Council Committee recommends free insulation across Lewisham

Regular readers of this blog may have noticed a slight preoccupation with insulation over the past year or so. On a personal level, I've been getting my draughty ground floor Victorian flat insulated, while on a political level, the Green Group on the Council has been pushing for a borough-wide free insulation scheme to be introduced.

Back in April, I mentioned that the Sustainable Development Committee, which I chair, was carrying out a review into home insulation in the borough. Over the last few months we've gathered evidence and heard from a number of witnesses, including housing associations, energy companies, other local authorities and the Energy Saving Trust. I spent many hours in September, together with officers, working on the final report, which is now available on the Council's website.

The key recommendations of the committee's report include:
A free insulation scheme for homes across Lewisham. The Committee's report describes a possible three-year programme that would insulate around 25,000 homes and calls on the Mayor to set a target date by which every eligible householder has been offered free cavity wall insulation. The scheme would run in partnership with an energy supplier, who would meet half of the costs, as part of their obligations under the national Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (CERT). The remainder would potentially come from prudential borrowing.

A pilot scheme to start insulating 'hard to treat' properties: The Committee wants to see harder-to-insulate solid-wall homes tackled too, as these older houses make up around 40 per cent of Lewisham's stock. The Committee suggested that building up expertise by insulating the 200 Council-owned solid-wall homes that become vacant each year could make Lewisham a national leader in solid-wall insulation work.

Creating new jobs locally: The Committee wants local people to benefit from the jobs and training that could result from the home insulation programme, and has recommended that the Mayor asks Council officers to look at potential training schemes.

Homes have the biggest potential source of energy savings in the borough
An unusually high percentage of Lewisham's CO2 emissions come from its homes - 44 per cent compared to 27 per cent nationally. This isn't because Lewisham's housing stock is less efficient than elsewhere, but more due to the lack of employment and industry in the borough, which means that housing makes up a much greater proportion of total emissions.

The Committee found that while a range of useful initiatives have been introduced to increase energy efficiency, a more systematic, street-by-street approach to insulation is now required in order to save residents money on their fuel bills and to meet the carbon reduction targets in the borough's Carbon Reduction and Climate Change Strategy.

Other recommendations in the report include:

• Creating a register of insulation installers to make it easier for householders to get work done
• The Mayor to consider a demonstration eco-home in the borough for local people to visit
• A new planning rule which says home extensions can be built only if the whole property's energy efficiency is improved
• Investigating how to incentivise private landlords to insulate their homes and help vulnerable tenants

I'll be presenting the Committee's recommendations to the Mayor and Cabinet next week. Since the report was finalised, there have been several more national reports published calling for free home insulation schemes ('Lofty Ambitions' from the Audit Commission and this from the independent Committee on Climate Change) and it seems that barely a week goes by without another body echoing their calls.

I no longer think it's a question of if we get a free home insulation scheme, but more when, and who leads on it. I'd very much like to see Lewisham in the vanguard on this, rather than 'lagging behind' (excuse the pun from yet another report calling for free home insulation, this time from the London Assembly).

A copy of the full report 'Local Warming: Increasing Home Insulation in Lewisham: a scrutiny review' can be viewed here.

NB: Really observant regular readers of this blog may notice some similarity between the key recommendations of this review and the Green Group budget amendment from earlier this year. Personally, I think it's great that our proposals now have cross-party support.

Home Insulation Review

The Council's Sustainable Development Select Committee, which I've chaired for the past two years (and will hopefully be chairing for the next year, unless I get ousted) is about to start an in-depth review on home insulation in the borough. (Regular readers may be noticing a recurring theme here.)

The review aims to answer the following two main questions:
• What are the benefits of and barriers to improving the insulation of existing homes in Lewisham?
• What further actions are needed to achieve improvements to home insulation in Lewisham?

In answering the above questions, the committee will examine the following:
• gaps in the Council’s knowledge of the insulation needs of homes in Lewisham, and how these gaps could be filled;
• home insulation schemes currently operating in the borough;
• good practice examples from outside of the borough, and what lessons can be applied to future schemes in Lewisham;
• proposals from central Government, the GLA and the LGA to improve home insulation, and the implications of these for Lewisham;
• the extent to which insulation measures are taken into account in the terms of transfer of council-owned housing stock; and
• the extent to which Building Regulation duties around home insulation are enforced on properties still to be built, or on conversions/extensions to existing properties.

It is proposed that the review would take place over three sessions:
• Session 1: to examine home insulation schemes currently operating in the borough, and the barriers to improving insulation further (including the data currently available to the Council).
• Session 2: to examine good practice examples from other local authorities. outside of the borough, proposals from central Government, GLA and LGA, and the lessons to be
learned in Lewisham.
• Session 3: to examine the latest policy developments on a national and regional level.

The first evidence-gathering session is next Thursday (9th April) and papers for the meeting can be found here. Members of the public are welcome to attend and observe the meeting (and potentially make contributions, if you notify the committee in advance). Written submissions are also welcome: e-mail them to me.

At drinks after last night's Council AGM, a certain member of the leading group was extolling the virtues of a free insulation scheme, having heard Lord Chris Smith, chair of the Environment Agency, talk about it. I politely pointed out that we had proposed this in our budget amendment and he had voted against it. Sigh. We will get there.

Green Budget: Free Insulation to 25,000 Lewisham homes

The Council's budget for the next municipal year is due to be decided at Full Council on 2nd March. As in the previous two years, the Green Group has put in a detailed budget amendment, with a combination of proposals to overturn what we feel are unacceptable cuts and also proposing a number of new measures, including the roll-out of a free insulation scheme to 25,000 homes in the borough.

The plan would pay for free loft, cavity wall or boiler insulation in 25,700 private homes across Lewisham. That means all private homes in Lewisham which need insulation - but which do not qualify for free help under schemes for the elderly and those on benefits - would get it free of charge. (Those living in social housing will be getting the insulation anyway as part of the decent homes work.) The scheme would run along similar lines to the highly-successful and popular scheme initiated by Green councillors in Kirklees, with an energy company, which must carry out 'green' work under the government's 'Carbon Emissions Reduction Target' rules, being sought as a partner, providing half the cash.

Once again, Ute has led for the group on putting forward our budget proposals and I expect will be posting something further on this in a few days. (It's Ute's birthday today, btw, so happy birthday Ute!). You can read the basic details of our budget amendment here and see the Full Council papers here. Among our other key proposals are:

• A new £1m 'revolving' fund which could be dipped into by householders wanting to fit renewable energy equipment in their homes. The no-interest loans would only have to be repaid when the home is sold on, and the money would return to the fund so others can access it.
• £1.5m to retrofit solid wall (mostly Victorian or pre-1930s) council homes as they become void. As tenants in the Brockley PFI area can testify, these properties often get less insulation than those in other properties because their solid walls make installing insulation more complicated. It's disruptive work, so it makes sense to start by carrying it out on properties that are empty, before they are re-let.
• £500,000 fund to allow the Mayor to use compulsory purchase orders to bring neglected properties back into use. This follows on from the findings of my committee in its Empty Properties review earlier in the year and is aimed at being a last resort, when all other enforcement measures have failed (I can think of a certain property on the corner of Loampit Hill/Tyrwhitt Road that immediately springs to mind here).
• Money to roll out the 'brown bins' garden waste collection trial to almost 20,000 homes. Our budget amendment the year before last resulted in the successful pilot. We are now saying lets start rolling the bins out permanently.
  

While the Greens have submitted a detailed budget amendment, the Lib Dems have again opted for the back of a fag packet option. They propose a zero rate increase in Council Tax by scrapping the Mayor's proposals to spend £2m on measures to tackle the recesssion. That's it, no attempt to overturn any cuts they might not like, no positive growth proposals to help us tackle the 'triple crunch' of climate change, peak oil and the credit-fuelled financial crisis. I am confident that our proposals will benefit residents more, both in the medium and long-term, both in terms of energy bill savings, new jobs and warmer homes than a one-off council tax freeze. No budget amendments from the Tories (again) or the Socialists.

Operation Insulation: Part 1 Completed!

Well, it's been a bit of a mammoth undertaking, involving moving furniture from room to room and kipping at Ute's for half the month, but finally my under floor insulation is all done and the floor boards all sanded, sealed and oiled. Most importantly, my flat feels noticeably less draughty, with a few inches of hemp insulation underneath the floor boards. Really pleased with the work - it took longer than envisaged, due to extra problems such as rotten joists being discovered, but more than happy to recommend the carpenters who did it to anyone interested in getting similar work done. Now just got to paint the skirting boards, move all my things back to the right place and wait for planning permission before I can embark on part 2 and 3, which involves replacing the windows and getting the walls insulated. . .

Insulation Day 3

OSB (oriented structure board) has started to go down in the front room today. Just 8mm thick, but enough to give extra support to the boards that will go over the top, as well as add an extra air-tight layer over the insulation. Apparently OSB is better than using plywood or MDF as it contains less formaldehyde and wastes less wood. Slight hitch in that my phone line was accidentally cut today when the skirting boards were removed - apologies to anyone who tried to call and couldn't get through - it's back up and running now though, so do call again.

Operation Insulation and the Lunacy of Expanding Aviation

The insulation has been laid in my front room now, and it already feels warmer, even before the floorboards have been put back on top!

I wondered for a while today why I'm bothering to make the effort though, when our government has today announced it was to press ahead with Heathrow Expansion, which would cancel out any carbon savings individuals make and put us well and truly on course for runaway climate change.

- Sorry Bangladesh, our government thinks BAA's business interests are more important than rising sea levels that will put your country underwater.
- Sorry Londoners, 1,000 of whom already die prematurely each year due to air pollution, but your government has just decided to make it all much worse and build an airport that will almost certainly be in breach of EU air pollution laws.
- Sorry to all those who already get woken up at 5am by the first planes overhead - for those of you who don't yet - stand by as it's going to get a hell of a lot noisier soon.

I am absolutely furious, and for me this is a line in the sand. I will do everything I can within the law to oppose this, but will also now consider taking part in direct action and if necessary risk arrest, as I think what the government is proposing is criminally negligent (and they didn't even have the guts to put it to the vote in parliament).

I haven't heard much from our 3 Lewisham MPs on this issue, but have written to Joan Ruddock MP asking for clarification of her stance on this, both as my constituency MP and as Parliamentary Under Secretary in the Department of Energy and Climate Change. By dodging having a vote in parliament on this issue, the government has tried to avoid embarrassment for any of its ministers with London constituencies.

Of course there is every possibility that we could end up with a Tory government after the next general election and if so they have pledged to scrap the plans for Heathrow expansion, but can we really trust them not to cave in to big business on this one? Clearly some of their members are less than supportive of their leaders' stance (not to mention being head in the sand climate change sceptics).

Good press release from the national party today and it was also announced that the Labour group leader on Bury St Edmonds Council has resigned from Labour and applied to join the Green Party in disgust at the Heathrow decision.

Finally, if you haven't already done so, why not sign up to Greenpeace's Airplot campaign, and declare a beneficial interest in a plot of land within the site of the proposed new runway? There is also a Flashmob at Heathrow Terminal 5 at midday this Saturday (17th).

Operation Insulation has commenced!

Finally, after months of reading up and getting estimates, and just over a year after I joined the Green Homes scheme and got my home energy audit, my plan to insulate and 'green up' my flat took a step forward today, with the start of the work to insulate under my floor boards. Living in the ground floor flat of a converted Victorian house with stripped floorboards and single glazed sash windows has been more than a bit draughty over the past few weeks, but hopefully that's all set to change. The works are going to take a few weeks, and involve moving all the furniture out of one half of the flat while all the floorboards are taken up. Any inch of space that isn't taken up with furniture, is jam-packed with huge bales of insulation material.

Work started today in the front room. The floorboards have all been lifted and the skirting boards removed. 'Periscope vents' have been fitted onto the air bricks to channel the air down. It's important that air continues to circulate underneath the insulation to avoid damp problems. A fair amount of rubble has been removed to make sure the air holes are clear. A breathable membrane is going to be placed over and between the joists, to hold the insulation in place.

The insulation that I'm using is hemp based, and (I'm assured) both fire retardant and treated with smthg which makes it unappealing to mice. After discussion with the builders today, we decided to add an extra 6mm layer of board on top of the insulation and joists to add extra support to the floorboards (they've already been sanded once and after being sanded a second time might be slightly thinner than ideal).

All this insulation will just about bring my floor insulation up to modern day building regs standards, ie not by any stretch of the imagination zero carbon, but significantly better than it currently is. We're limited in what we can do by the fact that the gap under the floor boards and the depth of the joists is not that big, but the insulation should certainly be enough to block the draughts that currently blow through the place and help to make my home a bit cosier and more comfortable than it has been.

Blogging may be slightly intermittent while the works are underway . . .

Heritage versus Energy Efficiency?

Hot on the heels of my last post about the need to insulate our period properties to make them as low-carbon as possible, comes the news that the Department for Media, Culture and Sport, together with English Heritage is considering listing the Excalibur Estate in Downham. The Excalibur Estate consists of 185 post-war pre-fabs. The Council wants to transfer them over to a housing association (L&Q) to demolish them and make way for new more energy-efficient (and higher density) housing, arguing that they can't bring the properties up to decent homes standard. They are in the process of balloting residents about this stock transfer. However, a number of the residents are very attached to where they live and feel their community will be destroyed.

I suspect that besides attachment to the homes they live in, a good chunk of residents' concerns is that their detached bungalows with individual gardens will be replaced with something much higher density with less outside space (L&Q's proposals are to increase the number of homes on the estate from 186 to around 460 homes, which they argue is a similar density to that of the surrounding areas.).

I have sympathies with both sides here - it's a lovely estate, part of our heritage, but can the properties be insulated sufficiently to keep residents warm without having to spend a fortune on heating bills? As a rule of thumb, I would say that reducing our carbon emissions has to take priority over aesthetic/heritage concerns, but I would like to see more evidence to show whether the two really are mutually incompatible in this case. My experience from Brockley PFI so far has also been that reducing the thermal efficiency of properties has not been the central plank of the decent homes scheme that it should have been.

The whole heritage/aesthetics versus energy-efficiency debate is one that needs to be had, particularly around here, with lots of draughty Victorian properties in and around the conservation area. I think we probably can insulate our Victorian conservation area properties without needing to demolish them or change their appearance by externally cladding them, but if push came to shove, cutting the carbon would take priority for me.

I bet Steve Bullock is quietly cussing English Heritage for throwing a spanner in yet another of his plans (the recent listing of Louise House having thwarted his plans for rebuilding the Forest Hill Pools). What next? Max, any plans to get any of those modernist buildings in Lewisham you love so much listed? Citibank Tower, Ladywell Leisure Centre perhaps? Please no . . .

Eco-retrofitting Conservation Area Buildings

My intention of going on the London Freewheel bike ride today was thwarted by a puncture in my front tyre, but I did get the tube up to Camden to go and see 17 St Augustine's Rd – a low energy Victorian house refurbishment. A friend was involved in the project and I was keen to go and see it at first hand.
It was basically a derelict property that Camden Council decided to refurbish so it could be let for social housing, but also to use it as an experiment in retrofitting a period property within a conservation area, with the aim of reducing its carbon emissions by 80%. The house was open as part of the London Open House weekend. It will also be open for the next 3 Sundays, then from October it will be let to a family on the Council housing waiting list.
All the windows have been fitted with high-spec wooden-framed double glazing (argon-filled). There is roof and floor insulation and also internal wall insulation (the latter makes the rooms a bit smaller, but it was a fairly large house so it wasn't that noticeable). The pictures show the depth of the wall insulation and the materials used.
















The refurbishment wasn't cheap and Camden Council wouldn't be able to afford to do the same with all its Victorian housing stock without extra funding, but the house will be closely monitored to see how it performs and lessons learnt from the project will be used to inform future housing refurbishment projects. Arguably, the windows and the insulation are the priorities, to make homes warmer and bring down fuel bills, and the solar panels can be installed at a later date when costs come down.

I was keen to see the property at first hand both as someone who lives in a draughty Victorian flat and is close to investing in insulation and new windows to improve my own home, but also as a councillor in a ward with lots of Victorian property and midway through a council housing refurbishment scheme. There is considerable controversy over what will/won't be included in the Brockley PFI housing improvements, depending on whether you live in or outside of the conservation area (there has been a heated discussion recently about double glazing in the conservation area over on Brockley Central, something I have previously commented on).

If you're a tenant living outside the Brockley Conservation area, you will get double glazing (albeit UPVC, which goes against the Council's own guidelines), even if you live in a period property, roof insulation and wall insulation (if you have cavity rather than solid brick walls) to improve the thermal efficiency of your home. If you live inside the conservation area you will get roof insulation and unless your windows are so rotten/rusty that they are irreparable, your windows will just be overhauled and maybe a bit of draught-proofing added, but no double-glazing or wall insulation. So conservation area tenants will have less energy-efficient houses and higher fuel bills than those outside the area.

This is a wasted opportunity to make homes warmer, reduce fuel poverty and tackle climate change. Over 50% of London's housing stock is solid brick wall, like most of the Victorian housing stock round here and we urgently need to roll out a programme to insulate these homes properly. Yes, it costs more and is a bigger job than putting in cavity wall insulation, but we need to do this (assuming no ones wants to demolish all the housing stock in the Brockley Conservation Area and replace it with new low carbon housing).

The Brockley PFI housing scheme could have been a flagship project to pilot such large-scale insulation of solid brick walls and good quality wooden-framed double glazed windows (which if well-maintained will last over 100 years) but sadly it appears that the consortium's lawyers ran rings around the Council's legal team and we have ended up with little more than a paragraph on thermal efficiency improvements in a 1500-page contract, and little obligation on the part of the contractors to do more.

Could your street be Lewisham's first eco street?

One of the Lewisham Green Group budget amendments that we got through earlier this year was money to run a street-by-street energy reduction scheme. The pilot programme has been announced this week and the Council is looking for a road in the borough to become Lewisham’s first ‘Eco Street’.

Residents have until Wednesday 10th September to submit their street's entry, saying why they should be the lucky eco street. So roll up Ladywell residents, get speaking to your neighbours and submit an entry. Although the Council press release dumbs it down a bit with talk of an 'environmental makeover', what this programme should (at least as we proposed it) be primarily about is insulating all the participating properties in street (economies of scale bringing down the cost etc) and other measures to reduce both your carbon footprint and your fuel bills.

You can download the application form from here.

The only criteria is that nominated streets should have at least 100 households, preferably made up of more than one type of dwelling (ie, houses, conversion and purpose-built flats). [Personally I can't see any reason why 2 adjoining small streets couldn't submit a joint entry, but I'll check that].

Residents on the street will receive:
- A free energy assessment for each home
- A free pack of environmentally friendly ‘goodies’ for each household
- Financial support for measures to make their home more sustainable and to reduce energy bills
- Information and advice on how to reduce, reuse and recycle

Improvements for the street will include:
- Local clean-up events
- A ‘sustainable living’ event for the street
­- Development of a car club for the street
- Opportunities to support local wildlife and other biodiversity improvements

You may also be interested in taking a look at the Council's Greener Home Guide.

Brockley Housing PFI - Plenty of Room For improvement

Both Brockley and Ladywell councillors have had a fair amount of casework recently from Council tenants and leaseholders affected by the Brockley housing PFI.

Leaseholders have been concerned about the estimates they have been receiving for repair works and have formed a leaseholders association to work together and ensure their rights are respected. Brockley councillor Darren Johnson and I recently met with members of the association and Darren is hopefully arranging a meeting with the Mayor to enable leaseholders to discuss their concerns with him directly and agree a way forward.

Meanwhile a number of tenants feel that their views are being ignored or ridden roughshod over. We have had several reports of bullying behaviour from Higgins contractors, which we are following up on and hope will be swiftly stopped.

A further concern is the way in which in certain instances the wishes of leaseholders and tenants are being played off against each other. There was a vociferous campaign led by leaseholders and Ladywell Society and supported by local councillors, against plans to rip out the original features of Victorian properties in Ladywell and install UPVC windows. After lengthy discussions, we secured a small victory in that 38 Victorian properties in Algiers Road, Veda Road, Vicar's Hill and Ermine Road are now being treated as if they are in the conservation area.

However, the contractors, Higgins, are now telling tenants in some of the effected properties that they won't get double glazing 'because someone from Ladywell Society objected'. They are being told that their wooden sash windows will just be repaired (not even any draught-proofing), and if the window needs replacing it will only be replaced with single glazing. The tenants, who like the rest of us face rising fuel bills are understandably p*ssed off.

The Council's housing team are telling me that this isn't the case and that these properties will get double glazing, as will the conservation area proprties, but I'm still waiting for a definitive answer, with details of exactly what work is being done to improve the thermal efficiency of these Council homes. Clearly, in an age of rising energy prices and fuel poverty, to be missing this opportunity to insulate homes and reduce fuel bills would be scandalous.

It is also a big mistake to play off the wishes of those wanting to preserve the character of the area against the entirely understandable wishes of tenants to have warmer homes. Whoever is spreading the rumour that Ladywell Society are the villains of the piece for daring to oppose all the applications for UPVC windows in Victorian properties in Ladywell is wrong - they were entirely right to question the wisdom of ripping out original Victorian features from properties that are likely to be included in a future conservation area and replace them with UPVC windows (which have inferior thermal qualities to wooden-framed double glazing and are an environmental time-bomb). No one was ever suggesting these properties shouldn't have double-glazing, just querying the wisdom of UPVC.

It would seem that when drawing up the 20-year PFI contract, in all the 1,500 pages of legalese, the Council's Housing team didn't get round to specifying exactly what thermal improvements to homes would be made. Unbelievable, but, this, it would seem, is what often happens when the legal teams of private consortiums run rings around the Council's lawyers.

I hope to be proved wrong on this, but I am concerned about how things are currently progressing with the PFI. Balancing the rights of leaseholders and tenants is always going to be a tricky thing, but it seems that the contractors and Council between them are currently managing to annoy both. We urgently need clarity on what improvements to thermal efficiency those 38 properties, and those in the conservation area, are going to get, as well as dramatic improvements in communications to leaseholders.

Green councillors in Lewisham consistently opposed the Brockley PFI scheme from when it was first proposed to when it was signed, as did many residents, but New Labour ploughed on with it, and the deal was finally sealed, several years later than planned. Since then we have been working constructively with the Council's housing team, contractors and residents, to see that residents rights are respected and repairs and improvements are carried out to a high standard and we will continue to do so.

Ugly Plastic Very-ungreen and basically Cr*p Windows (aka UPVC)

A number of residents have been in touch recently concerned at Council plans to rip out their/their neighbours wooden sash windows and replace them with UPVC ones, as part of the decent homes programme. Those Council-owned or leased properties within the conservation area will get wooden sash windows on planning grounds, but the 40 or so Victorian properties that are within the Brockley PFI area but outside of the conservation area, get UPVC.

I'd like to make it clear that the Green group objected to this well before the Brockley PFI contract was signed, on environmental as well as aesthetic grounds, but the Council went for the UPVC ones on short-term cost grounds. As someone who's in the process of getting quotes for new double-glazed wooden sash windows to replace my rotting ones, I know just how expensive they can seem, compared to UPVC, but if properly maintained they can last over a hundred years, the thermal properties of wood are superior to plastic and you don't have the problem of disposing of hazardous materials when they reach the end of their useful life.

Some residents on Algiers Road are so annoyed that it has spurred them into setting up a residents' association and I've also been contacted by residents on Vicars Hill up in arms at the plans.

It's worth noting of course that many tenants and leaseholders are absolutely delighted that their rotten, draughty windows are finally being replaced and as I posted last month, leaseholders can opt to arrange to get their windows replaced themselves and have wooden instead of UPVC (provided they meet certain criteria), but tenants do not get that choice. In the current political environment when politicians in the main parties are falling over each other to offer 'choice' in healthcare, education etc (when people generally just want a good locally-provided service), it seems like Council tenants and leaseholders in Brockley and Ladywell are being given something of a Hobson's choice.

So to sum up, they look naff, they're not the green option, but the contract has been signed and unless valid planning grounds are found to object they are likely to be installed (I did ask the Mayor last night to ask if he fancied extending the Brockley Conservation Area to include Vicars Hill, but he was rather cautious, having been threatened with a judicial review after doing a similar thing in Sydenham when the Greyhound pub was threatened with demolition!). I hope that lessons will be learnt and wooden windows will be stipulated when drawing up future contracts.

For further info on the comparative benefits of UPVC versus wooden windows, please see the response to Cllr Romayne Phoenix's question to the cabinet member for customer services in May last year.

Greening my home dilemma 1

I posted at the beginning of the month about the London Green Homes Concierge Service doing an energy survey of my flat. Since then they have been finding out more info for me, arranging quotes etc. Today someone from a sash window company came to give me quotes for renovating/draught-proofing/replacing my windows. I was expecting the quote to be v high, and indeed it was. While my front bay windows, which are the original 1900 wooden sash windows are in surprisingly good nick, and could be either just draught-proofed or retrofitted with double glazing without replacing the whole thing, my bedroom and back room French windows and sash windows are rotting and need replacing. The guy who did the quote seemed pretty thorough and knowledgeable.

However, I hadn't quite expected his answer when I asked about where the wood was sourced from. I had expected/hoped him to say 'it's all FSC certified'. How wrong I was. Apparently they use a wood called utile, which is similar to mahoghany and he said it comes from South America (although when I looked it up in the Good Wood Guide it said it comes from West Africa). They said they go to 'extensive lengths' to ensure it is sustainably procured, but I would like a bit more proof.

He also said the reason they couldn't use UK-sourced wood was because China is buying up all the British oak for their construction projects so they buy from South America. He said they could get French Oak, but it would cost 8-10% more. I think the world economy has gone mad when it's cheaper for us to get tropical hardwood from South America/Africa than to get oak from within the UK. So now I have something of a dilemma - I want to do the green thing and a) improve the energy efficiency of my home and b) get wooden rather than UPVC windows, but I don't want to use wood that has been unsustainably sourced. I'll get at least one more quote before making a decision, but meanwhile does anyone know of a reputable company that does double-glazed wooden sash windows made of FSC-certified wood?!

It isn't as easy as it should be being green . . .

Hothouses

Excellent new report out last week from Jean Lambert MEP (Green MEP for London) which looks at the urgent need to increase the energy efficiency of existing London housing stock, to reduce carbon emissions. Over 37% of London's carbon emissions come from domestic energy consumption. In particular it looks at ways of improving insulation in older housing stock, eg the solid wall Victorian houses, which are common throughout London, particularly around here. The Energy Action Zones which are about to go live in Lewisham are a good start, but I'm concerned that the improvements in insulation under the Decent Homes programme will not be enough to reduce fuel poverty or carbon emissions. The energy efficiency standards required in England for houses to meet decent homes standard are not as stringent as those in Wales and Scotland, where SAP ratings are being used.

From the foreward to the report:

"Climate change is a major challenge of our time. There is growing agreement that we need to make real and rapid reductions in our greenhouse gas emissions. This means reducing our demand for energy and using what we have as efficiently as possible.

We should be making strategic decisions as to where we put our efforts to get the fastest possible reductions, while taking steps to tackle the more difficult areas.The recent Government announcement concerning zero-carbon newbuild housing is welcome, but new-build is only a small proportion of our overall housing stock.

We need to look at how we can improve our existing housing. For the UK, energy use in the domestic sector is an important source of emissions and particularly in London, where it outweighs transport. London also has a different makeup of housing stock compared to other regions and a different balance between owner-occupied and rented.

If we deal with energy-inefficient homes through extensive insulation programmes, we can also combat fuel poverty and meet a social need. Fuel poverty is predicted to increase as fuel prices rise, so action is essential. London has many households still living in poverty, despite the capital’s overall prosperity."