EDITORIAL
Lessons in honesty from … a minister?
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Annabel Clasby, mechanical building services engineer, Atkins
Patrick Conaghan, partner, Hoare Lea Consulting Engineers Rowan Crowley, director, einside track James Fisher, e3 consultant, FläktWoods David Hughes, consultant Philip King, director, Hilson Moran
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G
overnment pronouncements are usually so full of self- serving puffery that they wouldn’t normally make the quote of the month in this publication. But this time we’re more than
Those involved in the process of design, specification and commissioning of low-carbon properties all need to sign up to checking their performance and helping occupants
willing to make an exception with Andrew Stunell, the Communities Minister, whose responsibilities include the Building Regulations. He told the recent Ecobuild conference that ‘British houses are still a joke because they leave the factory broken’ (see News, page 6). Stunell went on to admit that getting low-carbon homes to work in practice ‘is a difficult job that needs to be tackled on several different levels, including making sure that when we say we’ve built something, we actually have, and that we come back and take a look at it again’. The minister (excuse the pun) has hit the nail on the head. The housebuilding industry – which has been so successful in influencing the coalition government’s policies on the built environment – cannot sidestep its responsibilities to produce properties that are fit for the low-carbon purpose for which they were designed. But those involved in the process of design, specification and commissioning of low-carbon properties all need to be signed up to revisiting the buildings to check and rectify their performance – and to help occupants understand how to get the best out of living in a low-carbon property. It was also refreshingly honest of the minister
to admit that he could not say whether the target for all new homes to be ‘zero carbon’ by 2016
would actually be met. This would depend, he suggested, on whether the gap between design intentions and performance outcomes of new homes could be closed. The new ‘quality assurance’ regime envisaged for new homes will undoubtedly help to bridge this gap. But it’s no good ministers and civil servants – as they did at Ecobuild
– looking to the Green Deal as a panacea for all these ills. The Deal could help with making the existing housing stock a little more energy efficient, but there is a growing number of experts predicting that it could well turn out to be a damp squib. So the whole government needs to take a lesson in honesty from Mr Stunell and not let up on its drive to get the construction supply chain in tune with the zero carbon agenda, and with the immense challenges this still poses.
Bob Cervi, Editor
bcervi@cibsejournal.com
www.cibsejournal.com
April 2012 CIBSE Journal
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