The proceeding will start shortly. Order, order and good afternoon and welcome to the energy security and netzero committee, a third inquiry on heating and homes with focus on local leadership and challenges. And before I go much further, I'd just like to say congratulations to a vice chair, the deputy chair on his OBE in the New Year's Honours List. very worthy recipient, certainly from a committee perspective, a very worthy recipient. So congratulations, Marguerite. We have two panels. This afternoon. Both panels have three. And as per usual, I'll ask the panel said that just themselves name rank and serial number seven on my left.
Faye Hollins, I'm a senior energy policy advisor at energy systems catapult nonprofit whose mission is to accelerate innovation towards net zero energy system
works and thanks. Thanks for B being here today. For hold low.
I'm Dan Norris. I met of the West of England which covers Bristol, South Gloucestershire, where I went to school with JK Rowling, Bristol bath and North East Somerset where I didn't go to school with Mary Berry who she comes from there. And I may have gone to school with Banksy, but I'll never know because he comes from Bristol.
And a well known face in this parish once upon a time and who knows maybe again. And finally. Hello,
I'm Councillor Paul Woodson, no famous alumni. Speaking nationally for the Local Government Association as a member of the local infrastructure netzero board and spokesperson for the environment at the city of York Council,
or the local governments was used as a collection of councils, district and regional is it in England, we have coastline Scotland, so it's Trenton, oriented myself, but anyway, Paul Wilson, first, what steps are necessary to clarify the rules and responsibilities of different levels of government? With regards to heating and homes. Do you think
the steps that we require for the different Council levels, different districts and local councils across the country is clarity and consistency. So if we could have the policies, whether that's to do with planning, infrastructure skills funding, actually set out and consistent for five or 10 years, so that we know what we're doing. We can prioritise actions, we can work collectively. That is what is required across the country to decide who can do what one.
Do you feel like a Westminster perspective, it's, it's too short term reactive the policymaking rather than longer term and sticking with the plan.
Absolutely. So if you take funding, for example, you've got a beauty parade going on. For all the different sections of funding, there's five or six different sections of funding to do with housing. They are done on a short term basis. They are done with reactions to a specific action, which means it's really difficult to build the skills pipeline, the supply chain pipeline, and certainly the consumer offer, because it's too short termism. If we could elongate that and give confidence that it was going to happen for five to 10 years, you could build great partnerships, and you could deliver even more than the local governments, local councils are already delivering on the nation's behalf. Thank you.
Fi Holland, should local government be obliged to play a greater role in coordinating local action and granted greater enforcement powers? To do so?
Yeah, like government should certainly be encouraged to play a greater role. The way we advocate this happening is through a process called Local Area energy planning where local areas work with stakeholders from communities to the district network operators to create a whole system plan for the decarbonisation of their areas that that includes things like how we heat our housing, as well as transport electricity generation. And by taking that whole system approach from a kind of bottom up perspective from local level areas can be more successful in attracting investment. So when there are funding pots available, they can identify how to use that funding most cost effectively to feed into that kind of long term plan that they've set out. And we feel that this is best done at the local level, because local councils have that kind of democratic accountability to communities, but it also needs coordination at a regional level. And it also needs a kind of supportive framework from national government as well in terms of endorsing guidance about how this should be done and also providing funding and capacity building so that local authorities are able to do it and do it successfully.
I don't necessarily disagree with you in what you said. But one of the things that will might put you in that sort of approach is that there'll be some councils that are quite good and quite proactive. And some of them maybe not bad, but less good, less proactive, and you'd have a patchwork of outcomes. I mean, how would you respond to that?
Yeah, I think that's certainly what we're seeing at the moment. We have some councils and local areas who are forging ahead with local area energy planning, and then being very successful in attracting investment off the back of that and others that aren't. And so kind of endorsing a national framework and national guidance for how to do it and funding every area to do it would avoid that kind of patchwork. We think so it was naval that some areas aren't left behind.
Thank you, Paul, you want to come in?
Yeah, I'd love to come in at that point. The LGA, the Local Government Association is aware of some of the patchwork that you've you've described there. But actually, it's working really well, in terms of cascading the roadmaps that they've got across the country. And I'm sure you're all aware of the accelerator programmes. I know that the one in the West Midlands is really successful, and the one in Manchester is really successful. There are a number of others. And once the learnings from those have been brought together, that can be taken across the country, so that it's even more successful. What a would challenge on is how much powers that you give local authority without the resourcing, and without the funding, we can't be given the responsibility to deliver without the capacity and the resources to actually do that delivery. Okay,
I'm starting to notice or some similar theme. I mean, how can we ensure that a national framework for local action ensures fair and efficient outcomes across the country and does not constrain local innovation.
The thing to remember, when we're talking about warm hugs is this is about people. Sometimes I think we get drawn into the jargon, which means we get into the kind of discussions which are important. But what we've got to remember is that getting this right makes a big difference. So warm homes mean healthier people, happier people, more productive economy. And there's also benefits by doing those right things in the sense of that if you if every pound spent on retrofitting, for example, you will reduce the national health budget by 40 Pence for that pound you spend. So you have to look at it in a much more rounded way. Now, my view is that the government have been remiss in some of the ways I've already been hinted at by other people, there's been short term ism, too little long term thinking, too many poorly designed initiatives, perhaps to over focused here in Whitehall, rather than reaching out to get local inputs. But what it does seem to me is very important is that the things I'm doing like providing advice and funding and all sorts of things for people within my region, of which there's 1.1 million, what I'd say is that that really is something that should be done nationally by government overall, locally, what I should be doing, as a regional mayor, is putting the cherry on the cake, you know, getting good advice should be pretty universal anywhere in the country. But what I have, for example, in my region, which includes bath, as I previously mentioned, is an awful lot of Georgian homes, there's 505,000, sorry, listed buildings in Barcelona, many more in Bristol and right across the region, I'd like to be expert at that. So that then I could cascade from experience and that direct knowledge, that experience to other areas so that they could benefit from that. And vice versa, where they're very good at things like that. So we, for example, we have the seventh and the Bristol Channel. So we're interested in generating energy from the second highest tidal range, of course, and we're working with our Welsh Government colleagues about trying to do that. We also have a lot of former mines in the area, we wanting to try and get energy out of those pits that are close now being close into the 1970s. So that we can have, you know, heating systems for the public. And there's a kind of nice irony in that because since the mining industry contributed to co2 emissions so greatly It would be lovely to be able to get something positive to do something about the climate emergency which I sincerely believe is a big a huge problem. And one that we can't rollback on we've got to move more quickly
as it's intended to live at the moment, but I've been listening maybe just a little bit more in writing about what the plans for the coal mines are at the point under the NHS it was given an earlier session that asthma alone, I think was costing NHS hundreds of millions, if not on the billion the dampers. I told her to my colleague Marguerite will be enormous, very much.
Yeah. porta potties. If I could start with you, what I'm sort of trying to get to the bottom of is what resources are available to local authorities in terms of staffing and all the rest of it. And really, I suppose my first question Is is more money from central government a silver bullet to try to resolve your your resources problems.
There's no never a silver bullet. We all know that. But you also know that the local government authorities are 4 billion behind in funding. So there's never a silver bullet. If you could find that money behind the bottom of the sofa, that'd be great. But I don't think you will. What we do need is more resources and more capacity. And that can come in a variety of ways, funding is definitely necessary. But as I said earlier, you know, refer to what I said to the chair earlier, it's longer term planning. If we can get security, we can build confidence, if we can build confidence, we can get good consumer offer, and we can get all the way back through to the skills to be delivered, then the supply chain. So it's that confidence that will require money always helps because it means you can bring the resources in, it means you can bring the capacity in local government is doing a fantastic job working in partnership. There are numerous examples from the West Midlands to Cornwall, up in Newcastle, we're at an Eden Eden Project. So the Eden Project, for instance, has got a borehole is two miles three miles deep, that is going to supply 35 that can supply 35,000 homes with energy, you've got everything, including the mines. There's a whole plethora of resource and expertise, right the way across the LGA, you know, area that we can pull together, what is required. First of all, if we can get some more money, great. But secondly, an adult conversation between central government and local government in how we work in partnership, how you sort out the national framework, and then how we can deliver that up just going to there is there was a report between Innovate UK and PwC, which demonstrated, if you deliver this nationally, it'll cost 195 billion and get 444 billion return. If you do it locally, you will cost 58 billion and you get a 225 billion return. So if you do it locally, and we've had the adult conversation, you basically do it for a quarter of the cost and double the return. So that's the I think to start with, we need a grown up conversation. And then we need a long term planning, because nobody can work in such short termism that we've currently got. Even
local authorities are under a certain amount of financial pressure. But anyway, we just kind of well, well publicised do if money is coming to local authorities to try to promote this type of thing, would it be welcomed with that money with ring fenced, so that it wouldn't get sort of drawn into other very needed services, but you will know that
I'm not sure how you can ring fence it because as Dan has already said, you know, there is a knock on effect, if you can do warm homes, you have a knock on effect to health, you have a knock on effect to productivity in business, you have a knock on effect to the local economy, you have a knock on effect into industry investing. So I'm not sure how you completely ring fence it. And if that's sensible, I wouldn't need to look into that and get back to you. But I'm conscious that you don't want the money, right? We're gonna go and I don't know, build a windmill over here with it. It has to go to the right place. But at the same time, if you are too targeted, which has been the result of some of the green voucher initiatives, if it's too targeted, it fails to deliver what we're all looking for.
Yeah, okay. It's gonna be imaginative and fair if I can turn to you, what interventions do you think are necessary to ensure the local government can take on responsibilities to coordinate and plan local local energy transitions?
Firstly, as I mentioned before, sub national endorsement of the guidance for local area energy planning so that we can ensure that there's a kind of consistent approach across the country and comparable plans and different areas, funding in order for local authorities to do that. And then of course, there's kind of funding for the implementation, which is a separate stage and then complexities. I think the example that the Welsh Government is undertaking at the moment is an informative one where they're mandated local area energy planning for every local authority and Wales and providing kind of resource and capacity building at regional level within Wales to enable local authorities to do that. And then those plans will be aggregated into a national energy plan in 2024, and that kind of approach Each like national government sets the framework and empowers local authorities to do it can then allow like others to approach some of the changes that we need to heat homes more sustainably and make sure that everyone has access to warm homes in a more strategic way. And they can know what the low regret options are, and that they're using the funding that is available in the most cost effective way.
Does it? Dan, would you agree with that, that needs to be more sort of formal, formal role designated to local authorities from central government?
or Mr. Garner? Well, I think I'm not I think I've reserved judgement on that, if you don't mind. But I'll come back to your first question and say, I do think there does need to be a degree of ring fencing, because the pressures on local government are so vast, it is inevitable with the duties they have under law. And for the responsibilities they hold that they will try to eke out the monies that come in any other direction, into their midst. So as a mayor, I would want the powers to be able to say, look, this money is looking specifically for these range of green initiatives, because that will be helpful to give that ability to plan ahead, because that is the secret of it. I was going to talk about what had been mentioned by Paula, about Price Waterhouse Coopers research where you know, for a third less cost, you get twice the impact if you do it locally. So I hope that in ring fencing that money, it is an incentive to central government to do so because they're going to get more bang for their buck when they do it locally. Must
as quickly ASCII, texel primary with JK Rowling.
No, I was at St. Michael's Junior School, in Winterbourne. Should I leave you to speculate why her cat in in her books is called Mrs. Norris given that my mother did breed cats for a very long time in our area? Fantastic, brilliant. What about happy? Well, I was I was gonna guess Hogwarts and other guest dogs. Anyway, so much for my guessing.
Thanks, chair, fee if I can ask you first, should all local authorities be obliged to develop a local area energy plan and have the powers to intervene to ensure its delivery?
And yes, I think that's false fear, certainly that all areas should have the powers to develop like malaria energy plan. And we think it's really important to approach it in a coordinated way. So at the moment, areas are taking on leaps themselves or as in Wales, and as a kind of nation or in Greater Manchester, the Greater Manchester Combined authorities taking the lead on that. But a coordinated approach to local area energy planning, has potential to save the system, about 252 billion pounds in costs between 2025 and 2050. So as more local areas do local area energy planning, the coordination of that becomes much more important. And that kind of regional approach to ensure that plans make sense across boundaries, because, of course, lots of their kind of transmission networks for the energy that we need to heat our homes cross federal authority boundaries, and yeah, lots of decisions and supply chains also cross those boundaries. So having that coordination has the potential to really kind of save money for the system and achieve better outcomes for people and warmer homes for people which is ultimately the aim.
Okay, thanks. To us down. Nice to see Dan. Obviously, I knew you in one of your previous lives. Nice to see you back here. And by the way, I went to one school with Bernard Sumner from New Order. And Albert Finney also went to my school. Monday on a happy Wednesday team started. Can ask you down what processes should be put in place to support local government in developing local area entity plans and ensure proper coordination across local area? Well,
why would I know some of the committee's looking for recommendations and one of the strongest recommendations I can make as a regional mayor is to say I understand that the government have changed the rules as it were when it comes to energy standards for new build homes, in that that is now overridden by what the government says centrally, and yet ignores the highest standards that there may be locally. So for example, we have very strict Net Zero 2030 target in my West of England region. We're doing everything we can despite some of the things I was mentioning about the government earlier to counter that and get that on course, we need to have for example, a 25 fold increase in retrofitting. If we're going to hit that target. Huge increase, which we'll need resource I think we I think we've got to be very honest and say A, you can get all sorts of efficiency savings, you can do things more smartly. You can get that local knowledge to make things be more impactful. But you also need significant resources. There's no question about that. But what would be really helpful to me is if I could have resource over the longer term to aid and assist my skills and training responsibilities, because, for example, I think it's something like 57% of young people now, say they want to work in green industries, only 10% of them do. And this is about person power, as well as monetary resource and other kinds of resource. And if we're going to make this happen in the way that I suspect many of us want, we need to have those skills ready to apply when those resources are made available centrally, or from wherever else they may come.
Hey, thanks, just coming about to fail. Before I got to Paul, how can we ensure that the advice provided to consumers from local area energy plans do not conflict with other messaging that they receive, such as from energy performance certificates.
And that's a really important point because at the moment energy performance certificates as true as based on a measure of energy costs and tend to if they recommend the change of heating system, they tend to recommend a new Combi gas boiler, with our recent research found that about 25% of properties that have an EPC have been recommended a new gas boiler. And of course, local area energy plans are looking at decarbonization pathways. So looking at what future low carbon technology options should be available in those areas. And as you've highlighted, if people are getting very different messages from that EPCs, they might go and invest in a change in heating system with their property. And then if they're subsequently told they have an opportunity to connect to a heating network, or that they might want a heat pump for their property, they're less likely to engage in that because people already spent the money they're expecting to spend. So we need to make sure that those messages are really consistent. And we have advocated for changing the way EP C's are done in terms of the recommendations so that they align with local area energy planning and inform consumers about the options available to them. So rather than being prescriptive, and saying you should do this to increase your EPC saying, actually, this is what the local area energy plan says for your area. These are the options available. This is how you might explore it in terms of a personalised retrofit advice for your property and kind of leads people down that pathway to become more informed and make their decisions that they need to make.
Impala. Should the plumbing system be reformed to ensure that net zero no pop and low carbon retrofit a mandatory considerations when taking other local actions on housing?
Can I come back to your question? Can I just add something into the local area energy plant? Is that okay? Okay, so the local area energy plans, nearly half of local councils have already done them. And some of them have done them in so I can take York as a specific example. We did that in partnership with North Yorkshire, because by doing it in partnership with yours, North Yorkshire and as I've alluded to earlier, we reduce the cost and we increase the time, it costs just half the amount of money and it took half the time. With the local area energy plans, they are fantastic. But there is a big blocker, certainly for York and North Yorkshire because I can only talk about that in detail. And the big blocker, or the district district network operator. So in our part of the world northern power grid, a live example that I got this morning, we've got we know where we can put a solar farm. In order to put that solar farm together, it's on the top of a tip, an old way site, it's concave, you can't see it's not on arable land, in order to put it on the list to get connected to the grid, it's 150,000 pounds. In order to connect it to the grid, it's 7 million. And it won't happen till 2034. So there is a big blocker in terms of the infrastructure across the country to put the renewable energies that we can create into the grid and feed them around the rest of the country. And that is what keeps being highlighted in a lot of the local area energy plans. So I would really recommend that if we can. This committee looks at that area as one of the big enablers to bring electricity, which is where we're doing all the decarbonisation into all the houses. You know, the Climate Committee report, climate change committee reported that between now and 2050, the amount of electricity our country will use is doubling. So it's how we do that. So apologies for going slightly off but I think That's a really important point that we need to consider in terms of planning. That actually isn't in my remit. I would I'm genuinely sorry about this, I'd have to get back to you in writing about what the details are. Certainly, if we could have more power so that it doesn't, the local councils don't make a decision and then immediately gets bumped to a judicial review. That will be extremely helpful, because that seems to be what happens. If the developer doesn't like what said, it just get
them to say, yeah, thanks
so much. Thank you Chair, I just want to drill down a little bit about what the role of local government is and why the role of government is important we so in our written evidence, many people said that local government should play a greater role in home heating and energy efficiency, and gave us a reason, better knowledge of local area and properties now. I mean, if you say to a local authority, would you have more rather have more powers than less, they'll always say more. So there's, there's a presumption that you would want the ability to do that. But and for example, you told us that in Bath, you've got a large proportion of listed properties, that you've got a register of every single property in your area. So how do you know what you've got? How does if you do know what you've got, how does knowing what you've got make it better for you to deliver improvements than somebody sitting in while there
are all sorts of Bath examples, an interesting one, because obviously, it's a World Heritage Site, there is a lot of data that we get because of that, as well as across the rest of the West of England. What I'd say is that I'm quite excited by new technology in may be helping us provide warmer homes, I think some of you will be familiar with the satellites that have been developed the technology that's been developed on satellites from Britain, that can look down and see hotspots when there are leaky buildings.
That is why you're better at doing that than any other well,
because we will know the types of homes. So for example, we have a lot of Georgia houses. There are all sorts of different databases. But we also know that it's about those and tell us well, the databases will be obviously the historic ones, where there are particular examples like bath, but they're also examples of where different corporations have built homes historically, for example, so it'd be that sort of data, there is a wide range of
what the fabric is. Yeah, because because of having a planning authority, what it is exactly that you've got that somebody else, I
as a regional man don't have the same powers as local councils, unitary authorities is a different thing. But obviously, we work very closely together. But the data I have will be things like the type of demographic where people live, that kind of thing, which is also important, as I said in my opening comments, which, because it is so important, this is about people after all, then so I'm sorry. Yes, they will do and I think but I think it's not a complete picture. What I think is we have to dovetail it all
that tells me why local government is better at delivering.
Because I think when it comes locally, it is more trusted.
will trust it. Okay. Oh, you're absolutely build
on what Dan said. So if you if you ask the public about trust, 73% will say they trust local governments. 17% will say they trust national government, which is a lousy statistic, because it should be 100. For both. If you want an example of how it works really well, in terms of retrofit, leads have done a fabulous way of going about it. What they did was they use the social deprivation index, because again, that ripples out. It affects health, it affects education, it affects the local economy. And what they've done is they took a really low, somebody had a really high, low, whatever you want to call it deprivation score, they ring fenced in area, because they knew and they do know through our local
authority, how that information that other people don't say, Absolutely.
And then what they were able to do, it's not just about the information. It's also about how you put it into practice. So what they did was they put a whole marketing campaign out, they put somebody in the community, they got people to buy in the first time they did the project, they got about a 40 45% uptake. People watched it, saw it and thought it was fine. They then did the project a second time. They got over a 90% uptake of people buying in whether that was social housing council housing, private landlords, or private homeowners. We
then if we accept that local folks are better equipped because of the local connection and perhaps a greater levels of trust. How does the local authority make sure they've got the right skills to be able to deliver it wouldn't be better off having a national organisation With real expertise, who that's all they would do, and they could then focus on it, would that not give better delivery, for example, not necessarily tell me tell me how local authority resources itself, skills to make it happen. If
you go back to what you said about the national picture, and you go back to the green voucher scheme, nationally, the result was underwhelming. Local government spent all that funding and actually delivered significant changes to homes across each of each of the areas that won the beauty parade to get the money. So it can happen locally, what we need for it to happen locally, I'll go back to what I said at the very start, if you need certainty, we need to understand what the policy is, what the funding is how it works over the next 10 years.
I come in there because I want to give a good example, there's something called the Lawrence Weston wind turbine, which is in Bristol, it's the biggest onshore wind turbine in England. That was a community initiative, using local emphasis and enthusiasm and expertise supported by Bristol City Council supported by my West of England Combined Authority, we are now in the place where we're going to hopefully create 13 more and funded the getting to the planning stage with that. So that is how local can make an added value difference to what has to happen nationally to where we come
back to the certainty bit probably because I said that that's a value. But we've got a pre uncertain landscape, haven't we right now, because we've got this bid based approach. What's How does that make life more difficult? Can you I didn't think so. There may be a scheme. But it's not universal across every local authority, because local authorities need to make a bid to the department for the department to then subsequently decide to allocate to allocate the funds that are making the bid demand resource and it may or may not be acceptable. So in an ideal world, but what you'd be campaigning for is a more universal offer than a bid based approach. So what is the challenge of the bid base? Absolutely.
The bid based approach means it sucks up resources specially from smaller councils, it doesn't
wait ways that counsel is resourced and really wants to give it a go. Rather than other counsellors who might be just said, Well, they're gonna give us some money. And we'll get around to doing it at some point in the future, if I
can finish. Okay, so first of all, it takes resource from the smaller councils who don't have an awful lot of resource to actually put the bid in. Okay, it then takes time and effort to keep going around the bids, the beauty parade, whatever you want to call it, what the LGA would call for is consistency and long term commitment so that it's actually based on need, and the ability to deliver. So if, if you've got the need, so large urban areas will have different needs to large rural areas. Put that in how much funding it needs in the local area energy plans, I've got funding against it or costs against it. Over 80% of local councils have already written a climate strategy with a climate action plan that is costed, so we know roughly how much it's going to cost. If you know they can also deliver, then what you can do nationally, is say this is how much it's going to cost. This is how much we're going to put together. We know you guys can deliver shows you can and then you can put the funding out rather than wasting a lot of time putting the bids together. Great.
Thank you. Thank you, Chair.
Thank you very much. Suppose it Vicki Ford
sort of quickfire questions. Before I get to my main question, Paul. And given what you said about your solar panels, I'm assuming that you would welcome what the Prime Minister said in his speech for Tim about top priority should be making sure we speed up decisions to get things on the grid. Yes. Thank you. On EPCs, you said that they should be tied to the local plan. Do you think that an EPC should be looking at emissions as well as costs? Rather than just cost? Yes,
definitely. I think, like I guess, yes, we've suggested energy costs, energy use and climate impact is should be the three main indicators. That's really helpful.
Dan, we're going to really deal with this in the next session. But on historic buildings, I was very taken with what you were saying about bath and massively taken by the start that we were given that if you could improve the fabric of listed buildings, historic dwellings that could deliver 30% of the requirements needed by this six carbon budget. Do you think that we should be more relaxed about things like double glazing and listed buildings? Bit give a bit more flexibility on some of the things to I think there'd be more energy if the answer
is what is that I'm we need to weigh this up much more carefully than we've been doing so far. Because what we need, if you accept there's a climate emergency and the need to move on that, then you need to make some pretty difficult decisions because you can't do everything at once you got to prioritise. That's why I was referring earlier to the satellite, because that can point to where the leaky homes are. And then you get into the difficult dilemmas. And these are the nobler absolutely correct answers, because should you prioritise the older homes? Or should you prioritise perhaps where there are many more people living in I don't know, just giving you this
sense, the reductions in the carbon budget could come from listed buildings. And historically,
what I could say to you is in Bath where there are other issues, not just to do with heating, but about the listed buildings and how beautiful they are, and how to protect that while at the same time modernising. There's an awful lot of sort of inertia and slowness, unfortunately. So I think the answer to your question is yes, theoretically, that's correct. But in practice, it's much, much more difficult
or difficult. So we'll come into that. And then I was also very taken by what you were saying about using mines, where the spare energy, community wind turbines, which will also be generating spare energy on very windy days, when maybe they're getting constrained payments, not, do you think part of the local energy plan should be encouraging local areas to think about innovative solutions where they've got spare energy,
and you absolutely need innovation, because that is the key to maximising the you know, the impact for the benefit of human beings as well as the environment. But how you do that, I think, is a kind of jaw process, as you're tracking where national government takes the lead on the things that are pretty common right across the country, and does that really well. And then it allows the local areas, local mayors, or whatever it might be councils to focus in on their own particular areas and challenges. So for example, my region could be become very expert on what you do to retrofit Georgian homes. After all, there are 1000s of them, you don't want to do them as just one house here. And then one has to do a whole street at a time. Hey,
my name is Vicki. I'm gonna Yeah, but no, but you. So for example, we went to go and see the community hydrogen project up in Fife, a national policy to have some pilots, where local areas could be put into the pilot project to be innovative. So the local area then gets the incentive, I'm going to be the pilot. How do we in your experience, more effectively share a local innovation with other areas?
Well, that that is a big challenge because good ideas are often preciously guarded, of course. And so there is this tension inevitably. But I think that there is quite a lot of sharing that currently exists. And that could be encouraged. I do believe that could happen. Maybe come back to
us afterwards. If you've got Yeah, of course, we'll write something down ideas of clever sharing of innovation. DLj
already do that with the roadmaps. And also I know that you're talking to UK 100. In the second session, I know that they do an awful lot of shearing through their climate change Academy. But building Vicki on what you said about historic buildings, we've got a fabulous example. And we do partner a lot with math, because there's a lot of synergy in the types of buildings. We've got York Minster, the grade one listed, Refectory has now got solar tiles right the way across it, your ministry itself is about to have solar panels on the roof.
An example My question was, how do we better share this innovation? Do it through need to come to our committee to share? Absolutely,
it isn't coming to your
recommendations, we could give better sharing of information, shared more, one stop shops for consumer energy advice be mandated across the country. And it helped embed that offering for local councils, local areas, into communities. I mean, a lot of consumers are saying to us, we don't get good advice. We don't know where to get good advice. You said some of you that local councils are trusted better, but people don't even feel they can get that good advice locally. So how do you
it's really confusing landscape at the moment for kind of individual households are looking for advice, I think, reform vengi performance certificates as part of that. Starting Point is often the first place that people will learn but that needs to signpost on to trusted forms of advice. And whether that is in the form of a one stop shop or whether it's a platform where you can find local trusted retrofit advisors as a car But we have don't have a strong view and the exact form that that should take. But we do think it's really important that people do have access to good quality retrofit advice, and that we build the skills and supply chains. Because often, if you if you do want to do something like instal a heat pump or get insulation on your property, it's very hard to find an installer and that kind of high quality installer at the moment. And there's also questions around consumer protection, how to, you know, you're going to get improvements
in that one stop. We'd like to see, I'm going to keep going through the questions that could come, I've already got one minute left. It is there a danger that if we have more decision making on home heating at a local level, we could risk slowing down the transition. We've actually done very well in things like energy efficiency of social rented house, but very poorly, in my view on owner occupied. If we ended up with this all being local decision making, well, we lose some of the national push, I
think there's a bigger danger that you slow things up. If you allow innovation, it cascades anyway, people get to know about it and do things well. So for example, what would be really innovative it would be to allow local areas to make their own decisions to set heating standards, for example. So that we had rather than big solar farms, we had solar panels required to be built on new homes at the outset. So I think that would be an innovation in itself to just give that freedom. And then I think we're best practice was clearly happening. Others would inevitably follow. We
do more to encourage energy companies, local councils to show and tell my sort. I describe open houses. This is a house we've retrofitted. Should that should there be more than incentive to renters or owners open up their property with us to show what they've delivered?
That that does happen already. I mean, it happens all around the country. And going back to what Fay said, we've also got lots of one stop shops, in numerous councils, right the way across the country, there is a great thing everywhere, there is a great example, retrofit West Advice Service, which is in the West of England does a fabulous job. I know York does I know North Yorkshire does, and Yorkshire does. So there are numerous examples where that works. What would be helpful is if national government could get behind one or two particular particular screams. I know it's fanciful. But if you look at what Finland did, they said everybody's got to have a heat, heat source pumps, they put it at a price that you couldn't resist the offer, which was just over about 1000 pounds. And out it rolled. And that's what everybody's done was what we're currently doing is there's a whole plethora of different systems, the heat source pump is 15 grand, and we'll give you a bit towards it. So it goes back to how do you make the consumer offer compelling. And therefore you can build your supply chain and you can build your skill set.
Okay, can I move her to Derrick Thomas? Thanks,
can I pick up on that then? So. So you're right, it's very expensive to do a source grantees source. We're doing a lot of that in Komodo it is expensive investment in a home. There's various other things as you know, how what more can be done then, to give home owners or landlords, the right kind of incentive and tools to and possibly the confidence as well to actually instal these heat generation systems into the homes there is issue. But there's also an issue about confidence about whether their systems are good, and whether they actually won't cost more to run, particularly air source, then maybe they would expect what more can be done to resolve that issue.
You have to go back to communicating marketing conversations and Vicki's dead right, you know, show and tell. So there's an awful lot that that has to happen to educate people to understand that the change will be good in the end, because everybody hates change. We all know that we all know the change kind of it also needs serious government support. Because if you know that you can get a gas boiler for 2000 pounds. But you and you know how it works and it's worked for the whole of your lifetime. And then we're asking people to change to a technology that they're not familiar with, that is gonna cost seven times as much. That's where the incentives need to go in. How do we get people to do it? If you work with a local council, you should be able to get economies of scale, because you can put 234 100 buildings together. Therefore you can get the economies to happen, whether that's social housing council housing or private, privately owned, or private rental landlord owned and you can do it in blocks, which is what Leeds has proved can happen. I and many other councils have proved can happen as well. Okay?
Now there's some good examples of Cormac in mentioned already they're they're looking to say to all sorts of homes in United downs are looking to geothermal to heat an estate in tourists, several 1000 homes. porthleven are looking at whether they can actually take heat from the sea water and heat the street in stadiums is a private company Kenza who have provided heat to a number of homes, but but it's very time consuming. And at the end of the day on existing homes, as we've said, You've got to convince the owner or the landlord to take that on. Hasn't hasn't government? Is the government doing enough to ensure that community energy schemes are easy to set up and can be facilitated by local government? If anyone else wants to comment, but is it just that we haven't got the technology in place until we haven't got enough going on? Or is it that the government isn't doing enough to, to make it easy for these things to be rolled out?
Well, it's it's both really, and we're at that stage where we're in between. And so someone has got to take the lead and show that leadership. And I think that has to be come down from national government to be frank, because they'll have the resource. And if they made that commitment to the long term ism that you've heard about from all of us, today, so that you could reliably plan that I could do things that would allow, show and tell and various other things to try and encourage people to take up stuff and do it on a bigger scale, because the big scale is the thing. So if you've got lots of Georgian homes, or Victorian homes or whatever, you want to be doing whole streets of them at a time to get real good efficiency, rather than just here there and giving grants and what have you. So that is what I would say that, you know, someone needs to take leadership, who should that be is the question, in my view, it should be national government, where it's obvious, with local government and regional government coming in with expertise, where it's got particular challenges in its own area and knowledge that it can then spread around and share with other communities, right and up and down the land.
You want to comment on that?
Yeah, firstly, your question around how to increase consumer confidence, I think there's a place for innovative kind of business models and propositions as well, things like heat as a service where the consumer is buying the outcome of a warm home, rather than kind of buying the technology and hoping that they get it gives them the outcome that they want. And yet and community energy and kind of unlocking that, I think, coming back to the sorts of local area energy bands, but they've really come fundamental to identifying where there is potential for community energy projects, where there's need for extra generation where the kind of grid connections can be most easily down, because those are often the blockers and then can kind of work with the community to see what they want in those places, and hopefully, have greater success from that point of view, rather than starting from kind of a blank slate.
Your point about educating consumers when the algorithm by consumers paying for the outcome rather than the massive upfront cost that that must be explored, because we have got a problem where people are in these quite expensive homes. But they're reluctant, as Paula said, about spending 15,000 or even more, to put in something that will save them huge amounts of money in the future, obviously do good things to the planet, does the government I mean, I've been speaking to banks, high street banks actually about how they may even take a charge against a building in order to release that kind of investment. But does the government need to actually facilitate some alternative financial models to really look at how you shift the dial to do what you've described today? What kind of examples of would you have considered, that the government should be doing to facilitate that finance? Because you don't want taxpayers paying for investing equipment into a private home where the benefit might then be to? Would you want that?
Interesting question. I think, as you said, there's lots of green finance models that can be explored. Some of them can be explored within the kind of existing policy framework that we have, and you say, as you say, are being explored as potentially some things that government could do in terms of Lucky investment or enabling that to happen. I don't have a kind of realistic point
about the taxpayer. But in the past, we've used a tariff to support the investment of solar panels on roofs, but it's not even ground source heating. But it's often people will have means to do it to pay the upfront costs, then benefit at the taxpayers cents or certainly energy bill payers expense. What other kind of models might be able to be delivered to deliver the outcomes that we need in terms of moving homes from fossil fuels, but actually not putting the burden on. Let's say just about managing in private people's properties, if you've got any ideas about how we might deliver the
one that I know and I would have to write back to you with the details on it. I know that the LGA have looked into energy as a service, which is a real innovator. way of looking about it so that you just pay for the energy over time. And that is what pays it back in the same. If I've got, if I'm correct, it's in the same way as I know, it's rolled out across the UK, the solar for schools, so that you get the energy that way. And it's how you get people to buy in for the long term. So if the issues will be you know, how often people move home, how does it actually go against property, all those types of areas, all those types of issues, but it is a really good model to explore.
You use private finance to just up front, you can
use private financing that and I also would build on what Dan says, I certainly know across a lot of planning, local planning issues. But it's mandated that if you want to build your houses in York and North Yorkshire in parts of West Yorkshire, you must have solar panels on the new build, you must have evey charging, it must have insulation to such and such a level. And on the whole, and I must agree with what Dan said is there are higher levels and a set nationally. So you get challenged from the developers, because locally, we're expecting more that
comes up later on in a second time. Okay.
Thank you very much. Yeah, I think, obviously, a debate that was going on there was basically is upfront funding or the finished model for taxes or whatever, or is it a private or sovereign wealth funds from other countries or mortgage fee or whatever that plane? A number of wasted fund?
A would absolutely agree it's a number of different models. You're never going to get going back to I think the phrase that you use at the start of the meeting, there isn't a silver bullet.
Yeah. And it was Mr. Downey that said silver bullet was it? It was somebody says, and but I was struck by a number of things. That was one of the things that you find when you're on this committee, especially Chair of this committee, people expect you to be an absolute expert on energy all over the place. And it can be quite a handicap really. But it was because because the expertise can be quickly shown to be not through the experts. But I was really struck by the Eden Project, you mentioned that I was quickly googling for megawatts at 17 million pounds and 25 centimetres, an eight and a half inch, borehole kilometres and producing water at 180 centigrade coming forward. But then there's to go on to Mr. Norris mentioned the coal mines. And I'm Googling them. What are the little Phil's eating? But eating Centigrade? I presume they're using heat pumps to Yeah,
that's what we want to do. Yeah. So there's already there, the water down there is warm, yes, flooded. He's about how you take that heat out and use it wisely. It's about eating centigrade, it's quite low. But then you probably heat pump it up. And then you get depends on the depth. Yeah, of course, under doing a desk, down you go, the hotter it gets, but then you get distance issues, then
we're doing district heating. But I was also quite struck by the Bristol turbine, which I thought brought up quite a philosophical question, I think between yourself and Mr. Posey. And what I put the argument I thought was that it was between a central government in a position to better capture a lot of information, or enabling people locally to see opportunities to do do use the hackneyed phrase of self empowerment and to see what can be done in that area. So there was a quite an interesting aside, I didn't know about that. But what you're saying is that more could come around from that, because it's not been imposed centrally on funding
it. So there's more does come around. So it's already happened, I funded a lot of that. But we now need to explore 13 more to get them to the planning stage. And I've resourced that to get it to that stage. But then you have to identify where they'd go. Clearly, and there may be resistance among some communities to that. But that's part of this resourcing that I'm doing to try and find places that would welcome them in the same way at Lawrence Lawrence Western has, and they've embraced it wholly and the benefiting from it, they get the profits from the energy that is generated, to put back into their community and enrich it financially as well as socially
with a virtuous circle. And the final thing that we've constantly learn England and Wales, but Paula, you mentioned Finland, and I'm just wondering, as a as a panel, that how much do you look to other countries to see for better money? Because we, you know, we had the sort of the Whitehall regional England debate. But what do you see as best practice and other colours, and if you were to mention what another country to us in the 60 seconds, we've got left? Would one spring to your mind that we should maybe learn more lessons from them than anybody else? I'll start the poll, I just,
you can learn lessons in terms of building an infrastructure, you can learn lessons from Scotland, because some of the fabric first is very, very useful, and also the Scandinavian countries in the same way. So that's one of the areas I think we should be, we do explore.
Okay. Well, I'd say exactly the same. I think the Scandinavian countries do tend to lead the way on this, but I think there are good initiatives within the UK frankly, as well. So I think we've got a lot of answers within our boundaries
and for Hold on to start with you. So I'll finish with you.
I agree with what's been said. I think the consultation in Scotland around bringing in new targets for moving heat pumps or heat networks or decarbonizing homes would be really interesting. Learning from that, and also the Netherlands, quite similar climate and housing stocks. Some of the progress that's been made there and rolling out heat pumps is interesting to look at from the UK perspective as well. Thank
you so much. All that will help contribute to our expected bank of knowledge and expertise on this committee. With that I
thank the three of you a favour all and done notice and pull up widdle windows with us and for being here today. And we'll take a short a break for we have the second panel pulling bit forward minutes Thank you order.
Thank you Good to see you.
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The proceeding is currently on an order. And welcome back to the energy security net zero committee on our second half of our third session on heating your home's local leadership and challenges. Again, we have a panel of three in front of us and I will ask them to introduce themselves as I said before we name rank and serial number starting on my left. Hi,
I'm Richard Cooper. I am the CO president of UK 100. You can 100 is an organisation of councils that are all more or more aspirational end of tackling, tackling climate change and decarbonisation. I also chair their countryside Climate Network. I am the leader of Wiltshire Council as well. We're a large unitary, that distinction between types of councils is something worth coming back to at some point. And if we're playing the school's game, I went to the same school as the Prime Minister, but I think he started the year after I left. Okay. Well,
yeah, well, I have a scholarship. When when I chaired when I chaired the the Committee on International Trade, we used to have a well a viewer in wheelchair that he used to refer to very often. He was very interested in that so the people are wheelchair was very welcome. And if committee I chair in the middle, Mr. Ian Morrison. Yes,
good afternoon. I'm Mr. Syme, Director of Policy and evidence their Historic England, Historic England is an arm's length body with a statutory duty to protect and promotes and champion England's Historic Environment.
Thank you very much. And last but not least,
I'm Victoria Vivian. I'm president of the CLA the country land and Business Association. I think probably my role here is representing not just the private rental sector, but also very much the rural private rental sector, which is a voice that needs to be heard more loudly.
Okay. Thank you all for coming along. And hope you enjoyed the first session and to kick off the session. Victoria Vivian. Do the government support schemes and incentives for home retrofit and low carbon heating purely account for the sheer variety in the UK housing stock? And the differing circumstances? That's
one of those quick answer ones? No.
Because I thought, I stay in a small island city. So
that's right. It's our housing stock. There's even a geographical difference. It rains a lot more on the west side of the TV Line, I can tell you, our houses melt in Cornwall, they don't just fall down, it rains so much. So there's a there's a very different type of housing, there's a very different challenge to that housing, and a 90% of our housing stock is more than 100 years old. So it does represent a very different set of challenges. It's beyond absurd to tell us that we'd be much better off if we were on mains gas, because we aren't on mains gas as you aren't probably. And and it's never going to happen. So we really need to have solutions that fit the rural need, and not just ignore them. Because there's a percentage of the whole population. It's quite a small demographic.
Is that ever a heat pump before it became a football in the culture wars, but I don't it's just more generally to the rest of the panel and what sort of finance options and incentives were most the most effective, encouraging home improvements across all property tenures? I mean, you know, Richard, you want to know, Victor. Okay. So what we like in this
one, you encouraged me. So, past projects, which have worked really well in rural areas, we have the Rooney Renewable Heat Incentive, and a very high take up. And projects, which went into the Renewable Heat Incentive are still working now. But you know, principally with biomass, it's not necessarily an option for urban areas, but it's a very realistic option for those. In rural areas, we've got a half megawatt biomass boiler, which was actually funded before the rhpi. And it's just reaching the end of its life now. It's sort of 17 years old. So it's been a very, very successful project that he'd have. It has the capacity to heat 35 houses,
how many is it hidden word capacity?
Well, we haven't built this part of a planning thing, but we haven't built the second half. So it's heating, it's heating 15 At the moment, and with if we could just get that pipe in the ground to bring it to a few more that are on in our immediate area, then it could do that as well. But even
more so this is move over to Richard after.
Yes, thank you. We think that area based schemes are are a very sensible wage area based game. It's really a development of the model that's already been introduced. We would like to see some changes going forward. I think the previous panel mentioned about the opportunity of certainty and increased timescales. We think that the short timescales for existing area funding schemes has caused an issue and does disadvantage people that live in traditional properties, because they are more complex to address and you need lot longer to assess what options are the right options to put them in. We also think that the boiler upgrade scheme could be with the increasing grant that brings heat pumps, which we think a really sensible solution for the vast majority of traditional buildings, it brings it more into the realm of affordability, but there's still some way to go. For for owners, we know that affordability for those that live in historic properties is one of the main barriers to undertaking energy efficiency improvements.
I think if you look at the range of incentive schemes, it some of the work around retrofitting of social housing has been good, but the consistency of funding has already been mentioned. And that is a major headache, you have to have a scheme to retrofit the entirety of housing stock, you can't rely on piecemeal funding, it's got to be long term plans, when you come on to some of the incentives around private housing, they can work they take time to build up a head of steam, and even then success if I look at a solar together, okay, there's no real incentive there. But it's using communal buying to, to deliver a reduced price for solar panels and batteries. That it we've run it for two years, it's hit maybe half of a percent of the housing stock each year. So it's it's pretty small work given the timescales we need to work on for delivery. When you come on to the private rental sector, again, we've had some funding from government scheme there. But you've then got an awful lot of work to find landlords or tenants who qualify, who are willing to engage. So building up the steam on those those schemes is is very, very time consuming. And then you've got no certainty that that funding will continue once you've actually got something that's starting to deliver, and starting to provide this changes. So I would say really patchy, the incentives, I'm afraid.
Okay, and I'm not sure, which was maybe the best, maybe all of it. But there's those living alternative homes such as boats, and caravans have off the grid. Has the government done enough to support those types of houses? No, no, no,
absolutely not. If you look at the one the recent work around the provision of simply heating support, through through the cost of living crisis, they were the last group they were that we got anywhere near being able to tackle an address, despite content consistently pointing out that they are the ones who are at that point more likely to be in fuel poverty, you're more likely to be in fuel poverty in a rural area than you are in an urban area. What is it 12 and a half percent versus 11%, you're far more likely to be in an EPC FRG home in a rural area than urban area. And yet these these groups because they're difficult, because they are relatively small groups in the national picture, someone in pre 1915 housing or in a park home, because there's different groups, they're much harder to come up with, with an approach focus, you're dealing with fewer people, you're not getting more rapid support out to larger groups of people at once, which is what Westminster tends to like to see in my experience, and then you've got more complex solutions, because you're going to need some form of green gas, for example, to deal with the the home parks, certainly on all the bases I've seen from a wheelchair perspective.
Well advocated for it or Victoria wanted to add to that point.
I think that with regard to I think it was the smallest of those groups is people living in boats, probably. And the best work that you can do there is is the insulation. That's the because actually, water is a very good insulator. And probably it's not such a profound problem. I think dams probably their number one problem. But for people living in caravans, I think it's there even for that they're very unlikely to be dealt with by private landlords that they're sort of in but the people who live in parks of caravans, I think, again, that will be district heating systems. And there's not good money here for district heating systems. And installation.
Time is not with you, but I'm going to take in Lloyd or someone very briefly because he's usually has a keen interest in these areas. So
the the current plethora of different systems at the moment for people to apply for. Do you think that that has hindered people's ability to go and seek grant funding to be able to support some of these adoptions?
I think in my experience, certainly the, the erratic way some of these schemes have performed has made a significant hindrance because you then get the horror stories flowing out from them. The lack of the plethora, as you say, there are too many different options. There's no simple consistent advice across the country, we have what 10 standard housing types, and then all the stuff on the fringe, we ought to be able to provide much more consistent advice as to what people can do for whatever housing type they are broadly in. And again, that isn't there. It's it's schemes that people are said, well apply for this, and you're pretty much on your own. And you try and do it, and then you're in a rural area, you can't find anyone to give you good advice. Because the skills aren't there, I'm sure come on to that.
Yeah, it could be very briefly, if you look locally, for example, I just applied for eco for from some of the all the providers got back to me in Brighton saying there's no one that can help you. That's typical. That's typical. So then you look at the boiler refit programme in a conservation zone, then everyone says, Oh, well, the EPC of the the house is not above sea. So we won't even say you're stuck.
I think in addition to that, and it sort of covers off one of your other questions. And our experience has been that the local authorities are not the best conduit for that funding to come through either. We've contacted there's been a variety of responses from our members
who have disagreed. I'm not certain the previous panel
might think they did. I think I'm the one to disagree. Yeah. Because some of them didn't know they had funding. Some of them don't know who's funding for if you get past the desk where they say they have got funding, the person who picks up the phone has never heard of the funding scheme. You know, there are so many reasons that that's just not working. And it's probably not more resource. That's the answer. So I think bringing it all in under the the single body a national body to go back to one of the questions that was asked earlier. Why do we think local is better than national? I think in this protect particular case, national is more efficient.
Identify so desktops. Ya, thanks very much,
Richard, local authorities can set higher sustainability standards in their planning policies. A year ago, Cornwall Council adopted their climate emergency development plan document which allows them to go above and beyond building regulations on all residential new or new residential buildings. Is this helpful? Or is it a hindrance for if local authorities have varying standards on building on building quality?
Firstly, you can try button inspector can strike it down a number of us are using a variant of that Cornwall model and Bane bottom of the sunset have had it approved yet. I want to say Lincolnshire wasn't that there was a council in the north of England using the same principle had it rejected by an inspector. So that in itself causes an issue there. The only absolute that we have is in areas where we are looking at significant regeneration, you've got an ability to set high standards in those regeneration areas. That's the only actual power that we've got. The rest of it is arguing and the trade off between viability for affordable housing for for everything else that we need to provide your addresses. So that lack of consistency isn't isn't good. No government should instantly in my view, change the building regulations to say that all new housing has an essence got to be become neutral,
it's fine. It's fine until it's challenged by the inspector or it's challenged by
developers on viability and you're then stuck in a trade off. And I've had a lot of conversations through UK 100 with council leaders who are desperate to do this. And yet finding it means that their affordable housing delivery falls away. And we've got major issues with affordable the need for affordable housing in rural areas across the country as well. So that trade off is really difficult.
Okay, thanks, Richard. I know we were trying to claim earlier or the My only claim to fame is it Vivian. Victoria constituents Victoria, Victoria, why shouldn't
my constituent do the committee we forgive them everything
that we were discussed previously, how well aligned our current stands for heritage and rural homes, with the realities faced by those living in and retrofitting these properties. And as you say, Coleman has got its fair share.
I mean, retrofitting our properties, there is no recognition in the PC of the estimations of the cost of doing the work that's on the EPCs is sometimes only 10% of the real cost of doing the work. It's it's completely unrealistic. And I mean, we could be quite brutal and say some houses would be better off not the beautiful historic houses, obviously, but some lousy housing stock would be able to get better planning to start again, because it's so unlikely ever to be a warm home and that's something I'm I'm a bit equivocal about here because I don't quite know whether we're talking about getting everybody into warmer homes, or improving our carbon sequestration at the same time, because sometimes those things do lead in in different directions. And I think principally with housing stock, it's planning and its costs, because it might take us 18 months to get a reluctant planning officer to come out and check out the programme. Room
theory been properly a healthier, warmer home should also be cheaper. But you're right, the EPC doesn't necessarily deliver the outcome in should local authorities be empowered to require the installation of energy efficient see measures when owners make changes to a property that actually requires planning approval?
So the answer to that is consistency is really, really important across local authorities, what you what you'll find is for particularly for installers, if you get different requirements in different places, and different suppliers that causes confusion, and it affects the development of supply, we do think it's really important that measures are taken where feasible to improve the energy efficiency of historic buildings, we think the changes that we made to partielle improved documented the Building Regulations has struck the right balance between the enforcement of or the encouragement of new efficiency measures where appropriate, but each historic building is is unique and you need some flexibility. But But yes, we want to see Mark far greater energy efficiency improvements to existing building stock.
Will you be talking at all this afternoon about the work you did for Christmas around historic buildings and how you can make the skill set that?
Absolutely So? So? Yeah, but
I didn't want it to be missed. Yes, yes, no, no,
I mean, I can cover that. Now. If you if you
want to, we will touch on skills. Very good. Thank you very, very efficient. I should say just for my pause, you started with expecting a vote. Now normally we give, we suspend for about 15 minutes, as usual for one vote and think there's just one vote and then 10 minutes for additional votes and things, just one vote. And then there's pause, and then there's three votes to base
and then three votes effectively when we come back, but
first alerted, this moves forward. So I'm being guided with a broad expectable. But we'll start at the moment with a map pause. If we stop, we'll stop for maximum 15 minutes. If the group assembled here, come back earlier, we'll start when when everybody have this four, five about Mr. Posey,
I'm thinking Victoria raised a very important issue, which is what are we? What's our objective here? Are we talking about improving people's welfare in their homes giving them warmer homes? Or are we looking to reduce the country's co2 emissions. And in an ideal world, we'd be talking about the same thing. And but the measure of performance that we currently have is energy performance certificates, which each of you referred to, can you tell us a little bit your thoughts about the limitations of the PCs because as I think one of you pointed out that if to improve to meet an EPC, in many cases, the best solution is to stick a condensing gas boiler in there or
even to be able to bring it up to a standard where I can legally let it. So if I put in a an air source heat pump, it will fall below the necessary EPC certificate, and that house will likely fall out of the private rental sector. And just want to quickly add in there that from our members, and in the rural area, we let 80% of our stock at less than commercial rent, and all that 25% At less than social rent. So we really are providing that that sector with with accommodation. But we if we are forced to move into air source heat pumps, we won't be able to let
them well, sure. And I hear from people in the private rented sector who own leaky old houses that are unlikely to get to level see that they will simply sell their leaky houses, they'll see and go and buy a new house from a developer which will be able to comply, and the only people left in the old leaky houses will be owner occupiers. So we will have transformed our problem that way. But I'm interested in what you see as the problems with EBC. And what we might do about them. So perhaps the first
Yeah. So I mean, there are acknowledged issues with EPCs, which have been mentioned in the in the previous panel. I mean, there are two of course, there's a perverse incentive to invest in in carbon emitting upgrades, particularly in terms of new heating systems, and that has to change and we have to have to promote low carbon energy efficient approaches. The other key issue is that the current methodology that underpins the EPC assessment, the standard assessment procedure,
I'm offering you the opportunity to revise the piece EPC what would you
lowly so so so, so, so improve, improve the methodology that underpins the assessment. So, we know and there's good evidence that shows As the current assessments are under estimating the thermal performance of historic buildings, historic properties, we're working very closely with business and D luck to improve that methodology. And we believe there'll be a consultation very soon that sets out those improvements
go, Richard, what would your input be into the consultation that ends are referred to?
I think my concern with EPCs is that they are simply a blunt tool. There's there's one set of EPCs I think, if you are looking at historic solid will buildings, you should have an entirely different rating system for EPCs that would apply to those buildings by age, how would you distinguish? It's by construction type here? Yes, and you were asking, so you were a minefield, isn't it? It isn't, isn't I mean, when we've looked at decarbonizing council housing in Wiltshire, we've been able to identify four and a half roughly types of houses and then about 200 on the edge that are complicated. So you can you can break your housing down relatively simply in terms of the kind of work that will be needed to make a meaningful input there. And it should be delivering both fats that health saving, energy saving and carbon saving. But But EPCs, you can't have the same EPC for every house type. If you've got a solid wall construction pre pre World War One, you probably want a different type of EPC rating and a different set of criteria that you can use to improve the energy efficiency of that house to a 1980s build or a 2020 belt,
you would accept that we do need to improve the insulation of our existing housing stock. But at the moment, we seem to have this fabric first approach which says that you can't do anything about changing the heat system and improving it. You don't deal with the fabric at the same time. Is that a right approach to take? Or should we change that?
It depends on the property again, for the bulk of my council house properties, which is the ones I've got the most granular detail on Yes, fabric first is very much the right way to go. But involves robots spraying foam encrypting spaces humans can't get into which we never expected when we started. So it really does. It's mostly fabric, first of all makes sense. But there are areas where it won't.
And then in terms of the older housing stock, should we were trying to get take the fabric first approach may involve a substantial change to the character of some of these older properties. Should we not worry about that and get the more environmentally efficient heating system in regardless? Yeah,
so so we think that the fabric first approach can incentivize unnecessary interventions, which are actually increasing carbon emissions and may have damaged the property in the long term,
would they tell us how they increase government because they build a gas boiler. And
so it could be for the SS, there's both the heating systems such as the boilers, which we've already covered, but it's also sometimes pushing towards fabric interventions that are not actually necessary to achieve the thermal performance. And that's partly because the the standard assessment protocol isn't properly counting for the thermal performance of the existing building. And you have to have to factor in and this is something we're very keen to see more of the whole life carbon cycle of the products that are used in in historic in retrofit. So insulation has a high carbon footprint in itself, both in the in the manufacture, transport and installation. And quite often, they're not necessary, I would just refuse
to accept then that on occasions, it might be better to leave the property less well thermally insulated, and leave it leave it retain its existing character. And just it's it's about
having a much more nuanced approach and understanding. So thinking about the building and its context, how it's constructed, as Richard has said, how the building is used, taking very simple measures. So improving loft and under floor insulation can be really effective before you look at things like wall isn't
made. Excellent, incredibly complicated. At the moment, we've got a relatively simple formula. We're just gonna make this thing so complicated that nobody will know where they stand.
So it's striking the right balance, isn't it? I mean, this is this is always the technique, you want to have a methodology that which is which is helpful, which is working at the moment, the UPC methodology has to develop to be more appropriate to inform better choices and unnecessary works and not being undertaken. So you have to improve it. But I agree, you don't want to make it too complicated that it becomes unworkable. So it is about striking that right balance, and we're working very closely with the government to try and improve the methodology to make them more more more adaptable and useful for historic building bridges.
Sorry, you've touched on health. One of the problems you can get particularly again with older buildings is if you insulate you end up with major conduct condensation problems, which in turn causes a health issue, and that means the windows are open to clear the conversation so you're actually pumping more heat out into nowhere. So that nuance is
important. And how do you resolve this solution?
You've got to have a better understanding of the different those different types of buildings, particularly when you get to these small areas with with boats,
we're not better doing what Victoria suggests, which is if they're a bit old, and they're difficult to make efficient, really, you know, where some of these houses built in the 1880s are expected to be around today. And should we not look at replacement in some instances,
in some cases, certainly from a council housing stock perception perspective, I got nothing at all. But yes, demolition is the only way in some cases to actually deal with the issue, it gets much more contentious when you're dealing with anything with heritage in it.
I mean, I just wanted to come back to the minimum energy efficiency standard, which is based on on a cost basis, instead of a carbon basis, I think that's, that's kind of the heart of the problem. If we could move to it being based on carbon impact, that would make a difference to the result. So make a difference to the core problem, rather than the solutions. The second thing is, you know, if these hold houses, they have a lot of embodied carbon already in them, we haven't been ripping carbon out in order to instruct them. So in fact, they should be given a head start on their EPCs, because they've already got the carbon wrapped up in that building. And it's not going anywhere. And it's been there for 300 years, or whatever. So there are different ways of dealing with that as well. So I think the most important thing is, it's been so slow. It's been so desperately, desperately. So I've been an officer of the CLA for six or seven years now. And we've been talking about saps the whole time. And we've never progressed, because of the silos of it falling into different VPS a standard assessment procedure, and the ingenuity and the lack of conscience. So yes, we've got we get some breakthroughs about solid wall construction, you know, and they go, and that's great. And that'll be 2025 or 2026. And you
the way the afternoon is shaping up, I think in the programme I can get squeezed Lord little Marlon, for one question for one minute. Mr. Rosenbaum, very
quick, what you're saying effectively is we've got one standard, which is based on carb, on cost. And while income if you're a renter, you still want to know before you rent the property, how like much is this going to cost you, from a cost point of view? Is it that we actually need two assessments maybe that are done at the same time, but two figures, rather than what you're trying to do is we're trying to shoehorn two things into one when if you're a renter, you want to you don't really care about your carbon, but you do care about how much cash is coming out of your pocket every month. And on the other side, you might also care from a government point of view, the carbon in your body carbon of the house, we tried to do. So
it's I can't remember, it's already mandatory, it's battery mandatory that we when we rent a house, we have to say what we estimate the costs to move up. So just as a landlord, you have to do that based on the bills that you've already got for that property. So I don't think I think it's good to have both those indices there. But what are we basing the actual performance on?
The services? So actually, we should, we should take away all costs out of the EPC. And it should just be on carbon, and then we should do something else? That's cost base. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Yes. Running.
You may be interrupted, but the bell, I'm
going to be interrupted by the bell. I think, Victoria. Actually, just before I get into my questions, Richard, in the last panel, we had two elected representatives, making a number of comments about what they thought about various bits of government policies. They were from different political parties. And I just wondered whether or not you wanted to make any of your sort of general comments about how is it the government's doing, I
think we probably from a local government perspective, will share the same, the same issues, the big one being consistency. We, I'm a firm believer that in local government, you you have a wonderful opportunity to plan for the long term housing, we think in housing and 3040 50 year cycles, we've got to have consistency to
have consistency. That's that's very helpful. Think Victoria, you've probably answered this a lot in your answer, as well as you do think that the government policy on rural areas, and the challenges they face decarbonizing their homes is just it's too difficult. Let's not even focus on it.
Or
well, I think works. We're a tiny demographic, and therefore, it's quite easy to ignore our voice in government. I don't think it's this government. I don't think it's a party political issue, and I don't think it's probably particularly helpful.
graphic, but the numbers we would give them was the fabric improvements to listed buildings and historic dwellings in conservation areas. Could Divide 30% of the reductions required by the six carbon budget.
But I'm not sure if the cost would how much would that cost? I think that's the real question, you might get a 30% improvement at the cost of improving. I don't know, the whole of Leeds, it's the cost is prohibitive, I think is. So I think we could do other things.
Yes, I mean, that shows the potential of reusing and adapting our historic buildings. And that's one of the most effective ways actually of reducing our carbon emissions and the unnecessary consumption of natural resources. It's really important that we continue to invest in our historic buildings so that they continue to be desirable places to occupy, you know, that's one of the key things for keeping them in place. So So our view is that every historic building can be made more energy efficient and should be made and more energy efficient. It's not a question of how that's done. If that's done, that's question of how do you
think we need more guidance for people in his abilities, more flexibility about being able to make changes that may change the historic nature a bit, but enables them to continue to be in Aberdeen.
So we've been supporting a cross government review of the barriers that are stopping people from making energy efficiency improvements to their historic properties, and that was published last week, and that covers all of the areas that you mentioned, and more. So simplifying, planning is a key issue addressing skills, simplifying funding, are also so there's what
would one of your asks to this committee be that we as a committee should be encouraging the government to urgently look at implementing the recommendations of that review?
Let's the government's own review. So you'd hope that they would implement
things? What tell me the key recommendations,
the key recommendations, we've already touched on reforming the RPC framework. So that accurate, more accurately reflects making sure that funding addresses the issues of traditional properties, simplifying the planning system. But quite frankly, one of the areas where we can make the biggest improvements is, is around getting better informed advice and guidance to the owners of properties so that they know what what improvements they should be undertaking.
Now, in terms of heat generation, Victoria, I touched on it with a previous panel, you sometimes get local areas where there is excess energy, you might live as this example was near an old mine geothermal, you might live near a wind turbine, that sometimes it's paid to do nothing. Do you think rural areas could be using that excess energy better in terms of community heat sometimes? Should we be looking at pilot programmes on community heat in rural areas? And do you think rural areas could host more of those assets to produce community heat
solutions? Yes. And one of the really interesting things that could be pursued is looking at how you can have a community heat solution based on any of those things you've said, that doesn't need access to the whole national grid to be delivered to your particular area, if we could localise that as well. That will be great. I mean, we have plenty of big holes in the ground and Cornwall full of warm water eighteens to centigrade seems extraordinary house. I don't think we've got anything like that. But yes, I think in this particular case, we could have local answers, but on small landlord scale, nothing. There's nothing here that encourages us to put district heating systems in for four to 10 houses. We could take out little There you go. There's your bell, but we could take out those small groups and put district heating systems in really quickly.
And division time, we've got 15 minutes, so we'll be back here and maximum length 5015 51. Okay, you think we think we might be here before 1551 to our panel, but this is the risk of afternoon committees.
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The proceeding is currently suspended. Thank you very much audit committee resumes and I think we were with Vicki Ford. Right on.
I was just talking to Victoria about how could rural areas play a role in hosting the assets that may be required for more decentralised model for community heat. And Utopia talks about, for example, geothermal, I would be interested to go potentially further than that one, we saw the project in Fife with hydrogen that was spare power from wind turbine, which wasn't used always to provide electricity for the grid, using the spare electricity to produce hydrogen and then having a local hydrogen network.
Well, much that pains me to say it or Scotland is definitely ahead of us in the use of renewable energy. Please be enjoyed whenever I know a bit about the delivery of the borehole at Eden, which is a successful project but which is definitely done working with outside finance. So yeah, that's that's one of the routes is to find the way you can finance that, I think was the reopening of South Crofty mine, which has been deep waters out there are there are roots.
Because you've already spoken about a community network. Could you also see that being a potentially community hydrogen network on a local hydrogen gas grid? For example, I
don't know enough about delivery of hydrogen is my answer isn't that I can send that to the office and they can give you the answer any
other thoughts from anybody else about this sort of local type grids for off grid rural areas? I
think we need to look at them. I think they're going to be quite unique depending on whichever area you're looking at whether you've got solar that's producing next excess capacity that you can harness, whether you can use some form of battery or heat battery storage. But but just coming back, you asked a question What is different about rural areas. One and a half million homes in rural areas are heated by oil. That doesn't happen in urban areas. Our policy constantly is metropolitan. It's designed for cities because the bulk of our residents live in cities. So yes, rural areas, our policy is not flexible enough to be adapted for rural areas, whether it be on heating our homes, or on the need to decarbonize cars but keep them because buses in Cornwall or Wiltshire and not so hot, or a huge range of areas when we're looking at decarbonisation national policy is urban and does not easily translate to rural.
So Victoria said earlier, but she wasn't sure if what we were trying to do is reduce people's energy prices. I hate more homes, affordably or reduce people's carbon usage. And guess the point was, Richard is that oil is both the most expensive way to heat and the most carbon emitting. So your income encouraging us to say the government should do more to focus on those one and a half million homes that are currently well heated.
Government needs to set policy that's flexible enough to allow that focus to be done. We don't decarbonize, everyone decarbonize as tall, the countryside does, as well as Manchester. And I think your point about cost. decarbonisation when it works, there should be an incentive to do it, because it should not only be better for the planet, it should save you money.
And is there more you want to say about the conflict between policies that are trying to preserve traditional homes versus those aiming to make them Net Zero compatible?
Yes. I mean, the fundamental thing is we don't we don't see those as incompatible approaches. We think that it's perfectly possible with a right approach to make every single historic building more energy efficient. It's just a question of how you do it. And making the informed choices and having the right information, the right assessment, the right knowledge, about which interventions to make.
So I think you said you, you've said information, the right assessments. And clearly, because they're historic, not a one size fits all approach, you want to have a more of a building by building bespoke approach. That's
right. So so understanding the building, how it's constructed, how it's used is also really important. And making sure that we put in place sufficient advice and guidance for owners locally as well as nationally, I think that's really, really important. Maybe we'll come back to local expertise and local authorities, because I think that's an area of signal.
Does that need to also have more financial incentives to go hand in hand with it?
So without question from our own research, finance, and affordability is one of the real barriers and that's that's been also picked up by the government in its review. And so you need to be able to make sure that financial solutions work for those that occupies those properties as well as those that don't
does that need to be public sector grant? So can you see the sort of private re mortgage with a charge against you is,
like most things, it's a mixed economy. And it's about making sure that the public finance is invested, where, where it's most needed. So reflecting the income, and affordability and ability sorry, ability of people to be able to afford improvements,
and how should the planning system be reformed.
So the planning system needs to be made more straightforward. And we, the government's review highlights two specific areas where, where improvements can be made. The first of those is the development of national management development policies, which the government is set will bring forward as part of the levelling up and regeneration act. And within that, we believe there's the opportunity to really strike the right give that right advice about how you strike the balance between both securing the preservation of what makes our historic buildings so so important. So So preserving their significance, whilst also also allowing for them to be adapted to be made more energy efficient. The other areas using existing tools, but which are not used more very widely, at the moment. So listed building consent orders, for example, is one area where we think there's a good opportunity to, to bring in blanket approval for things like solar for improving windows, installations and various other other measures and heat pumps are particularly good government's again, committed to consult on this in due course. But we are working with local authorities at the moment, bath was was mentioned, for example, for a listed building consent order a local list of building consent order for solar panels, which would remove the need for individual owners to apply for individual consent every time they want to instal a solar panel, providing they abided by a clear set of controls that set out in the consent order. So you could have a
historic building, and in concert that covered multiple houses.
Exactly. I think that's that's got to be a sensible way, way forward. It will be more challenging to do that nationally, because every area, as we've already
talked, I'm probably gonna put you on the spot. And you may not be able to answer this question. But of this, this 30% statistic that I we were given the suggested that if you could improve the energy efficiency of our historic and Conservation Area buildings, it could take 30% of the carbon budget. How, how much of that 30% is actually realistic.
I mean, that that's if we did everything to every single building. So of course, that's not going to be, but it's an aspiration, and we should work towards towards that. We do think that you can improve the energy efficiency of every building. We think that's really important. And we think there are ways to achieve that. We know at the moment, you
could realistically aim to achieve half of that, a third of that. So
our ambition is to achieve as much of that as we possibly can. I would hope we can achieve more than half of that. At the moment we've got we know, using the same mechanism that designates use for recording progress with EPCs. And we've been notwithstanding the problems and issues with EPC. Is it still a useful mechanism for understanding progress in terms of retrofit more generally, but we know they've said we've moved towards 47% Now of dwellings that are in a band C or above. We know that for traditional properties for those that built before 1919 that currently stands at eight 10% So there's a significant way to go. What I would say is that that was very negative when the survey was first undertaken in 2008. It was it was only at 1%. So we've seen significant progress over the last 15 years, but there's still a long way to go. And it's a great opportunity
18% of our historic buildings are that
and that that's using the results of the English home survey, which doesn't as base their their their their results. Thank you
very much, indeed, that efficient Lourdes Mall.
We're too obvious. Just has the government done enough to integrate skill development into government funded retrofit schemes? Ian, I don't know if you want to lead on that. I mean, I know that my plumber, only this week has gone on a scheme around. So hot sauce heat pumps, despite me going on him for about five years, because the opportunity is only just come up. So it has the government done really to integrate that skills development,
the government doing more and more to support skills. We undertook some research jointly with Groveland National Trust Peabody in the Crown Estate last year, which just showed the scale of the challenge to ensure that we have the skills in our construction industry to meet this need of retrofitting, and this retrofitting objective, and that is at least another 100,000 People in the construction trade. So there's a huge, huge challenge ahead. We Historic England have broken that information down into local authority areas and made that available through an online interactive online tool. So it's there available for local authorities and particularly for for the employer representative bodies that are producing the local local skills improvement plans to understand what they need in their area bespoke for their area, what skills they need to deliver that energy efficiency programme. The key I think, and people have mentioned in the previous panel, around the importance of local area energy planning, is bringing that together with a local skills improvement plans, you know, that it's these connections, which are so important, and we that needs to happen so that we're working, it's all coordinated action to respond to what is a really significant challenge, but quite an exciting opportunity.
That Richard, put putting aside the disaster of taking f ecologist at a local authority control that happened 30 years ago, something should skills development to local areas where there is greater should it be devolved, sorry, to local areas, where there's greater local capacity to understand the needs and assessment, and what area of unit should that devolution kind of happen? I always kind of glaze over a bit where we talk about skills panels and local skills, or whatever, because they change every 10 seconds, don't they? You know, kind of so there's no, there's no consistency in our skills planning locally. So is the local area, the right body to devolve that to?
Yes, I think it is working inside the bounds of what you've just been talking about. So it's it's part of devolution policy, that pretty much every Devo deal skills comes with it, which is sensible. You've got a distinction between whether that should be skills on a regional basis. So where you've got a metro Mayor a larger area, where it probably makes some sense to sit at that level, inside a county area, it probably makes sense to sit at a county council or a large unitary level. But you've then got that disconnect between if skills are being provided by the top tier authority, yet districts are responsible for housing, we've got district councils, you've really got a problem that districts and and counties don't necessarily play well together. And even where you've got different unitaries, Wiltshire and Swindon we have a very good relationship, but but we don't always see eye to eye. And when it comes to the LePen and the schools agenda coming out of it, there are all sorts of tensions. So I think you've got to be pretty clear in where you are assigning that. And I think you've got to be looking at a footprint of at least to county, I think if you let it become too granular and to micro, you're going to hit problems. If you're looking at the the people who provide the kind of plumbing services for much for the north of wheelchair, they're coming out of Swindon, so to look at Swindon, in isolation from what you're in that context, when it comes to skills will be wrong, and you'll get you're going to need to get back that strategic approach somewhere in that devolution
and he's got to be done in a way that isn't just the county council trying to roll over the unitary authority that's on the side. Ain't
no you definitely don't want to create conflict between the county and the districts. But also you need to be involved in business and business doesn't always want to be engaging too closely with something that's political. So I mean, my my assessment from from a wheelchair, and we're going through this with with the lab coming in is, is to look at a having a, not a lab, but a board there that is run by the council, but is involved in business are not controlled by the council to understand what that mix of skills is we only have one further education college makes it easier, but to understand how that that that context should, should be, should come together and actually identifying what those critical skills are.
And I mean, I've come to all of you with this kind of question, but you can answer them pick up the other ones. I mean, what extent is this this you've mentioned it previously on the actual grants, but short term funding versus long term funding on skills development hindering this? And where? And where should the government provide more certainty for that kind of funding, funding development, it's
exactly the same principle. And the problems we've got at the moment are we've got the UK share prosperity funding, which is the easiest way to look at at least kickstarting skills. And you can then try and access more funding on the back of that you can SPF, we had two years of funding, we have incredibly tight controls on how we should spend it, which makes it difficult, we have really struggled in my own context to get some schools funding through Wiltshire college to enable some retrofit programmes to be put in place, we've just made it. But that's because we're large, unitary, and I've got a lot of officers who can put their time into that it's a different picture in different places, you need a consistency of at least five years for skills, it's got to be at least the length of the course, for skills. And if you're looking at some of the further education elements has got to be
fantastic. In
Yes, I mean, this issue of national versus local delivery, and has come up a lot through the panel discussions. And what I'd say is it's not a binary choice, you know, it's not either, or it's both of them working together. So. So there's the clearly the it's a very complex challenge. And I think the bulk of the delivery has to be at a local level, but within a national framework, and with national expertise. Suppose he has an example of that. I mean, I'm talking about a very particular part of the of the building stock, of course, but understanding how to make energy efficiency improvements to start buildings is a particular expertise. Now I'm lucky enough in my organisation to have some fantastic people who have the best knowledge around heat pump installations and historic buildings. It's using their expertise and how we spread that within local authorities, each local authority is not going to have that expertise embedded within it. So how do we
share local authority might need a different level of it, you know, where I come from Brighton and Hove along the way, we've got over almost 2% in conservation, housing, so much higher than national average, we might need far more of those experts in that particular style of housing stuff compared to something else.
That's right. So so you have to have a have a system that's flexible enough to respond to each local place?
And are the educators trained up enough to kind of if I go to my local college, or medical school, which does building teaching, they're teaching people how to build new, very exciting, but there's not a huge amount there of the teachers that necessarily know how some of these old buildings are, how do we get that pump primed effectively to get the right teachers in?
This is a really, really complex area. And I'd be really happy to write to the committee with further advice. I'm not going to cover it all in thank you for those times.
He made the chair, I think that would be interesting, because they consider that you'd be more critical about versus local. Here, is it
this is about skills and education, I'm afraid, right? It's just a case that the greatest silo is the Department for Education, they don't seem to be very receptive to changing their ways or changing very quickly. So there are two distinct patterns here. How do we educate young people? And how do we educate people who are already in the workforce? I think business commerce will drive the people in the workforce to skill if they see a profitable business, like your plumber as a result of it. I say extreme beware, I do not need any more people telling me they're experts. I need somebody to come and do the work, you know, and actually get dirty and bring a pasty and spare stay all day and come back tomorrow and do a job that isn't the wrong job because they haven't been properly trained, and they never understood the training in the first place. So I think that adults training is a different area that needs a different approach to the schools and the higher education. And I think that in rural areas, which is the only place I really understand, I think that's skills across The board, I think it's the great growth in in how we can have green energy skills, that great growth and what we can do with forestry skills. At the moment, we've got a one size fits all education system, and it simply doesn't deliver for rural areas for historic buildings for all of these nice things. We're very fortunate we have a unit unitary authority. We're very efficient one our chief executive was Chief Executive of the Year. And we hadn't have had a very good lip. And I think the lips were and are the people to deliver, because they know what the businesses in the local area need. If we still have them, obviously,
if we still have the right areas. Yes, thank you very much. We're
very fortunate because we've been in the position of seeing that it works. I think we're
lips have mapped better over a local authorities they work quite well. In my area. For example, we had two different Leps over one county council district councils split in half. It makes it very difficult. So
anywhere there's a muddle as a mess. Yeah.
Thank you very much. We were going for energy efficiency, and we've covered that quite well. Today. We'll also touch time efficiency. I did notice there the the subtle product placement of the Cornish pasty and one of the answers. Attend but can I thank the panel very much, Richard clear in Morrison and a Victoria Vivian, for coming along today and for sharing your experiences particularly notable was the advocacy for a caravans and people living on boats in particular, which has been touched by BBC moneybox and amongst other programmes, and it's been very much overlooked, and it's welcome done that that was noted again today. Thank you all and thank you for remaining Order, order.
