I’ve been following the recent developments on zero carbon housing closely. The current discussions are revolving around the UKGBC’s document defining zero carbon released a couple of weeks ago. I read the document and had a couple of observations to make which I didn’t blog immediately. Instead I sat back and watched the fireworks begin. (This post grew and grew, so see below the jump for the full text).
The always excellent TheyWorkForYou has alerted me to these factoids:
A:The Department has allocated some £1.96 million to start-up costs for the Energy Performance Certificates scheme. This money is required to put into place the necessary systems and calculation methodologies to support introduction of energy certificates and to develop guidance, qualifications and quality assurance frameworks for energy assessors. The allocations for 2007-08 are currently under consideration.
I assume this includes the upcoming public buildings, as well as housing.
Q : how many qualified (a) home inspectors and (b) domestic energy assessors there are on the (i) Buildings Research Establishment, (ii) Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and (iii) SAVA Government-accredited schemes?
A: As at 23 March there were 1,085 home inspector candidates who had successfully passed their exam. There were over 3,000 DEA candidates who were in or about to begin training, all of whom could qualify by June.
Accreditation schemes for domestic energy assessors are in the process of being approved by the Secretary of State, and will receive formal approval shortly. As no approval has yet been made details cannot be provided.
Still no formal approval! Cutting it a bit tight, aren’t they?
Q: what funding her (Yvette Cooper) Department provides to government-accredited schemes to train (a) home inspectors and (b) domestic energy assessors?
A: No public funding has been provided to the commercial companies currently offering training courses to prospective home inspectors and domestic energy assessors.
The trainees themselves are responsible for payment of their own fees, but have access to the range of Government-backed schemes such as career development loans which are available to those wishing to upgrade their skills or undertake a new career.
Q: how many lenders offer a green mortgage in preparation for the introduction of energy performance estimates?
A: We are aware of four lending bodies who currently offer ‘green mortgage’ products, others have said they are interested in developing products. As the Chancellor stated in the Budget, the Government expect the introduction of Energy Performance Certificates and other initiatives to provide the potential for the market for ‘green’ financial products to develop further.
She hasn’t said who they are – anyone know?
Unrelated to EPC’s, but relevant to housing and obviously asked due to the impending merger of HC and EP:
Q: how much land is owned by (a) the Housing Corporation and (b) English Partnerships; and what estimate she (Yvette Cooper) has made of its value.
A: The Housing Corporation predominantly pursues its objectives through the provision of grant funding and does not currently own any land.
English Partnerships, the national regeneration agency, owns over 8,000 hectares of land being held for phased redevelopment and disposal, with an estimated market value of £1,838 million as at March 2006.
Nearly £2 billion of land in the coffers – good news for BREEAM and EcoHomes/Code for Sustainable Houses. EP land requires a ‘Very Good’ certification as minimum or 3 star for CSH.
Yvette Cooper estimates we need between 2,500 and 4,500 qualified assessors. She sets out how much setting up HIPs has cost here (£11.7m total). Let’s remind ourselves why HIPs and EPC exist:
The Housing Act 2004 requires that a mandatory Home Information Pack (HIP) is put together on every home that comes to the market from June 1st 2007. Crucially, each pack will contain a mandatory Energy Performance Certificate (EPC).
What’s more, the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) provides that an Energy Performance Certificate to be provided for all residential lettings no later than January 2009.
The Daily Mail reckons assessors will be earning up to £80,000 a year each. Connells Limited and LSL Property Services plc joint venture, energy-assessors.com reckons £50,000 a year.
200 companies have been set up to ‘cash in’ as the Daily Mail terms it. These are in general micro-independents or KTC*’s (kitchen table consultants). In addition, energy-assessors.com reckon they can provide 870 assessors.
www.energy-assessors.com personnel comprises 300 DEAs, 100 home inspectors, plus 470 chartered surveyors employed by LSL and Connells. Energy-assessors.com said it would also provide training for those wishing to become energy assessors.
In just 12 weeks and for £1,995 you too could be an assessor with them. Or opt to spend £3,250 with NHER (if you have no previous experience) or £2,750 if you are an experienced practioner. Again, it takes 12 weeks to get qualified. BRE will charge you £1,700 for their training.
Government has indicated that the only suitable qualifications will be the Home Inspectors Diploma (Level 4 VRQ) or a QCA approved Domestic Energy Assessors (DEA) qualification. It appears that three different awarding bodies; the Awarding Body in the Built Environment (ABBE), City & Guilds, and the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA), will be offering DEA qualifications. The ABBE was the first of these to be approved by QCA towards the end of December, City & Guilds launched on the 23rd January and the NAEA has been approved as of 31st January.
All of the training providers I have mentioned are registered with one or other of these qualifications, but as you can see there is a wide range of prices available. I’ve not managed to track down how much it would be just to turn up on the day of the exam without training, but it appears there’s a market developing in providing training, never mind the certificates themselves.
As Yvette Cooper keeps reiterating, the price of certificates will be set by ‘the market’. But with the market effectively sewn up with 1/3 of assessors under the same umbrella, is this somewhat compromised? I’m no economist, but I’m sure there must be a theory or name for this?
On a different note, Rat and Mouse have a slightly gloomy asssessment here, with very few of the public actually taking any notice of the proposed rating scheme given the buoyant property market, especially in London.
It looks like Wednesday’s budget (para 7.68) may have answered Yvette’s wish back in September for green mortgages to be linked to EPC’s:
Based on consultation with major banks and building societies, the Government anticipates that these measures and improved energy advice and information have the potential to create a market for ‘green’ financial products designed to help householders invest in energy efficiency and microgeneration installations.
It’s just 10 weeks until 1 June – fun and games ahead…
* “copyright”, JTB
The press release reads:
At a time when demand for housing outstrips supply, the change to build better homes more cheaply and efficiently using modern approaches to construction is essential, according to a new joint Housing Corporation and English Partnerships publication.
Launched today (Thursday 1 March 2007) and referred to in Housing Minister Yvette Cooper’s speech at the Regenex conference in London, Modern talking: Building better value homes using modern approaches illustrates how the construction revolution is gathering pace, driven by housing associations and private developers who have risen to the modern approaches challenge.
The publication highlights how last year 41% of affordable homes were built using modern approaches, against a government target of 25%. For home buyers, this means that more high quality properties are available. For housing associations and house builders, it means that more homes can be built for the same money.
Demonstrating how housing providers have used modern approaches to construction to build new homes more quickly then ever, the publication:
• shows how housing associations have cut their costs as a result;
• offers advice on how to approach building using new construction methods and how to avoid unnecessary expense;
• illustrates, via case studies, how new homes built using modern approaches are bigger, better, lighter and brighter than those built using conventional construction techniques.
Housing Corporation Chairman, Peter Dixon, said, “Modern Talking is a fantastic testament to the work of affordable housing providers and their ability to respond to the challenge to build better, cheaper homes using modern approaches to construction.
“The challenge now is to build upon this experience further and embed the best of modern practice into the mainstream. I have every confidence that the affordable housing sector will achieve this and continue to be at the cutting edge of efficient methods of construction.
“This publication also symbolises the increased joint working between English Partnerships and the Housing Corporation ahead of the creation of Communities England.”
The publication can be found here (pdf, 40 pages) and contains plenty of examples of successful MMC (modern methods of construction) which don’t include CASPAR. One such is Corbett House in Camberwell, which used Buma. Some interesting observations on using an MMC system established in a foreign country (in this case Poland) – for instance offsetting costs of import against cheaper labour. Interestingly, the system only claims a ‘good’ ecohomes rating (EcoHomes ratings are dependent on location and other factors – I’m not sure if this claim is for the energy and fabric related clauses alone?).
I first was alerted to www.theyworkforyou.com via Stuart Bruce, who originally was the one who pointed me in the direction of Simon Dickson, who I believe is instrumental in the design of the site. I was happy today to find a question on there relevant to me (via my bloglines keyword search for BREEAM). The idea of the site is explained as:
TheyWorkForYou.com is a non-partisan website run by a charity which aims to make it easy for people to keep tabs on their elected and unelected representatives in Parliament, and other assemblies.
The question I found was “ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what incentives there are for schools to incorporate micro generation technology and solar thermal panels when spending the additional capital resources announced in the pre-Budget report.” Readers of the site are even given the opportunity to vote if the reply answers the question or not (I haven’t voted). Jim Knight (Minister of State (Schools and 14-19 Learners), Department for Education and Skills) has responded in the written answers. According to TWFY:
“The parliamentary question is a great way for MPs and Peers to discover information which the government may not wish to reveal. Ministers reply via written answers, a list of which gets published daily.”
Poking about www.theyworkforyou.com a bit more reveals RSS feeds for every MP and their appearances. So in addition to reading David Miliband’s own blog I can now follow his parliamentary appearances here. I can also ’stalk’ Yvette Cooper and Ruth Kelly.
If anyone wants to learn more about social media in the UK, I’d highly recommend Stuart and Simon’s blogs as good starting points, be it from slightly different perspectives.
::via English Partnerships
The Summit House at Allerton Bywater Millenium Community, a local project, has been opened by Yvette Cooper.
The Summit House was first built for national regeneration agency English Partnerships to display at the Sustainable Communities Summit, held in Manchester last year. There it was used to demonstrate how a high-quality, cost-effective and environmentally-friendly home could be built using off-site construction techniques.
Zero-carbon housing is definitely flavour of the month. I can’t find any information of the carbon consumption of this building, but it is unlikely to be zero-carbon. If anyone has any further information, please post a comment or email me.
Are you keeping up? Yes, yet another name change. ODPM (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) is now DCLG (Department for Communities and Local Government). Website address is now www.communities.gov.uk
Ruth Kelly is running the show (Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and Minister for Women), with Yvette Cooper in charge of Housing and Planning.
Building Regs now rest in their domain.
David Millibrand at DEFRA also has a role to play in the industry, being involved in the environment. Yes, environment and buildings are in 2 different departments still. Not logical to my mind, but at least the 2 seem to talk to each other (or at least appear together at events). Until beginning of May, David was in ODPM/DCLG (are you keeping up?).
David Millibrand is the first UK politician I have come across with his own blog and it does actually look to be written by him, and not an automaton. And he drives a Prius.
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