Calderdale Housing Campaign

Can we make new houses
more sustainable?

Here is what the Saturday Telegraph 16th July 2005 has found

A waste of energy

Last week's G8 summit underlined the dangers of global warming. But efforts to solve Britain's housing crisis are making it worse. How and why? Sarah Lonsdale reports

Like most towns in the South-East, Whitstable in Kent has dozens of new houses currently rising on its outskirts - characterless brick boxes in a nondescript, period pastiche. These new homes are just a tiny fraction of the 150,000 being built each year, themselves a fraction of the two million that the Government says need to be built by 2016 to tackle the impending housing crisis.

This spring, Whitstable received nearly two inches of unseasonal snow overnight. By mid-afternoon the following day, the town's older houses, built in the 1920s and 1930s, still had thick coverings of snow on their roofs; the new ones, however, were glistening and grey again, the snow having been melted by the heat escaping from within.

In theory, these new houses should be far more efficient than the inter-war ones, built before planning and building regulations, particularly given all we know now about climate change, carbon dioxide emissions and the benefits of insulation.

But in practice, a combination of lax inspection systems and a powerful building industry keen to protect its enormous profits has meant that new homes built in Britain, with fast construction methods and mass-produced, environmentally unsound materials, are falling way behind the rest of Europe in standards of energy efficiency.

Read full article here  

Guardian Monday 18th 2005

Energy-saving targets scrapped: Minister drops efficiency plan for older homes and postpones tougher regulations for new houses

Pledges made by Tony Blair to force housebuilders to improve the energy efficiency of homes to cut Britain's greenhouse gas emissions are to be ditched, the Guardian has learned.

Read full article here

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Calderdale Council and affordable housing

Can we make new houses more sustainable?

How many new dwellings are the Council required to provide?

STOP PRESS

15th July: Council refuses huge Crow Nest, Hebden Bridge planning application

New Council housing strategy 2005-10 and affordability housing policy report