lazy ones. What is it with politicians and hard working families?

But speak it softly – the situation has been turned around thanks to schemes like Help to Buy and a revived Right to Buy helping people realise their dreams of homeownership.

Speak it softly because it's not true. The situation is as bad as ever and is about to be made worse by Help to Buy etc.

The numbers of first time buyers are now back at their highest levels since the economic collapse.

That's not saying much.

And housebuilding rates have climbed back too, with over 150,000 affordable homes since the election, and many more to come. House building starts are up by a third since this time last year, and houses are being built at the quickest rate for a decade.

Yeah, yeah.

Instead of the targets which built nothing but resentment, we’re giving councils which build homes a financial boost, we’re investing in bringing back empty homes into use and we’ve reformed the planning system to accelerate rather than stifle development.

The result has been renewed confidence among developers and buyers alike and it’s breathing new life into the market. But something else has been happening too, something which has largely gone under the radar, and that’s the blossoming of interest from people wanting to build their own homes.

[Policital content removed]. What can he have said here? The DCLG redacters have been working overtime.

It’s well known that the desire for homeownership is hardwired into the British DNA,

Nonsense: people just act rationally and sometimes irrationally - it's nothing to do with British DNA, if there is such a thing

but so many people don’t just dream of homeownership, they dream of building their own home too.

Custom building has traditionally been seen as the preserve of those with deep pockets,

No it hasn't, quite the reverse in fact

I am speaking as someone who has just replastered their house, I can tell you any building project requires deep pockets.

But while for a few people, self-building means a Grand Designs style project, many other people have more modest ambitions. And let’s consider the other benefits too - the boost to local construction and jobs, especially among small businesses.

In some European countries – Austria, Belgium, Sweden - as much as half of all new housing is custom build. Likewise in Germany, where there’s a strong tradition of co-operative building.

Actually I've no idea what he means by co-operative building here. I don't think the Germans are particularly into it anymore than anyone else.

I refuse to believe they are any more ambitious or creative than the British, but they have systems which support, encourage and reward self-builders. And we must do likewise.

The truth is that their national and local governments do not favour spec development like ours do: that's what Pickles can't admit.

In the past, self-builders found themselves tangled up in red tape before they ever got going. They had to bang their heads against the brick wall of a system which seemed designed to put them off.

Some truth in this, but the red tape issue is mostly red herring - it's not what stops selfbuild from happening.

This is a government which believes in supporting ambition - in fact, the more people who build their own home, the better. So we are addressing the problems which make people hesitate.

First: the lack of suitable land
Potential self-builders say this is the number one stumbling block - by selling off government owned land and encouraging councils to do the same. Not every housebuilding site has to be like Cranbrook near Exeter, which is going to deliver more than 6,000 homes.

There are some plots which are perfect for small projects and self-builders

Second: the red tape
We’ve changed the planning system so for the first time councils must take into account the needs of self-builders as part of their overall housing plans.

It's true. NPPF mentions custom build, the first time it's ever been in national planning policy. But an awful lot of local authorities have yet to pay any attention to it.

And finally, the money – or lack of it
We’re working with lenders to help would-be self-builders get access to the finance they need and because we believe that custom-building should not be the preserve of the wealthy elite we’re offering £47 million worth of loans to aspiring self-builders and community groups.

We’ve also set up a website dedicated to guide people through the practical process of DIY housebuilding and we have Kevin McCloud working with us as the industry champion to raise awareness of the opportunities are on offer and help them see that their dreams are within reach.

As a result the mortgage market for self builders is now more than a billion pounds. There are over 50 councils supporting self-builders

why aren't they all doing it? 50 out of 350 is a piss poor total

– by making land available or supporting individuals and community groups with their schemes and there were 11,000 custom-build projects last year

That's hardly success. It's always been around that figure. In Germany, the equivalent figure is 120,000.

That’s around 1 in 10 of all the new houses in the country - a £4 billion boost for the national economy.Hardly a boost as it's very close to the historical trend and has probably fallen during the recession.

But we believe we can go further - that with support and nurturing the custom-build industry can double in size over the next few years. We can make this a mainstream option not a minority interest.

Now that's what we want to hear.

That is why we will do even more to increase the land available with planning guidance that asks councils to actively assess the demand for self-build in their area. Councils will put together a register of interested people who can then benefit when suitable land becomes available. We will also carry out a review of the Homes and Communities Agency’s land to identify more land that is suitable for small scale projects and publicise that to would-be self builders.

And we will strengthen the Community Right to Reclaim Land so that more publicly owned land is sold off and brought back into use.

We will remove even more of the red tape. We rightly ask big developers to make a financial contribution to the roads, schools, parks and surgeries that are needed as part and parcel of large scale housing developments, but it’s ludicrous to ask self-builders to pay up in the same way

personally, I'm not convinced it is ludicrous, because in the long run it's the landowner who pays these impact fees, but if you want to give a subsidy to selfbuilders I'm not complaining

so we’re introducing a Council Tax discount for self-built family annexes.

Interesting, but what is a self-built family annex, and how would you define it?

And we also want to exempt self-builders from unreasonable section 106 charges and from the community infrastructure levy, potentially saving self-builders thousands of pounds - making projects that would otherwise be unaffordable a realistic choice.

Possibly? Possibly not - see above comments

And we will do even more to increase the finance available
…by working with lenders to extend the Help to Buy scheme to those who want to build their own home and we are putting £65 million of the Affordable Homes Guarantees programme potentially up for grabs for community groups.

[Political content removed] this government truly sees the potential in the market to help families realise their aspirations to create jobs and support small businesses and to make a real contribution to meeting our housing needs now and in the future.

We are taking the practical steps which will unlock that potential.

We are famously a nation of shopkeepers but we can be a nation of self-builders too."

Despite my carping, it's a fascinating speech and it's the first time Pickles has spoken on selfbuild, as far as I know. Being a consummate politician, he can't stop trying to score political points, which probably sounds better than it reads, but despite all this there are some very interesting titbits in here. Grant Shapps is now long gone from DCLG, but his initiatives live on.

The Welsh Sprinkler Conundrum

In 2012, the Welsh Assembly passed an amendment to their building regulations requiring all new homes in Wales to be fitted with sprinklers, thereby becoming the first territory in the UK to have such a requirement. This has always been seen as a controversial move because sprinkler systems are expensive, costing anything up to £3,000 per pop, and those trying to build homes cheaply resent this sort of intrusion into their business.

A year on and there is evidence that housing starts in Wales are dramatically down (32%) whereas in England they are up (34%). Now as the sprinkler requirement has yet to take effect, it seems unlikely to be the cause of this downturn, but this hasn't stopped the pro-business lobby making a big fanfare out of it.

The more you dig down into this story, the more interesting it gets. In fact, it's a good example of the wider sustainability debate going on throughout the construction industry and the related energy supply business. Just where should the standard be set? How much is it worth spending to save lives? Or atmospheric stability? Or whatever goal you want to achieve? Put another way, how much should we be interfering with the market?

As if to address this question, DCLG in London commissioned a report from BRE Global, which concluded that the sprinkler policy in Wales would cost £6.7 million per life saved over the next decade. The report suggested the policy will save 36 lives and prevent around 800 injuries between 2013 and 2022. BRE Global concluded that this was not cost-effective.

It's the horrible sort of calculation we'd rather not think about but I guess they have a point. If you simply set out to save lives, you could probably find far better ways of spending the money. And in general new homes are far safer than existing ones, many of which have only a passing acquaintance with Part B of the building regs. So by what logic should this ruling only be applied to the safest sector of the housing market?

But there is also a significant counter argument. The cost of homebuilding clearly impacts on the cost of building land. QED, if sprinklers add £3,000 to the cost of a new house, and sprinklers are made mandatory, then the price of the plot on which the house will sit should, in theory, decline by £3,000 to reflect the difference. In effect, it's the land seller who bears the final cost of this, not the housebuilder, nor the house purchaser.

The same arguments apply to almost all building standards. Whenever you introduce a regulation or a standard which the market would not normally meet, then you add a cost burden. If you are of a free-market libertarian persuasion, you can and will jump up and down and shout "Foul" and "Anti-Competitive", or some such, adding that they don't do this in China or, in this case, Shropshire. But our housing market is unusual in this respect because it contains a highly elastic cost component, the land. Whilst the final price of a new home is largely out of the control of the builders — it is usually set by the second-hand market which is ten times the size in terms of turnover — and the cost they pay to build a house is partly out of their control (planners and building regs), the price they pay for the land is very much in their control. Therefore it is generally no hardship for the builders if the government chooses to set high building standards.

It follows that the landowners are the disadvantaged group in all this and it is they who should be leading the campaign against Welsh sprinklers, not the DCLG or the housebuilders. But let's not forget that it is the government who decides which parcels of land can be built on and which can't. So landowners tend to keep their traps shut over matters like this, grateful as they are for the gift of building permits from the government which they are able to sell on for a fat profit.

Follow this line of argument to its conclusion and there really shouldn't be any reason for the government not to introduce loads more regulatory hurdles onto our housebuilding industry. Squeeze it right down to the level where the building land is worth little more than undesignated farmland. Let's have space standards. Let's have Passivhaus. Let's have SUDS and water saving and bike racks and bin stores and whatever else we think would be good. And let the farmers pay.

Is the Green Deal doomed?

Seemingly, the answer is yes. The government is only lukewarm in its support, which doesn't help. But let's also admit that retrofit is difficult and expensive. And without knowing what is going to happen to fuel prices in the future, we have no way of knowing whether it's really worth doing. I am not surprised by the low uptake.

How's that for a short blog post! Barely longer than a tweet.