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roundtable: commercial property 51 The elephants in the room


Throughout the roundtable discussion two topics kept recurring:


• The lack of clarity and detail about the Act • The potential inadequacy of EPCs as a legislative measure.


… as you will see from the conversations below.


Architect Chris Castle agreed that uncertainty was no friend to long-term planning, or complex design projects. “To be sat here with this panel of industry experts discussing what is going to happen in five years without clarity of the target, is in itself a significant problem.


“As designers, we always strive for best practice, sustainability and flexibility within buildings, but if they are going to set hard targets for five years time then we really ought to know what they are now. We are operating in something of a vacuum at the moment.”


Chris Castle Clarity is coming


Griffiths, of the UK Green Building Council, which is assisting the Government’s working group for the Energy Act, explained that only primary legislation has yet been tabled. The working group is now defining the detailed nature of the legislation, and the statutory importance of specific EPC ratings.


He explained that a wide range of roughly 20 organisations are represented on the working group, including owner and occupier professional bodies through which lobbying can be channeled. The working group will produce a proposal paper, for ministers, before wider issue for public consultation in late summer or autumn.


Robin Harris said he would ensure the SEGRO research and CoreNet’s views were made known to the working group.


Pointing out that some premises, such as listed buildings, will be exempt from the Act, Griffiths accepted the Roundtable concerns about the need for clarity and detail: “There is a big material risk to an occupier who finds himself in a building with an EPC rating worse than E, if the final legislation ends up demanding that the building is unfit.”


Finnis noted that the Act remained unclear and highlighted the risk of this legislation being a blunt instrument in a complex market.


M&E engineering consultant Matthew Jones mentioned the uncertainty brought to the sector by the “disorganised and shambolic” introduction of legislation in 2006, 2010 and 2013. “We are currently designing buildings valued at £20-£40 million that will fall under 2013 legislation and we still don’t know the full legislative position. Talking about statute for 2018, I am not surprised that we don’t know the details. We will probably still be having this conversation in 2017.”


THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – JUNE 2013


SEGRO’s Dean mentioned the challenges of the proposed EPC legislation for owners and landlords in transferring occupational responsibilities to others, particularly in multi-let office buildings. “It’s not clear who is responsible. Is it the landlord or the tenant? We are all waiting to see the detail of the secondary legislation. It definitely needs a lot of finessing.” There might also be a need to lobby the Government, she added, to get “some clarity around the ambiguity


that we are working with at the moment.”


EPCs: A flawed method of measurement?


EPCs were introduced in August 2007, but several Roundtable members were still not convinced about their true value within the legislation.


Nigel Pavey explained that EPC assessment software was never meant to be a design tool, but, because of its link to legislation, it will now influence design. “You can improve a building’s EPC – get a biomass boiler or connect to a local heating network – but you don’t have to change the building design at all.”


Matthew Jones: “It is certainly flawed. It is not an empirical instrument but a very blunt tool that gives an order of listing for various buildings.”


Pavey claimed that when EPCs were launched the methodology was so simple that EPC assessors in England and Wales could complete the rating procedures while on their holidays, having never even visited the buildings concerned. “When the EPC concept was brought out they opened up EPC assessment to the market. Anyone could do it with a little training.” (A different system was set up in Scotland using qualified professional assessors.)


assessment role commercially unviable if carried out with proper professional diligence.


Griffiths acknowledged that historically the launch of EPCs had been somewhat undermined by early poor assessment standards, but the Government had quickly recognized that and improved the assessment process – and would continue to do so with the new legislation.


Should the new legislation


be based on EPCs? Castle: “The evidence of the past five years shows that EPCs are not exactly accurate and that is problematic. Where buildings have received EPC ratings, there can be a huge gulf between a building’s actual energy performance in use and its EPC anticipated at the construction phase. We need to measure what we need to know about, and measuring projected energy through EPCs is not really useful.”


Pavey questioned the validity of EPCs as a statutory measure. He suggested the calculation methodology of an EPC rating could be “quite flawed.” Display Energy Certificates (DECs)* that measure the actual energy use of a building could be extremely different to the EPC rating, hence EPCs will get challenged.


(*The Government introduced the requirement of a DEC (Display Energy Certificate) for public buildings in October 2008.)


James Finnis


Assessments have been improved since the early days, but even so many existing EPCs, valid for 10 years, could still be questionable, he suggested.


Coote said his firm’s building surveyors had not undertaken EPCs when launched because they realized that the open-to-all assessment process would lead to a flooded commoditised market based on the lowest cost – making the


Griffiths said that EPC recognition and use within various sectors made them the best option for the legislation to be based upon. “There is nothing potentially better at present and we can at least focus on EPCs and improve them. This is a real opportunity for EPCs to be made into a robust tool.”


Castle queried if EPCs could be used in conjunction with another measurement device to produce better benchmarking. Griffiths felt EPCs would be the sole tool adopted by the legislative working group.


www.businessmag.co.uk Continued overleaf ...


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