Criticising the government’s response to a major report on heat resilience, Oki insisted the response ‘demonstrates they lack a clear plan to tackle the threat of rising temperatures’ and that the nation’s buildings ‘were not ready for extreme heat’.
The expert report, Heat Resilience and Sustainable Cooling, was prepared by the House of Commons’ cross-party Environmental Audit Committee and published earlier this year.
It warned of a ‘blind spot’ in government policy regarding the ‘silent killer’ that is overheating, despite experts predicting ‘more frequent and severe’ heatwaves in the UK as temperatures continue to rise.
Among a list of proposed policy changes, it recommended ‘a comprehensive national retrofit programme to adapt the UK’s housing stock for both net zero and thermal comfort’, and the expansion of urban green space ‘particularly in disadvantaged areas’.
The report also urged the government to clarify whether it intends to expand Part O of the Building Regulations – which deals with overheating – to include refurbishments, and to outline ‘when, and by what mechanism, this is to be achieved.’ It also directed a number of recommendations at the Met Office, such as the uptake of ‘heat-health alerts’.
In its response, published last week (30 April), the government addressed each of the report’s recommendations.
While declining to commit to a ‘comprehensive national retrofit programme’, the government said its Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) was researching ‘policy levers to adapt the UK’s building stock for net zero and thermal comfort,’ which would ‘help us identify how to prioritise action’.
It insisted there had been ‘good progress [on] improving the energy efficiency of households,’ with 48 per cent of households now hitting the government’s 2035 target EPC level of C, and a £6 billion DESNZ net zero support package announced in December 2023, ‘including £500 million allocated to a new local authority retrofit scheme’.
But Oki claimed the government had failed to adequately respond to many of the recommendations. ‘If we are to set the country on a sensible path to deliver more resilient buildings and communities, we must urgently bring forward a National Retrofit Strategy to futureproof millions of homes,’ he said.
‘Disappointingly, even simple and cost-effective solutions put forward by MPs, like reversing the decline of urban green space, have been ignored.’
Although the government described the committee report’s recommendation to expand urban green space as ‘welcome’, it added: ‘The primary responsibility for urban planning in individual areas sits with local authorities.’
And it said it had ‘not chosen to mandate’ its Green Infrastructure Framework as ‘it is important that we allow local authorities the space to develop their own policies’.
Regarding the query about expanding Part O of the Building Regulations, the government said it was currently ‘running a call for evidence on Part O’ as part of its Future Homes and Buildings Standards consultation, to ‘better understand any omissions or issues’ with the policy in order to ‘inform and prioritise reviews and updates’ to the legislation.
It said a new weather-health alert (WHA) early warning system had already been implemented as an ‘integral’ part of the UK Health Security Agency’s (UKHSA) Adverse Weather and Health Plan (AWHP), published in April 2023.
A government spokesperson said: ‘We have set out a robust five-year plan to respond to the impacts of a changing climate and strengthen our national resilience – with action to improve infrastructure, promote a greener economy and safeguard food production.
‘We are the first major economy to halve our emissions and have already taken steps to manage the risks of climate change, including committing to minimise overheating in the Heat and Building Strategy and bringing in a new warning systems to alert the public to heatwaves.
‘In addition, homes built to the new Future Homes Standard will be “zero-carbon ready”, meaning no further work will be needed as the electricity grid decarbonises.’
Insisting that it was ‘not too late’ to heed the warnings over heat resilience, the RIBA president urged ‘whoever forms the next government’ to ‘step up, work with the sector and embed resilience in our building stock’.
Read the AJ’s three-part mini-series Handling the Heat, which explores how we can mitigate overheating in building design, how the profession can effect citywide and nationwide changes, and how UK planning policy can adapt to meet the shifting needs of a hotter climate.