48
ROUND TABLE REVIEW
CHAIR
James Parker, Managing Editor, Architects’ Datafi le and Housebuilder & Developer
ATTENDEES • Simon Kemp, Growth & Innovation Director, Warmworks • Greg Mathers, Co-Founder, Studio CMA • Brian Berry, CEO, Federation of Master Builders • Naomi Sadler, Director, SEES (Sadler Energy & Environmental Services)
• Laura Morgan-Forster, Innovation Lead, Innovate UK • Andrew Tod, Head of Net Zero, Sureserve • Ben Whiterod, Head of Decarbonisation, Social Infrastructure
• Cypren Edmunds, Project Coordinator, Sustainable Traditional Buildings Alliance
• Trevor Wilkins, Managing Director, PAH Building & Construction
SPONSORS’ ATTENDEES • Rick Clarke, Product Manager, NIBE Energy Systems
Scothern said that the market remains challenged by short funding cycles and “stop-start programmes,” but that responsibility for delivering most of the retrofi ts required would rest on SMEs. At the same time, they were facing “rapid regulatory shifts without transition periods, fragmented standards, and high administrative and compliance burdens, set against “thin margins and limited working capital.”
She said that major changes needed to deliver scale were: “multi- year funding certainty, predictable regulatory pathways, simplifi ed compliance interfaces, and payment structures that do not penalise small fi rms.”
Sustainability consultant Naomi Sadler of SEES highlighted a range of retrofi t issues, including the concern that in the private rented sector, tenants were not yet protected from the potential adverse consequences to their properties’ interior from low energy upgrades, although Awaab’s Law had been introduced to mandate tackling damp and mould in social housing. “There are all these condensation issues, where you’re creating these thermal bridges, because you’re not measuring where you’re creating a problem.”
Current practice & driving consumer confi dence Several delegates raised the issue of a lack of consumer demand for low energy retrofi t, citing a range of issues from fi nance to trust, and this needed addressing. Simon Kemp of Warmworks, which has a network of 42 retrofi t contractors operating in Scotland and is expanding southwards, stressed that demand-led retrofi t there, at least among social tenants for tackling fuel poverty, had been very strong versus more proactive retrofi t. He said that there were interest-free and low cost loans (being administered by the Energy Saving Trust, which is part of Warmworks), enabling heat pump
installations or similar larger upgrades, but advocated that in England, something more “demand led,” outside the “able to pay” loans-based scenario was needed to drive demand at scale – “which is community driven, local authority led, proactive.” Sadler drew attention to the new RDSAP software, and asserted there wasn’t “much of a demand for fuel poverty-based retrofi t until MEES (the Minimum Energy Effi ciency Standard) comes in.” Simon Kemp pushed back on this, saying 15% of people in England were living in fuel poor homes, but accepted that “if the measure was the same as it was in Scotland, it would be greater, because you’ve got this somewhat arbitrary SAP level attached to fuel poverty [under £36,000 household income for the Home Energy Grant eligibility].” Sadler said “a lot of people are in the private rented sector, and until MEES is a mandatory requirement, they are waiting until they “suddenly need to deal with this; there’s no driver, no push.” She suggested using “in-use readings” on performance; “it doesn’t form part EPC, but it should.” As a contractor, Trevor Wilkins expressed concern about the current lack of a “fabric fi rst approach,” saying “I think homeowners could be very disappointed in the short term.” Consumer understanding of renewables was also an issue: “Unless you use batteries correctly, drawing input overnight, I think people will be inundated with rather large bills over and above what their gas bill was, and you’ll instantly get that negative impact, and that will spread very quickly amongst the public.” He added: “I think people don’t realise electricity is currently fi ve times the cost of gas.” He echoed Laura Morgan-Forster’s comments from Innovate UK, saying consumer education was now imperative, and without this plus good quality installation, retrofi t targets were “pie in the sky.” It “has to not be another Government scheme that falls off the tracks.”
Brian Berry of the Federation of Master Builders said that endless political shifts at the Ministry of Housing had caused sustained uncertainty, plus failed schemes like the Green Deal and Green Homes Grant. He said that FMB members’ focus was that “we need to go back to basics,” and added that they “really wanted to see the results of the EPC consultations.” He supported the theory proposed of every home having an “energy passport” enabling homeowners to “understand the performance of their home and the [retrofi t] measures that best suit the needs of that home.” Naomi Sadler gave the forthright view that the Government “rushed out the Warm Homes Plan” when they cancelled ECO4, to avoid “mass unemployment; we’ve basically trained all these people that are going to leave the industry, and we’re not going to have anyone to do the assessments.” She added: “I think it needs to be mandatory that every house assessed is by a competent person,” which thereby “creates a plan for that house of all the work that needs to be done, including condensation risks, and the ventilation assessment.”
Sadler said this needed to be done before a heat pump was considered, and while she endorsed the technology, they were being “oversized and undersized,” and criticised RDSAP for “not assessing the things it needs to assess,” again potentially resulting in tenants in the private rented sector being on the receiving end of
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