The FMB Director General, Richard Diment, opened the 2010 National Conference in York and spoke to members about how the FMB is working hard to ensure its members are ready to tackle the massive retrofit market.
The phrase ‘Green Deal’ was first used about 12 months ago by Grant Shapps who at the time was the Shadow Housing Minister. He became the Housing Minister in May following the General Election and now has the responsibility to pull the Green Deal together working with other government departments. As far back as the mid-1980s the United Nations set up the Bruntland Commission to define sustainable development and Margaret Thatcher came up with the phrase: “We have a full repairing lease on the world and that is our responsibility.”
Our main concern is still for the environment – we also have to consider energy security and there are serious issues here. Certainly if we consume energy at the current levels we will have major supply problems over the next 10 years. There are social issues around fuel poverty and economic issues particularly now as we try to recover from the recession and move forwards.
With the change of government we have seen a cross party consensus of how we need to move forward to tackle these issues. We are tied to UK legislation to reduce energy consumption so things have to change. Today, I want to talk about what the FMB can do to shape the detail within that policy to the benefit of members.
Improving existing buildings
We have to reduce the energy consumption of buildings. Most of the buildings we have today are going to be with us for the rest of our lifetimes and for a long time after that – about 80 percent of buildings will be around 50 years from now so we need to make the most of them.
We now have the Code for Sustainable Homes in place but the real challenge is what we do with existing buildings. Even if we get housing new builds up to the levels the country needs, we will still only be adding 250,000 units a year to the market. It’s the 27million or so existing homes that need action now.
There is a reticence from Government to produce a code for existing homes, but that is what the FMB is trying to drive forward. We got into this debate two or three years ago when we commissioned the work by academics at Oxford University with our 2008 report: Building a Greener Britain: Transforming the existing housing stock. This made the point that if we are going to achieve the targets that we are committed to in legislation and by international treaty – to reduce carbon emissions in the UK by 80 percent - very significant work needs to be done.
Massive spending on existing properties
So whatever you do with new homes, it’s the existing stock that will really make the difference and the incentive for FMB members is that we need to encourage spend on retrofit of the existing stock by at least £3billion per year for the next 20 years and probably more.
The current Government is building on the previous government’s strategy and we are anticipating that the detail of this strategy will be published in the Energy Bill which will be presented to Parliament in November. The Government has been talking for some time about the concept of every household in the country having an entitlement of £6,500 to get work done on their property.
Although I suspect this is a bit optimistic, the Government has talked about a plan to get work rolled out on 14 million properties by 2012. The details of this plan should be issued in two to three months’ time.
FMB action
So what has the FMB been doing? As well as the research we commissioned Oxford University to do, we also commissioned research by Professor Anne Power at the London School of Economics** which looked at the possible funding options and we have had on-going dialogue with Ministers, officials and politicians. We are constantly reminding Ministers that this work will be done by SMEs who are ideally placed in the local market to get work done.
Our concerns are, how do we make sure that this is not handed over as a massive contract to major suppliers or just become the ‘Cowboy’s Charter’?
FMB Competent Persons Scheme
One of the areas we are working very hard on at the moment is the development of a ‘Competent Persons Scheme’. We must get the message across to consumers that if you have this work done and paid for with the £6,500 entitlement, it should be dependent upon employing someone who does fall into the ‘Competent Person’s Scheme’.
Encouraging discussions
Initial discussions we have had with the Department of Communities and Local Government suggests that they look upon this idea very favourably. We meet again with the Department in October for more detailed discussions when the content of the legislation will become clearer.
To sum up, it is the reality that in many parts of the UK our industry may be facing a double dip recession or at the very least flat lining. We have identified that there is this massive retrofit market that needs to be addressed and we are trying to make sure that FMB members have the knowledge and the skills, and are there on the starting blocks for when the Government says: “Things need to happen.”
So my message is: Let’s work together to make this happen. The FMB is putting together those tools for you to use because this is going to be the growth market of the next few years.
Visit: www.fmb.org.uk/news/campaigns/building-a-greener-britain
Visit: www.fmb.org.uk/news/campaigns/building-a-greener-britain/research
