Home greening could be compulsory

Homeowners could be forced to green their homes when they carry out unrelated building work, Construction News reported.

The plans are likely to form part of the government’s response to the Innovation and Growth Team’s Low Carbon Construction report, out next week.

A stakeholder working group is being set up to make recommendations to government on what building work might justify mandatory efficiency upgrades, what upgrades should be considered and how additional requirements should be phased in.

Construction News reported that the draft government response describes the situation presented by the IGT as “sobering”. Concern is growing that existing measures, such as the Green Deal, the Renewable Heat Incentive and the Green Investment Bank, may not be enough to meet the challenge.

Willmott Dixon head of retrofit David Adams said forcing people to have energy efficiency upgrades if they get other building work done – sometimes referred to as consequential improvements – was “absolutely the right thing to do”.

“With appropriate support from the Green Deal to ease the financial concerns, it can be an important mechanism for driving take-up of low energy measures at a time when people are going through disruption anyway. It’s really important that we capitalise on trigger points,” he said.

But the government response also makes clear that the “number of cases where it is accepted that government has to use ‘command and control’ regulation will be much reduced”.

Instead it calls on industry to build on the collaborative work done by the IGT in compiling the original report.

This includes the creation of a business plan by the UK Green Building Council to help the sector achieve a 50 per cent reduction in emissions and a Strategic Forum for Construction to develop a construction-specific sustainability accreditation scheme.

A Green Construction Board from the public and private sectors will co-ordinate industry action with wider government policy and take collective responsibility for change.

But the document is not expected to address the issue of fiscal incentives, though climate change minister Greg Barker has told the Energy Bill committee this will be addressed in the next Budget.