Lord Krebs
Main Page: Lord Krebs (Crossbench - Life peer)
Baroness Parminter (LD)
My Lords, the aim of this amendment is for new homes to contribute to meeting our greenhouse gas targets and to help lower fuel bills. In Committee the Minister argued that homes had to be financially viable to build, yet conceded that the extra build costs to meet carbon compliance standards are under £3,000 for a three-bedroom, semi-detached house. That figure comes from a Zero Carbon Hub report published in 2014, which forecasts a continuing reduction in those costs until 2020. Indeed, the managing director of Zero Carbon Hub said last month that today’s costs are dramatically lower than in 2014 due to the industry’s greater proficiency at building energy-efficient low-carbon homes.
The Government also argued that the amendment imposed a regulatory burden, but these standards, withdrawn by the Chancellor last year, had industry-wide support. If the Government’s priority is to support small housebuilders, it should be noted that they themselves cite that the major constraints on their building more homes are land prices and access to finance. This was the evidence given last October to the House of Lords Committee on National Policy on the Built Environment by representatives from both the Home Builders Federation and the Federation of Master Builders. The committee concluded:
“We disagree with the Government’s decision to remove the zero carbon homes policy and the Code for Sustainable Homes. These decisions are likely to add to long-term housing costs through a reduction in energy efficiency, and we have heard no clear evidence that they will lead to an increase in housebuilding”.
Since the Committee stage, the House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee has added its voice to the call for a reinstatement of the zero carbon homes policy.
Let us not forget home owners in all of this. The annual energy bill for a family living in a zero carbon three-bedroom, semi-detached house will be £1,220 less than that for a Victorian home and £330 less than for a home built to existing building regulations. The amendment would also avoid retrofit costs, given that the Government are not ruling out raising energy standards in the future. It is a long-term saving not just to the home owner but to the environment.
Higher regulatory standards should be considered not as burdensome red tape but as a requirement that is essential to reduce both energy costs and to tackle the threat of climate change. As Mike Roberts, the MD of small housebuilder HAB Housing, said, there should be no exemptions: volume housebuilders have the scale and resource, whilst smaller companies are light on their feet and more able to react quickly. We urge the Government to back up the commitment that the UK made at COP21 in Paris and make higher carbon standards mandatory as soon as possible. I beg to move.
Lord Krebs (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, for introducing this amendment, and I thank the Minister for meeting us last Thursday to discuss this and other amendments.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, has already mentioned, the UK has signed up to the Paris agreement on climate change and, importantly, we have our own national legislation—I declare an interest as a member of the Committee on Climate Change, established under that legislation—which commits us to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In a few weeks’ time the Government are due to accept the fifth carbon budget proposed by the committee, which will commit us to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 57% below 1990 levels by 2030—on the cost-effective path to our ultimate target in 2050.
At the end of June, the committee will publish its annual report on progress towards this target. The analyses are still going on, so I cannot leak the final results, but I can inform noble Lords of one fact that is highly relevant to this amendment. Last year—2015—emissions from buildings actually increased by 4% and, even adjusting for annual variation in temperature, the decrease was only about 1%. This is not a one-off. There has been very little reduction in emissions from buildings over the past 10 years. If we are to meet our legally binding obligation, emissions from buildings will have to decrease substantially, and at a much higher rate in the years ahead.
Part of the problem is that we have old building stock and many poorly built houses that are energy inefficient. This underlines the importance of not adding to the problem with new homes, when we do not need to. That is why this amendment is so important, not just for the short term but for the long term. If we do not require the zero carbon homes standard today, we will have to introduce it at some point in the future.
As we discussed in Committee, there are differences between what the Government are proposing and the standard in this amendment. For example, in the 2006 Part L requirements, the Government’s proposal amounts to a 44% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, while this amendment suggests a 52% reduction for attached homes and a 60% reduction for detached homes. How would these greater reductions be achieved? An important element is on-site renewable energy generation—for example, by solar panels or other renewable sources.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, mentioned, there was considerable discussion of costs in Committee. We know now that from October this year in London all new homes will have to meet the zero carbon home standard and the GLA has calculated that for a three-bedroom semi the extra build cost will be between £978 and £2,702. For this additional investment to be cost optimal, the savings, discounted at an appropriate rate, should exceed the initial investment through the life cycle of the building. The calculations show that even with modest savings on energy bills of £100 a year, the investment would be cost optimal, and if the price of carbon is included—as it should be, according to the Treasury Green Book—the balance shifts even further in favour of zero carbon homes. The cost argument simply does not stack up if we take a life cycle view.
There was also a suggestion in Committee that making homes zero carbon would introduce an additional problem: if we make our buildings too energy efficient, they may be prone to overheating. It is true that one consequence of future climate change is that we probably will have to make our buildings more resilient to hot weather. However, this is not incompatible with zero carbon home standards. Professor Philip Eames of Loughborough University, an expert in renewable energy and building physics, says:
“The problem of overheating in new build can be an issue if the design is not appropriate ... we can quite easily improve the energy efficiency of new build significantly without suffering from this problem. It just needs attention to detail in terms of design”.
Finally, we have heard—as indeed the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, has mentioned—that the requirement would be too onerous for small builders. Here, I would make the following observations. As has already been said, at least some small builders do not see it as a problem. Furthermore, given that one of the simple measures to achieve the zero carbon home standard is the installation of rooftop solar panels, it is hard to see why this is a regulatory burden, since it is a routine procedure. Even if the amendment would pose a challenge to some small builders, we should be asking them to up their game.
There are compelling reasons to accept this amendment, in terms of both our climate change commitments and cost effectiveness. The objections raised in Committee seem to me to not stand up to scrutiny. I very much hope that noble Lords will agree that this amendment should be accepted.
Lord Krebs
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, for introducing this amendment so eloquently. We discussed it at some length in Committee and therefore at this point I will be brief. As the noble Baroness has said, the Government’s position is that the changes introduced in April 2015 need time to bed down so that their impact can be assessed further. The noble Baroness has already referred to exactly how this assessment will take place, but it is important to note that while we wait for the review, many more new homes are being built, and some of them will be at risk of flooding if we do not have proper and sustainable urban drainage to deal with surface water flooding.
As I said in Committee, as long as developers have an automatic right to connect to existing sewerage pipes, there is no real incentive or need for them to implement SuDS. I referred then to the survey undertaken by the Adaptation Sub-Committee of the Committee on Climate Change, of which I am the chairman and thus declare an interest. We surveyed about 100 planning applications in flood-prone areas and found that only 15% of them had installed SuDS. Barratt Homes has subsequently reported that in 2014-15, a third of its developments contained no SuDS provision. At the moment the policy is simply not being taken up in the way it should be. Moreover, when SuDS are installed, it is not clear who is responsible for maintaining them. The amendment seeks to ensure that SuDS are the default option in new developments. It achieves this by removing the automatic right to connect to existing sewerage systems, which would become the absolute exception once all other options have been explored.
As has been said by the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, this amendment has the support of many industry, professional and environmental bodies, including most importantly Water UK, which represents the industry that has to deal with drainage problems when they occur. I should like to quote the Construction Industry Council which has said that,
“the Ministerial Statement that now guides planning was not rooted in all the research and development that had been undertaken by Defra over the last 10 to12 years”.
This has left,
“voids in policy as aspects of Schedule 3 are now unresolved”.
It is worth pointing out that, in this regard, England is lagging behind the devolved Administrations. Northern Ireland has ended the automatic right to connect; Scotland has a general requirement for SuDS in new development; and Wales has much more extensive SuDS standards than those in England. We have heard the debates in Committee. We know that Parliament has already legislated for the requirement for SuDS in Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, but the Government have chosen not to implement it. We know that Sir Michael Pitt, in his review after the 2007 floods, recommended that SuDS should be incorporated in all new developments, so now is the time for the Government to respond to this amendment by saying, “Yes, we agree”. This is a very simple and straightforward way of ensuring that SuDS are implemented and that new developments—the very large number of new homes that will be built—are properly protected from the risks of surface water flooding.
Baroness Andrews
My Lords, my noble friend Lady Young of Old Scone has signed the amendment but is unable to speak to it. She has given me the grave responsibility of supporting it in her name. She is such an expert on the environment, including sustainable drainage, that I would be taking a risk if I went into the technical detail, so I shall confine myself to a few more general statements.
We have 5.2 million homes at risk of flooding, according to the commission of inquiry into flood resilience, published in March last year. Clearly, policy needs to shift the focus away from flood defence towards flood resilience. That is the case for sustainable drainage.
We heard evidence in the Select Committee on the Built Environment on flood risk. The committee was sitting just at the point when there was so much flood damage across the UK. All the evidence emphasised the fact that the provision of sustainable drainage systems was of key importance to future urban water management. Essentially, SuDS are designed to mimic natural drainage systems, such as green roofs, ponds, wetlands and underground storage. They provide an alternative to drainage of surface water through pipes to watercourses, which increases flood risk.
The Government’s decision not to implement Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, which would have established a separate approval regime, is rather perverse and was strongly criticised. The construction industry, no less, told the committee that the decision had created voids in policy, uncertainty in planning policy interpretation, the abandonment of the concept of draining as critical infrastructure, no structure for the adoption and maintenance of SuDS, as we have already heard, and no measures to address flood resilience at a local scale. This is very strong language from a responsible, professional body.
Amendment 119A comes with a whole raft of professional and expert support. A range of authoritative environmental bodies have supported the intention of the amendment. Those bodies have pointed out, for example, that SuDS can be installed and maintained at a low cost and are cheaper than maintaining conventional drainage. We have good ecological and economic arguments for SuDS.
The problem is that those same bodies have emphasised that the presumption in planning that SuDS should be included in new developments is not working. Those bodies agree, too, that the decision not to implement Schedule 3 has created uncertainty of interpretation over what is acceptable. It has made drainage simply a factor in the planning mix rather than critical infrastructure, partially implemented in places and of variable quality. It is that distinction between the status and guarantee of SuDS as infrastructure and a planning choice that is weakening and debilitating the policy. That seems to be what is happening. In short, the Government have designed a system through using the planning guidelines adopted instead of the legislation, which is almost bound to lead to low take-up and low quality, so increasing flood risks. There is collateral damage as well in terms of habitats and human life.
This also gives the developers an upper hand. If they suggest that there are practical or economic barriers, few local authorities can answer back. There is not the same level of expertise to challenge this. As we have heard, only England is being so short-sighted. The devolved Administrations have indeed taken more proactive steps to implement sustainable drainage. So, we have an opportunity for catch-up. I do not believe that it is enough at this point to say that it is good enough to wait and see. Many more homes and developments could benefit if we act now, and that is what we should do. I hope that the Minister will feel able to accept Amendment 119A.