Introduction
The Bath Local Plan Options consultations sets out a framework for development in Bath & North East Somerset for the next 20 years. We would like to encourage you to contribute to this consultation as it is important for setting high sustainability standards and supporting the council will make it more likely they will be implemented. This document covers the policy associated with buildings and renewable energy.
Summary
Buildings offer the biggest opportunity under the Local Plan to reduce carbon emissions as it’s a policy area which the local council potentially has most influence over. Buildings account for 17% of our carbon emissions and with 14,500 buildings due to be constructed under the Local Plan in the next 20 years it is important that these are built with the least embodied construction carbon emissions and have minimal ‘net zero’ operational carbon emissions. We also need to reduce the operating carbon emissions of the 80,000 existing homes in B&NES.
In summary the local plan provides options to:
- Increase the energy efficiency of new homes. B&NES already has among the best low carbon building standards in the UK, a trailblazer often referenced by other Local Authorities. The new local plan offers the opportunity to improve this further to near Passivhaus standards
- Reduce the carbon emissions during construction of the new 14,500 homes to be built which if built from concrete would account for more than 100 years of their operational carbon emissions
However there are notable omissions from the plan:
- No plans to decarbonise our existing heating systems which at the current run rate will take 900 years to decarbonise, and no plans to support the insulation of existing properties
- No plans to impose higher standards on converting existing non-residential properties into residential properties (‘Change of Use’)
- No plans to force on campus building of student accommodation, despite for example 2,200 car parking spaces at the University of Bath, which could be replaced by 25,000 student flats, reducing car congestion and transport emissions in Bath, freeing up greenfield land currently planned for housing
- The council’s refurbishment of their existing property portfolio in central Bath is currently to the lowest standards of thermal efficiency; we feel that these should be exemplars for other commercial developers
If you have 5 minutes and would like to make a difference, support the council in reducing carbon emissions in buildings in B&NES over the next 20 years, complete the two critical suggested consultation question responses in the ‘Short Read’ below.
Or if you have 20 minutes there is more background information and a further 7 further consultation questions in the ‘Long Read’ section, then you should read the remainder of this document, and then further respond to the consultation.
Short Read: Spend 5 minutes supporting B&NES Council creating the highest standards for new buildings over the next 20 years
If you only have 5 minutes this is a list of the questions you can answer in the consultation which will make the biggest difference to supporting B&NES in reducing our carbon emissions.
For each consultation question click on the links provided below, scroll down, and complete the consultation selection ‘Option’ and add some comments. Ideally using different wording from us but with the same meaning as we have provided. A diversity of wording will help support the council in claiming a broad community support for these policies.
| Policy | C/RD: Sustainable construction for new residential development |
| Consultation link | Policy C/RD: Sustainable construction for new residential development | Bath and North East Somerset Council (bathnes.gov.uk) |
| Option selection | Option B [the highest standards] |
| Suggested accompanying text (rewrite to provide a diverse response) | I support the implementation of the highest standards of new building development in B&NES to near Passivhaus standards in the future to minimise the carbon emissions of new build homes so they are Net Zero and don’t require further retrofitting before 2050. |
| Policy | Missing Policy |
| Consultation link | Infrastructure provision, challenges and opportunities | Bath and North East Somerset Council (bathnes.gov.uk) |
| Option selection | NA |
| Suggested accompanying text (rewrite to provide a diverse response) | I feel the council have missed significant areas of building policy which should be included in this local plan:There is no decarbonisation policy for heating and hot water in existing homes which at the current rate will take 900 years to decarbonise, well past the councils 2030 Carbon Neutral target in 6 years time. The council needs to do more to encourage and support the installation of heat pumps and to improve the thermal efficiency of existing buildingsForcing student accommodation to be built on campus, replacing car parking and therefore encouraging the University to make better use of more sustainable forms of transport, reducing demand for building land elsewhere in the city, , and commuting by car from central Bath to CampusThere is no policy for force ‘Change of Use’ developments to refurbish or build to high standards of sustainability, given there is now potential precedence within the Future Homes Standard we feel the council needs a stringent policy under the Local PlanThe council’s refurbishment of their existing property portfolio in central Bath is currently to the lowest standards of thermal efficiency; we feel that these should be exemplars for other commercial developers |
The Long Read: 20 minutes: A more detailed analysis of the council’s proposals for Buildings.
Only read this if you have time, it’s more important that you respond to the consultation as suggested by the ‘Short Read’ section above. If you don’t have time to read our background information below, skip to the end and submit your answers to the consultation as we have outlined in the tables under ‘Suggested Consultation Responses’.
Standards for new homes in B&NES
Current standard for domestic new build homes: SCR6
In January 2023 under the current Local Plan Partial Update B&NES introduced policy SCR6 which specified that new homes must:
- Be built with heat losses less than 30 kWh/m2/year; this compares with about 100 kWh/m2/year for most homes in the UK
- Be built with an energy use of less than 40 kWh/m2/year; compared with about 170 kWh/m2/year for most homes in the UK
So, about 3 to 4 times lower energy use and carbon emissions than other homes. The implementation of these 2 simple requirements is that new homes need to be built to a high standard of insulation, with heat pumps and solar PV panels that do not use fossil fuels in their operation.
Government challenge to setting local standards
This standard is about the highest of any council in England, and is being used as a precedent by other councils throughout England to set higher standards in their upcoming Local Plans.
Unfortunately the current government has been fighting a rearguard action to try to stop Local Authorities from setting ‘Net Zero’ building standards rather than the minimum building standards. This culminated in December with Baroness Penn issuing a Written Ministerial Statement attempting to ban councils from setting higher standards and stopping them from setting kWh/m2/year standards in favour of the unfit for purpose ‘notional building’ metric. Contrary to some of these government attempts to stop UK housing becoming Net Zero, a recent judicial review has deemed West Oxfordshire’s Net Zero Plans legal in the face of Planning Inspectorate, government and developer opposition. Recent legal advice to Essex Council and a legal challenge might clarify the legal uncertainty caused by the WMS sometime in the next year, but the government could still bring forth primary or secondary legislation to outlaw Net Zero housing.
If you are being cynical, Government Policy for building is largely being driven by the big six builder’s influence. They dominate 80% of domestic building in the UK, a far greater concentration than any other developed nation. Developers are also big political donors, being responsible for 25% of donations to the Conservative party, £10 million per year over the last few years; and to previous Labour and Coalition governments. Developers incorrectly claim that building to higher standards will impact their profits, and fewer homes will come forward to be built. In B&NES this is completely untrue, as the only impact is on Land Prices, depressing them from perhaps £10 million/hectare to £9.6 million/hectare, which is not enough of a reduction to discourage owners of agricultural land or brownfield land currently valued at £20,000/hectare and £800,000/hectare respectively (500 times, and 12 times uplift) not to put their land forward for development.
The upshot of the Written Ministerial Statement has provided some ambiguity in whether Local Authorities can set higher standards, and has created legal uncertainty. It is not clear whether B&NES will be able to go for a higher standard and hence why the council is hedging its bets and offering a choice of options in the consultation the last of which Option 3, a lower standard, might be their only option if the Written Ministerial Statement is deemed legal and usurps Parliament’s role in passing Primary and Secondary legislation. We have suggested selecting Option 2 the higher standard (see 1st table at the end of this document), leaving iot to the council to decide later in the year once some of the legal uncertainty has been resolved whether Option 2 will be legal and can be proposed for the Local Plan.
Future Homes Standard 2025
The government is currently consulting on the Future Homes Standard (FHS) which is due to replace the current 2021 Part L Building Regulations. Although the FHS is an improvement on current building regulations, it is not a zero carbon standard and is lower than B&NES’s proposal for the new Local Plan.
The FHS is also subject to potentially being cancelled at the last minute like the Zero Carbon Homes standard was in 2016, and hence why we feel B&NES should include their proposed higher standard replacement for policy SCR6 in this Local Plan as there is a significant risk FHS which is a weaker standard anyway won’t be enacted.
The Future Homes Standard is also proposing to impose higher standards on ‘Change of Use’ type of applications; barns to homes, offices to student accommodation, hotels, flats etc. There have been a number of significant applications in B&NES in the last few years which come under the ‘Change of Use’ category which currently frustratingly falls outside B&NES higher standards and only required minimum standards if that. Equally problematically B&NES owned property going through change of use by its property company Aequus Developments – typically space above shops becoming residential accommodation, is being converted, often with no additional insulation. We feel that B&NES should be setting an example and providing exemplar conversions, rather than often doing nothing. We have suggested some wording below which you can use to respond to the ‘missing policy’ section of the consultation which will hopefully persuade the council to support higher standards for ‘Change of Use’ and for their own property.
B&NES New Standard: a replacement for policy SCR6
The new standard proposes:
- Be built with heat losses less than 15 kWh/m2/year; compared with SCR6’s current 30 kWh/year
- Be built with an energy use of less than 35 kWh/m2/year; compared SCR6’s current 40kWh/year
Both of which are as close to a net zero standard that you can probably get. The 15 kWh/m2/year meets the Passivhaus annual heat loss standard. The 35 kWh/m2/year energy use standard is constrained by the amount of available roof space for solar PV on an average new build home available to offset the home’s electricity use for appliances and heat pumps.
We therefore believe that this new standard should be supported. (Option B below in 1st table below)
National Building Metric versus an energy use per m2 of floor area standard
The current building standards define a building efficiency relative to an identical (notional) building of the same shape and dimensions which uses minimum standard materials in its insulation. This allows developers some flexibility for example to building with lower standards of wall insulation but higher standards of glazing to compensate.
However, this ‘notional’ building standard is problematic in that it allows developers to design buildings with an inefficient ‘form factor’ or shape – larger surface area for a given floor area. Most other countries use a kWh per m2 of floor area metric which deals with this issue and was originally proposed for the new Future Homes Standard (FHS) as the ‘notional building metric’ was felt as not ‘fit for purpose’. Unfortunately the government without explanation has reverted back to proposing the notional building standard; for the FHS and was a requirement for all future standards in the Written Ministerial Statement. Given there is no explanation for this rollback and the government refuse to comment, we can only interpret it as being caused by pressure from the big 6 developers wanting to continue to build homes to their existing standard designs which have potentially poor form factors.
To provide a concrete example, a bungalow can have 2 times the external surface area of a mid-terrace property, the implication being that using the notional building standard the developer can design a bungalow with twice the heat loss and energy use of a mid-terrace, whereas using a kWh per m2 metric, our preferred measure, and as is being used in the existing SCR6 policy would require the developer to compensate for the poor design by having to install insulation twice as thick so the bungalow wouldn’t be disadvantaged.
The government through the Written Ministerial Statement (WMS) and the Future Homes Standard is trying to outlaw the use of the more sensible kWh per m2 of floor area standard, and it might be if the upcoming legal challenge to the WMS fails and B&NES is forced to comply with the notional buildings standard. As a contingency B&NES have provided an ‘option 3’ answer to the SCR6 question which supports the continuing use of the ‘notional building standard’ which we would object to. If this is forced on the council we would like to see a ‘notional building standard’ which sets different standards for different types of buildings e.g. flats, mid-terrace, end-terrace/semi, detached, This would largely avoid the ‘notional building standard’ producing inefficient form factored homes and provide a standard close to our preferred kWh per m2 metric.
On campus student accommodation
The Universities continue to plan to expand through to 2040 and require more student accommodation. In the recent past this has been in the centre of town displacing opportunities for working residents of Bath to live in properties in the centre of town and increasing transport to and from the Universities. As a result new residential housing is being pushed to the outskirts of Bath, into farmland and areas of biodiversity.
Bath has made some moves under the most previous Local Plan to reduce this very profitable development of student accommodation in the town centre but doesn’t seem to be directly addressing the issue of why student housing is not provided on campus. The excuse appears to be a lack of space.
However, we would argue there is lots of underutilised space which currently provides excess parking for staff and students which if used for accommodation would forcibly restrict short commutes by car across central Bath and reduce air pollution and congestion at the same time, and reduce pressure to build homes on green spaces on the periphery of Bath.
The University of Bath for example has 2,200 parking spaces, covering 40 hectares (100 acres) on it’s Claverton campus, which if replaced with 4 storey student accommodation would support 25,000 students, removing the need for any student accommodation in town and freeing up demand for build 1,600 homes on greenfield sites for the remaining residents of Bath.
Lack of a plan to decarbonise existing homes heating systems
Currently the majority of the 80,000 homes in B&NES are heated by gas, with only about 100 heat pumps being installed per year in existing homes, but more than 5,000 gas boilers. At the current rate it will take 900 years for heating to decarbonise heating which is clearly incompatible with the council’s stated aim of making B&NES carbon neutral in 6 years time! A government grant of £7,500 is currently available under the Boiler Upgrade Scheme to install an air source heat pump.
B&NES appear to have no clear strategy to reduce the use of fossil fuels in heating, currently presiding over the installation of 5 times more gas boilers than heat pumps. Heat pumps instantly reduce a home’s heating and hot water carbon emissions by 75% and further as the national grid decarbonises in future. We believe that hydrogen heating via the gas network is unfeasible; all government trials to date have failed, the government has largely given up, and hydrogen boilers have 6 times more operational carbon emissions than heat pumps.
There are currently no active heat pump installers in B&NES with the few active installers coming from out of the area.
Transition Bath is so exasperated by the situation we have launched a Heat Pump Advisory Service but feel that although WECA is providing some support B&NES Council really needs to do a lot more. The council has some focus on solar panels but heat pumps provide 4 times the greater reduction in carbon emissions of solar PV panels on a home.
We would therefore like to see B&NES develop policies and targets above and beyond that of the central government under the Local Plan to support the installation of heat pumps and the market for installing heat pumps in B&NES.
There are few policy levers available to the council but we would like to see policies including:
- Training of heat pump installers, retraining gas boiler installers
- Requiring all planning applications involving extensions, and boiler installations (typically for listed buildings) to evaluate why they can’t install a heat pump or at least make any new radiators ‘heat pump ready’
- To reduce the significant costs of planning applications for heat pumps which doin;t fit under ‘Permitted Development’
- We also wonder whether the council has discretion under ‘Section 13A of the Local Government Finance Act 1992’ to provide a council tax discount for a limited number of years to newly installed heat pumps? This might encourage the local market and encourage gas boiler engineers to convert to become heat pump installers?
Improving the thermal efficiency of existing homes and solar PV
There are also some limited incentives from the government to insulate homes based on council tax band, EPC energy rating and income criteria which need promoting. Installing cavity wall insulation and loft insulation etc. can generally reduce carbon emissions by up to 25%, can make installing a heat pump easier but have a significantly smaller impact than installing a heat pump, and don’t ultimately decarbonise homes if gas boilers continue to be used.
Widespread implementation of these measures and deeper measures e.g. floor and wall insulation of historic homes is currently limited by government support but this may change if there is a change of government and if Labour take power, and only then funding is available. Given this is likely to be covered by the period of the Local Plan Update we feel the council needs to develop a plan to capitalise on this. The more important preparation would be to encourage the market for installers and develop their skill sets so that they are ready if grants become available.
Installing solar PV has a declining carbon benefit as the national grid decarbonises, and 4 times less carbon reduction than installing a heat pump, and so although we encourage the installation of solar PV on existing homes it is less of a priority than heat pumps or insulation. We feel the council should continue to promote bulk-buy solar PV schemes like Solar Together which has recently ceased operation in B&NES.
Suggested Consultation Responses
The tables below allow you to respond to a further 7 consultation questions. As above, click the ‘Consultation Link’ associated with each table, scroll down, select the suggested Option, and if you have time add some accompanying text to your response.
| Policy | C/RD: Sustainable construction for new residential development |
| Consultation link | Policy C/RD: Sustainable construction for new residential development | Bath and North East Somerset Council (bathnes.gov.uk) |
| Option selection | Option B [the highest standards] |
| Suggested accompanying text (rewrite to provide a diverse response) | I support the implementation of the highest standards of new building development in B&NES to near Passivhaus standards in the future to minimise the carbon emissions of new build homes so they are Net Zero and don’t require further retrofitting before 2050. |
| Policy | Missing Policy |
| Consultation link | Infrastructure provision, challenges and opportunities | Bath and North East Somerset Council (bathnes.gov.uk) |
| Option selection | NA |
| Suggested accompanying text (rewrite to provide a diverse response) | I feel the council have missed significant areas of building policy which should be included in this local plan:There is no decarbonisation policy for heating and hot water in existing homes which at the current rate will take 900 years to decarbonise, well past the councils 2030 Carbon Neutral target in 6 years time. The council needs to do more to encourage and support the installation of heat pumps and to improve the thermal efficiency of existing buildingsForcing student accommodation to be built on campus, replacing car parking and therefore encouraging the University to make better use of more sustainable forms of transport, reducing demand for building land elsewhere in the city, and commuting by car from central Bath to CampusThere is no policy for force ‘Change of Use’ developments to refurbish or build to high standards of sustainability, given there is now potential precedence within the Future Homes Standard we feel the council needs a stringent policy under the Local PlanThe council’s refurbishment of their existing property portfolio in central Bath is currently to the lowest standards of thermal efficiency; we feel that these should be exemplars for other commercial developers |
| Policy | C/NRB Sustainable construction for non-residential buildings |
| Consultation link | Policy C/NRB: Sustainable construction for non-residential buildings | Bath and North East Somerset Council (bathnes.gov.uk) |
| Option selection | Option B [the highest standard] |
| Suggested accompanying text (rewrite to provide a diverse response) | I support the highest standards of energy efficiency in non-residential buildings in B&NES but realise that given the diversity of these types of buildings it might not be possible for all types of non-residential buildings. |
| Policy | C/EC: Embodied carbon |
| Consultation link | Policy C/EC: Embodied carbon | Bath and North East Somerset Council (bathnes.gov.uk) |
| Option selection | None of the above |
| Suggested accompanying text (rewrite to provide a diverse response) | The embodied carbon emitted when constructing a new building may create more carbon emissions than 100 years of a building’s operational carbon emissions. Given we have a Climate Emergency any short term significant increases in carbon emissions should be avoided at all possible costs. I believe that a developer should first consider refurbishment (Option C) and as a last resort replace the building with the lowest possible construction carbon emissions (Option B). We would have liked the opportunity to select both Options B and C. |
| Policy | Policy C/RET: Renewable energy target |
| Consultation link | Policy C/RET: Renewable energy target | Bath and North East Somerset Council (bathnes.gov.uk) |
| Option selection | Strongly agree |
| Suggested accompanying text (rewrite to provide a diverse response) | I believe we should install as much renewable energy locally as possible within national constraints and guidelines. |
| Policy | C/REA: Renewable energy approach |
| Consultation link | Policy C/REA: Renewable energy approach | Bath and North East Somerset Council (bathnes.gov.uk) |
| Option selection | TBD |
| Suggested accompanying text (rewrite to provide a diverse response) | Awaiting feedback from BWCE |
| Policy | Policy HD/DC: Design codes |
| Consultation link | Policy HD/DC: Design codes | Bath and North East Somerset Council (bathnes.gov.uk) |
| Option selection | Option A |
| Suggested accompanying text (rewrite to provide a diverse response) | I support the development of a local design code to ensure new developments are compatible with the existing local character and built heritage of buildings in Bath and avoid developers building generic brick houses in the same style as elsewhere in the UK. |
| Policy | J/EM: Employment and skills |
| Consultation link | Policy J/EM: Employment and skills | Bath and North East Somerset Council (bathnes.gov.uk) |
| Option selection | Option A |
| Suggested accompanying text (rewrite to provide a diverse response) | I support the requirement for the use and training of a local workforce for large building developments, particularly those skills which help build a workforce capable of helping make homes more thermally efficient with decarbonised heating systems. |
| Policy | C/RD: Affordable Housing |
| Consultation link | Policy H/AH: Affordable housing (large sites) | Bath and North East Somerset Council (bathnes.gov.uk) |
| Option selection | Strongly support |
| Suggested accompanying text (rewrite to provide a diverse response) | I support the council’s existing policy to provide as much affordable housing on major developments as viable. |