Retrofitting Buildings: National Strategy

Lord Foster of Bath Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

The noble Baroness makes a very good point. These questions are really for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, but the Government are committed to the new home standards and there is a review of building regulations under way, which is probably the best route, rather than legislation.

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, it is the retrofit industry that is able to deliver the Government’s often-repeated target of getting all fuel-poor homes to EPC band C by 2030. But, having been let down so many times, that industry says it would be much more likely to invest in equipment and training with the certainty provided by putting that target into legislation. Can the Minister tell us why the Government refuse to do that?

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

I cannot answer that specific point but, if the noble Lord had been present yesterday at the University of Birmingham’s presentation on this, he would understand that a lot of what it discussed was in exactly this area. It went on to say that more power should be devolved to local authorities to bring forward the retrofitting of buildings. But companies like Vaillant and Cadent are doing an awful lot of research into retrofitting and adapting to the future possibility of using hydrogen in the heating system, which will also help to decarbonise it.