Infrastructure Bill [HL]
Debate between Lord McKenzie of Luton and Baroness Maddock
Baroness Maddock (LD)
My Lords, I strongly support what my noble friend has said about these matters. Can the Minister give us a little more clarity about how we are going to ensure that these changes actually happen? I remember getting terribly excited some years ago about the provision that every new house would have to have a SAP certificate in it. I am forgetting what SAP stands for but it is about the energy efficiency of the house. We passed regulations that said that every new house should have a certificate, but they have never been enforced. If you go into new houses, you will never see one. So when we talk about this, one of my main concerns is: how is it to be regulated?
There is another issue that I have come across. I should declare my interests as a vice-president of the LGA and as president of the Sustainable Energy Association. In my role over the years as a councillor, one problem, particularly when I was in Berwick-upon-Tweed, was that builders would start to build something and then stop. There was nothing we could do to progress it if they did not carry on, so I worry about the abatements. How are we to ensure that they will actually be done? Will there be a timescale? This throws up the problem we have with all this. We are all very keen on it and want it to happen, but most of the detail will be in secondary legislation and regulation. It would be helpful to have indications from the Government about that and to see some of it before we finally pass the Bill.
I am really concerned about how we make sure that it happens. I am told that the building inspectors will of course inspect new buildings. However, supposing that a builder builds a whole block of flats and has not done it properly. What happens to those flats and that builder? If I were doing it, I would quite like to have a few examples of people getting heavy fines if they do not do it in the first place. Again, I do not know how we are going to police that. Regarding the abatement, how are we to ensure that that happens? Will there be a timescale and will people be able to allow that to drift?
I also strongly support my noble friend’s Amendment 93AD, particularly its subsection (d) about community heating. This is a great opportunity to promote community heating and attach people to bigger district heating. I saw that many years ago in Scandinavia, and it is something which I was involved with as a councillor in Southampton, where we set up one of the most successful district heating schemes in the country. It has everything on it from private housing to public housing, schools and hospitals, shops—it has the lot. However, we have been quite slow in getting domestic properties on to community heating schemes, and I hope that what we are proposing here, particularly given the points that my noble friend made, will progress that along the way.
Lord McKenzie of Luton (Lab)
My Lords, we have Amendments 93AAA, 93ZAAA, 93AE and 93AF in this group, which I will speak to as well as commenting on the other amendments. I start by offering my warmest congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, on his promotion. He is not a stranger to CLG matters and certainly not a stranger to local government. We look forward to working with him, at least in the remaining months of this Parliament.
As we have heard, the government amendment facilitates allowable solutions, which are not otherwise already available under the Building Act 1984. However, together with other matters which have gone on, this does not represent the progress on zero-carbon homes that was hoped for and which we believe is achievable. It might be worth quoting from the briefing that I think all noble Lords have had from the UK Green Building Council, just to remind us of the figures, which I think the Minister touched on:
“The UK’s buildings account for 37% of total greenhouse gas emissions, with 66% of buildings’ emissions from homes. The UK is committed to reducing emissions by 50% in 2025 and 80% in 2050. Some of the most cost effective potential carbon savings exist in the buildings sector and Government is looking to this sector to deliver significant levels of carbon savings”.
We would say they have not looked hard enough. In 2006, the previous Government announced that all new homes would be zero carbon from 2016, but this of course will not now happen. It was originally planned for there to be three clear regulatory steps along the way to achieving this, in 2010, 2013 and 2016. The code for sustainable homes, a standard against which all new homes would be rated, was introduced alongside the zero-carbon target. The purpose of the previous Government’s approach was to recognise that small, incremental changes to building regulations from time to time were insufficient to generate the fundamental change that was required within the construction industry, and that clarity was needed on the direction and speed of travel as well as on the ultimate destination. That worked, and it is widely recognised that it had a galvanising effect on the housebuilding industry and on the supply chain, and sparked a bout of innovation in the sector.
After promising early announcements, a series of decisions taken by this Government have reduced the ambition. The zero-carbon target was weakened by one-third when it excluded emissions from plug-in appliances, and they are now allowing a further third to be mitigated off-site through allowable solutions. The standard adopted is also below that recommended by the Zero Carbon Hub. A long-term exemption for small sites is illogical in principle, and we do not yet know how it is to work.
Our Amendment 93AAA would require the Secretary of State to,
“publish a report each year on the progress which has been made towards a carbon dioxide reduction”,
for differing types of dwellings. We propose that the targets should be,
“44% for flats, 56% for semi-detached houses, and 60% for detached homes”.
These are not arbitrary amounts but have been agreed by the Zero Carbon Hub after a significant piece of collaborative work. These are the levels that the industry advises are achievable, and were accepted by the previous Government. By setting the standards at a lower level, as the UK Green Building Council points out, the effect is to transfer more of the carbon savings to allowable solutions, which are generally less easy to verify.
Amendment 93ZAAA, like the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, permits a small-site exemption for a limited period. In this case, the exemption threshold is less than 10 units. Let me be clear that we are opposed to ongoing small-development exemptions. Along with the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, we have a degree of equivocation about identifying any threshold, even for a short period. One could advance the argument that because the Government have been tardy in bringing some of this stuff forward smaller developers perhaps need a bit more time to come to grips with it all. Like the noble Lord, I think it is not necessarily right to equate small developments with small builders or ill equipped builders. There is a big question mark, certainly on an ongoing basis, about the risk of sites being deliberately fragmented to avoid these commitments. The Government have a strong case to answer about why they are pursuing this course.
Baroness Maddock
My Lords, I suspect that my noble friend will again talk about the balance between getting houses built and imposing regulations, particularly on small builders. Perhaps I may say how much I welcome his presence here as our new Minister for the DCLG. It is indeed a pleasure to have somebody who has served in local government doing that job. I did not say anything earlier, although I should have done, because I am really pleased about my noble friend’s appointment.
I want to raise two points concerning the problems for people who are carrying out what we want them to do in relation to zero-carbon homes. As the noble Viscount has just said, there has been a lot of discussion about this. It is not new—builders have been trying to adjust to this for quite a long time. Therefore, if people are starting to cry wolf, we need to be careful, because they have talked about it for a long time and, indeed, have been part of the consultations on how we are going to achieve zero-carbon homes.
One thing that we have been very bad at in this country is taking on new building methods, which can be more efficient and less costly. I particularly remember being involved in this 20 years ago when I was an MP. In a small village in north Dorset, a housing association had tried to put up more energy-efficient homes, using, as much as it could, off-site construction. Off-site construction can be cost effective, and you get accuracy and can build pretty energy-efficient homes. The thing that still sticks in my mind about it is the almost zero waste from the building site while the homes were being built. I do not know whether any consideration has been given in the regulations on zero-carbon homes as to how much waste from sites is produced.
In trying to get the balance right, I hope that the Government will look at these points and say to builders, “You’ve had lots of time. Use your energies in being imaginative about new ways of making energy-efficient homes, because in that way you can probably drastically reduce your costs and reduce the effect on the environment”.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, I want to make a couple of points. It seems to me that the amendment highlights that, whatever the Government’s claim about improvements in the position since 2010, they have not delivered the trajectory that was expected and consulted on, on which there was a consensus and which is reflected in this amendment. That is to be regretted.
The other point that the amendment focuses on is the extent to which you have to deal with abatement on-site as fully as you can before going down the path of allowable solutions. I may have missed it in what went before but I think that that is a point on which it would be very helpful to have clarification—that you have to do as much as you can in relation to these standards and can only take an alternative allowable solutions option to fulfil the rest of the obligation beyond that.