1. Communities and Local Government, Code for Sustainable Homes; A step-change in sustainable home building practice. London, CLG, December 2006

2. Communities and Local Government, Table 204 Housebuilding: permanent dwellings completed in England

3. Communities and Local Government, Table 203 Housebuilding: permanent dwellings completed in Great Britain

4. Natasha Nicholson and Pamela Charlick, 'Standing Tall in the Estuary', in Ian Abley and Jonathan Schwinge, guest editors, 'Manmade Modular Megastructures', AD. Chichester, Wiley-Academy, January 2006, p 42 to 44

5. Communities and Local Government, Planning Policy Statement 3 (PPS3) – Housing. Norwich, TSO, November 2006

6. James Heartfield, Let's Build! - Why we need five million new homes in the next 10 years. London, audacity, 2006

7. Kate Barker, Barker Review of Housing Supply: Final Report - Delivering stability: securing our future housing needs. London, HMSO, 2004, posted on www.hm-treasury.gov.uk

How many reports does it take to make housing affordable and energy efficient?

It is a pity you are unable to speak at our conference on the 18 and 19 May, All Planned Out? – The Worldwide Impact of the British Town and Country Planning System, because I wanted to ask you this:

How many reports does it take to make housing affordable and energy efficient?

The Callcutt Review will report in Autumn 2007. John Callcutt is to examine how the supply of new homes is influenced by the nature and structure of the housebuilding industry, the business models and its supply chain, including land, materials and skills.

Callcutt Review Suite 201, 2nd Floor Portland House Stag Place London SW1E 5RS

Website: www.callcuttreview.co.uk

e-mail: info@callcuttreview.co.uk

The Callcutt Review is to consider how these factors influence the delivery of new homes, meeting housebuyers' requirements and aspirations, achieving high standards of energy efficiency and sustainability as set out in the Code for Sustainable Homes, (1) and progressing to a “zero carbon” standard. He is to make recommendations on how to achieve the Government’s target of 200,000 new homes per annum. By which is meant 200,000 new homes in England, or only about 37,000 more than were built last year.

Two live tables maintained on the Communities and Local Government website are important on that rather unambitious target of building 200,000 homes per annum in England. (2 and 3) Read together they give the following table:

British housebuilding, not just English housebuilding, has been producing fewer than 200,000 homes per annum for a decade and a half, since the construction industry recession at the start of the 1990s. The Callcutt Review is only asked to increase housing production in England by about a fifth, and to continue the year on year increase seen across England and Britain since the low point in 2001. If these small increases are being achieved anyway, and a small increase is all that is required by Government, then what is the pressing need for another review of the construction industry? There must be more to this than giving John Callcutt a published review to his name.

It is not as if other efforts at improving house building have ceased. After industry consultation in 2006 the National Audit Office is expected to publish their Assessing Excellence in Homebuilding Product and Process, later in 2007. This was intended to present a “vital few” KPIs for the housing sector to adopt, as implicit, if not explicit criticism of the vast number of KPIs that have proliferated to date in pursuit of policy objectives. Presumably the NAO will report before the Callcutt Review is concluded. However it is not clear that the new KPIs will either be “few” in number or “vital”. We might hope the KPIs are being reviewed with regard to the categories in the Code for Sustainable Homes. If so, it is possible that the NAO may avoid too many measurements.

The technical content of the Code for Sustainable Homes is to be published by the Building Research Establishment in April, while the engineering commitment to energy efficiency is blurred by the mysticism of “zero carbon housing”. Reducing the operating energy demand of 200,000 new homes per annum from an average of 260 kWh/m2 per year to 100 kWh/m2 per year is sensibly energy efficient. But how can it be “zero carbon”. Only if those “sustainable” homes are of zero m2 area will they be zero carbon – but that is not what is meant. Assuming new British homes are on average 100m2 (which is optimistic) that requires “zero carbon” energy production from wind, solar, tidal or nuclear infrastructure to be 2 billion kWh per year. Every year another 200,000 homes are built then another 2 billion kWh of new “zero carbon” energy infrastructure will also need to be built.

The wind-farm built by the Crown in the Thames Estuary off the coast of Sheppey, Kent, has thirty 3 MW marine windmills of vast size and great beauty. As was argued in Manmade Modular Megastructures, (4) allowing for intermittency the large wind farm generates about 275,000 MW annually. That investment in a 90 MW wind farm would have to be repeated between 7 and 8 times annually to meet 100% of the demand from Britain’s new home builders to deliver enough “zero carbon” energy. Or the equivalent provided from the mass of smaller installations of wind and solar technology, some of which might be off-grid. In other words, the annual shortfall in major utilities companies supplying 2 billion kWh per annum from wind, solar, tidal or nuclear infrastructure will require the installation - by house builders - of off-grid production capacity distributed across 200,000 homes, if they want to call the homes they are building “zero carbon”.

We seem to have missed a serious argument about the efficiency of that diffusion of off-grid technologies, and the impact an increasing reliance upon off-grid sources will have on the utilities companies supplying the rest of society, unable to afford an autonomously serviced home. But even at the practical level, at the 30 homes a hectare minimum you have set in Planning Policy Statement 3 – Housing (5) every new home is unlikely to have enough roof space, or garden space, for all the expensive small scale wind and solar equipment required to make up for the lack of grid supplied energy infrastructure. Maybe Callcutt will look at that?

If his review were to look at energy infrastructure seriously Callcutt might show that all new house building could technically achieve Code 5 levels of energy efficiency, with homes engineered as upgradeable systems to operate at 100 kWh/m2 per year, hopefully without cheating on floor area. However those 200,000 homes cannot all be “zero carbon”.

Yet that is still an underestimation of what is needed. Those 200,000 homes are adding about 0.75% to the total stock of about 26 million existing homes. That level of new building is barely keeping up with household growth. Clearly if you wanted to keep up with household growth and replace the existing stock on a 100 year cycle of 1% per annum, you would need to be building 500,000 homes.

You have read Let’s Build! – Why we need five million new homes in the next 10 years (6) by James Heartfield.

500,000 homes would require 5 billion kWh of new “zero carbon” energy infrastructure every year. However, because in that case about 260,000 of those homes would be replacing the poorest performing of the existing stock, they allow the retirement of the older energy infrastructure. Those replacement homes would all require an average of 160 kWh/m2 per year less to operate, every year. You could then have a concerted programme of energy infrastructure investment and replacement, facilitated by a massive and unprecedented energy efficient house building programme. That would surpass anything achieved at the peak of post-war house building, of 413,000 in 1968, both in terms of quality and quantity.

To make that sort of history, however, you have to risk exceeding the cautionary advice of Kate Barker in the Barker Review of Housing Supply: Final Report – Delivering stability: securing our future housing needs. (7)

Government would have to face the prospect that half a million homes a year might induce a “correction” in the residential property market of existing housing. Britain has 70% of homes in private ownership, having an aggregated “value” of £4 trillion, “securing” about £1 trillion of mortgage debt, or nearly the equivalent of GDP. To build half a million homes a year you will have to issue far more planning approvals on far more land. You could do that of course… in several creative ways.

This letter continues...

Ian Abley 14.03.2007 (part 1 of 3)

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