50
ROUND TABLE REVIEW
TRADITIONAL VALUES
Cypren Edmunds of the Sustainable Traditional Buildings Alliance (second from left, with Ben Whiterod of Social Infrastructure to his right, and RIck Clarke of NIBE and Brian Berry of the Federation of Master Builders to his left), puts the case for developing skills in retrofi tting historic buildings
poorly-performing retrofi ts.
She also said the EPC consultation was a “massive missed opportunity” to drive retrofi t in the private rented sector by making retrofi t “automatically trigger a requirement for a new EPC, and instead allowing existing EPC C properties to essentially be immune from upgrades for 10 years.” She added: “There’s nothing to make the landlord improve that house, regardless of how poor the quality or the cost to the resident.” Simon Kemp said, candidly: “Get a friendly assessor, and they’ll get you a C.”
The delegates were keen to stress the importance of focusing on consumer preferences in retrofi t decisions, including aesthetics as well as functionality. Sadler agreed that consumer education in understanding the benefi ts of retrofi t measures was key. Anna Scothern warned that the consumer side was challenging as “demand remains inconsistent, due to confusion about schemes and eligibility, lack of trusted intermediaries, perceived disruption and complexity, and uncertainty about return on investment.” She said that in order to sustain demand at scale, messaging “must be simplifi ed and consistent, and trusted sector bodies should be leveraged as confi dence anchors.”
Laura Morgan-Forster said that it was problematic to expect simple answers regarding the impact of retrofi t technologies in each setting, but data was increasingly being used to help inform consumers. She said she had recently been involved in the new CIBSE Technical Memorandum around heat pump performance, and it’s “actually incredibly complicated.” She added:“Getting one very precise fi gure is not easy, but it offers an opportunity to understand a building, but not necessarily what you’re going to do.” One number isn’t going to tell you how to improve your heat transfer coeffi cient, but it’s still part of a picture of creating more data and better understanding.”
Standards, quality & regulation PAS2035, the new British Standard covering retrofi t, including retrofi t assessments air-tightness, and ventilation plus a new
Retrofi t Coordinator role, has been a further missed opportunity, said delegates. Simon Kemp said it’s “kind of perverse that they didn’t mandate it, because the thing was designed to protect individual consumers, and the Government’s adopted it where you actually had pretty reasonable controls across many of the programmes already.”
Brian Berry complained that there was a “two tier” system where
PAS2025 was mandated in social housing, but “didn’t exist in the owner occupier market.” Kemp countered that it “can be offered, but you have to pay for it; if you look at an organisation like Furbnow, it’ll cost them £6000 to go through the whole process. So if you can afford it, fi ll your boots. But for a lot of people who are perhaps above that fuel poverty threshold – the squeezed middle – they’re not going to pay for that.” Rick Clarke of NIBE supported the idea of a ‘passport,’ but asked who would pay for this in the social housing sector. Naomi Sadler said “it should be part of the assessment,” and outlined the structure of governance in the design team to oversee this. “You’ve got retrofi t coordinators, retrofi t designers, and then you’ve got retrofi t assessors, and the designers and coordinator can technically be the same person.“ She continued: “These houses should then come with a home information pack, and if we’re talking scale, it needs to be obviously put in as a function of selling a house.” Anna Scothern of NHIC commented that this could be another challenge for SMEs: “As well as overlapping accreditation requirements, the cost of compliance could be prohibitive for SMEs, and fi rst-time entrants into retrofi t frameworks have insuffi cient support, clear routes to competence, or practical guidance.”
Skills & funding SMEs lacked confi dence to employ and invest in key retrofi t skills, due to an uncertain pipeline of work currently, according to Anna Scothern. However, she said retrofi t competence “cannot be treated as a separate industry. It must integrate into mainstream RMI
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