Drowning in another industry report - a plain talking perspective on the green agenda by Joe Martoccia, Director, UKTFA
You don’t need to search very far to uncover a mountain of policy, regulation, debate,
opinion and recommendation on how the UK will achieve zero
carbon housing stock. Add to that the continual changes to Code for Sustainable Homes courtesy of Mr Shapps and suddenly the construction industry, and more specifically the housing developers, are struggling to see which side is
up.
The recently published final report of the Low Carbon, Innovation and Growth Team (IGT) would suggest that the construction industry has engaged positively with the issue of sustainability. I would challenge the Low Carbon Construction report. With over 60 recommendations it seems to point once again to the ‘too difficult to achieve box’ – it’s another report that underlines the issues without actually telling us anything new. It highlights the perceived issues of an enlightened group of people but once again fails to deliver tangible outcomes that are a true and real reflection of the UK construction industry. Did the Innovation and Growth Team visit a timber frame housing development? Will we remember the report in years to come? I doubt it. I read the word collaboration in most industry/Government reports, but I see no real evidence..
What the report fails to recognise is the realities of the construction industry.
It’s fragmented, it’s disenchanted
and at best it’s just about clawing its way through the recession. But instead of strong practical leadership from the front, almost daily the sector is faced with the likelihood of a changing regulatory framework. It’s incredibly challenging for the housing sector to know which way to turn in terms of delivering Code compliant homes. If we look at the proposed Local Standards
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For me the industry is faced with three principle issues. Number one is the issue of dealing with the here and now. How do you build a home that meets today’s standards? The second issue surrounds the anticipation of what’s coming next impacting heavily on the burden of planning a housing scheme. The third issue surrounds the construction industry’s ignorance of build solutions that limit the need for technology-led, top drawer green solutions costing an arm and a leg to install and costing even more to maintain. For me, and more specifically the UKTFA, these issues can be dealt with now without the need for endless reporting and time consuming navel gazing.
If we look at new housing in the UK there are a few notable examples of leading edge practice, but by and large the mainstream construction industry is lagging way behind where they should be well on the road to 2016. The industry is being dragged kicking and screaming into the brave new world of sustainable construction and if it really wants to play its part in responding to the challenge of carbon reduction, I would suggest there needs to be a quantum shift in the way the industry operates to enable it to face that challenge.
But in truth the Low Carbon Construction report completely misses the opportunity to look at an exemplar segment of the housing industry that is already setting the standards by which the entire industry should be following. The UK timber frame industry has been leading the way in sustainable construction for years. It’s no accident that our market share has been steadily growing in the affordable housing sector, with social landlords appreciating the low carbon, low maintenance nature of a sustainability strategy based on a high performance building envelope. Their tenants appreciate the low heating bills a well insulated home can deliver, day in day out.
Framework
for a moment. On paper it might
seem like a great idea to empower local councils
to demand certain standards of housebuilders. Wouldn’t local councils love that? But it doesn’t
work in practice. How can a national housebuilder deal with such localised
standards without significantly increasing the costs of building a home? On the other hand while
it seems to be a common sense move to reduce the compliance burden of achieving Code Level 4 homes in certain situations it’s a huge challenge for the industry to continually switch its build methodology when faced with regular changes to policy and compliance.
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