Sustainability in construction: how and why should retrofit flourish?

Ben Stansfield: Hi, my name is Ben Stansfield. I am a sustainability lawyer at Gowling WLG focusing on climate, carbon and nature issues.

Emma Knight: Hello, I'm Emma Knight a professional support lawyer in the construction team here at Gowling. And welcome to our series on sustainable construction.

Ben: So today we are speaking to Will Hurst who is the managing editor of The Architects' Journal. Will is an award winning journalist who has written extensively about the built environment's contribution to the climate crisis and has recently led two campaigns regarding the importance of retrofitting buildings. Will, thank you for joining us.

Ben: I wonder if we can start by you sort of setting the scene you know the proportion of UK carbon emissions and waste that comes from demolition, excavation and construction is huge but how big is the problem?

Will Hurst: Well it equates to 10 or 11% of all UK carbon emissions so it is fairly sizeable and that number covers construction primarily but also maintenance of buildings as well and is what we call embodied carbon. The other part of the built environment's contribution to the climate crisis in terms of carbon emissions is operational carbon. So that is what we think about when we think about day to day energy use of buildings. Obviously people well know that we have a very leaky housing stock that needs retrofitting and that is because it is not particularly well built, it is old compared to the rest of Europe and so we lose a lot of energy that way and a lot of carbon but I think what is less well known is that upfront embodied carbon that goes into construction. So we are talking about the fossil fuels that go into making cement and steel and other building materials.

Now the other aspect of this which it is worth talking about is the waste aspect because I think there is a very clear link that myself and others have been trying to draw attention to between how wasteful the construction industry is in terms of demolition and it's carbon footprint. So of all UK waste, which is something like 222 million tonnes a year, about two thirds of that or 62% is construction waste so it is absolutely massive and because we have this wasteful disposable attitude of paring things down and building in their place with new buildings that explains the two things, the waste and the carbon.

Ben: So Will picking up on that theme of waste, can you bring that alive to us a bit more, what does that mean?

Will: Well, in terms of the carbon impact of it, as I said earlier, it is sort of around 10% of all UK carbon emissions is down to construction and the Environmental Audit Committee who did a report on zero carbon construction in the last Parliament found that that chunk of our overall emissions is greater than shipping and aviation combined, which is quite eye‑opening and quite worrying really, and indeed the stat that really struck me when I was first looking at this problem of embodied carbon was a report by the RICS, that is the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, which found that in a typical housing block, by the time of practical completion, so before the housing has even been occupied, more than half of the lifetime carbon emissions of that block are already in the atmosphere. So building it is just an enormous, an enormous chunk of the carbon and that I think really underlines why we must reuse as a priority rather than build new.

Ben: Perfect.

Emma: Thanks Will. Can you explain for us what retrofit means, what the term retrofit means and, as a second sort of follow up to that question, what the current barriers to the increased use of retrofit are as opposed to demolition and rebuilding?

Will: Sure, well retrofit I think is a bit of an ugly word I have to admit even though I use it a lot and lots of people in the industry use it. I do not think it is that well understood widely but I think what we mean really is refurbishment of buildings, often upgrading you know and part of that can be aesthetic, part of it can be about energy efficiency and so on and so forth but, yeah, when we are talking about retrofit we are talking about taking an existing building and improving it really and that has to go beyond the sort of simple fit‑outs that you see in office change of tenants and that sort of thing. I think another term that we use quite a lot in the industry is adaptive reuse so that can be a form of retrofit where you are changing the use so we could be talking about for example a commercial building that you know is at the end of it's life and no longer occupied perhaps being turned into other uses, could be community uses or housing or lots of other things like that. So yeah there are various terms but retrofit I think is certainly still very well used in the industry.

Emma: And does the term extend to reusing materials as well as sort of structural elements such as the core or retaining the podium or piling of existing buildings?

Will: I would not use the term for that but I think they are connected and indeed we have an awards programme called the Retrofit & Reuse Awards at The Architects' Journal. So that is trying to bring together the fact that you know the ideal is that we should be doing, for climate reasons, is reusing buildings and retrofitting them. But also connected to that is the idea that it is also good to reclaim and reuse individual building materials and products. So eventually we may see a scenario where we move away from demolition into something called deconstruction, where you are taking a building down in a much more careful manner than you would through demolition and reusing the parts of that building in other buildings. That is starting to emerge perhaps in the continent, you know in the Netherlands and Belgium, more than it is here but I think it is an aspiration of the new government to try and move towards that zero waste economy and start following those kind of techniques.

But sorry you also asked me about the barriers to retrofit and those are many. Obviously one that is quite well known is VAT because there is this strange quirk of VAT or a discrepancy between new build housing which is zero rated and refurbishing housing which is the full 20% which I think a lot of people see as a very unfair kind of barrier to more sustainable construction. I think other things that are going on are to do with things like densification of the city. Obviously we know we have got a housing crisis, you know we want to develop our cities and make them better, make them denser because actually that is quite a sustainable form of living. So a lot of times if you want to densify a site and you have a low rise building, those are typically knocked down and you build something bigger in their place. Now obviously that also ties into not just the aspirations of more sustainable cities but also the profit motive. Because if you are a property developer buying a site you may see a low rise building and think actually we could put a building on that site that is five times as big and that is where my profit is going to come from. So a lot of the time, in a short‑term sense, it may be that the disposable attitude of knock it down and start again is profitable and that I think is why we very much need government intervention to kind of rebalance things in this area.

Ben: Perfect. So Will you mentioned the new government and one of the things the new government has talked about is reforming the planning system. So presumably that is going to mean looking at the NPPF, the National Planning Policy Framework, and looking to see if there could be changes to policy to promote retrofit and I think you might have been working with the last government on that. Does planning hinder us in retrofit?

Will: I think, I am not sure if it hinders us exactly but I think it is far too vague if the government truly wants to you know transition from our wasteful carbon intensive development industry into something much more progressive and low carbon. So for example it does, the NPPF does talk about sustainable development as being it's ultimate goal and it does talk about things like the need for radical reductions in carbon emissions. It also talks about reusing existing buildings as a positive thing but I think what we have found is that it is far too vague, the word they use is "encourages" so in the relevant paragraph of the NPPF there is this "encouragement" of reuse of existing buildings but I think we see time and time again that that is not enough to actually move the dial and it needs to be much more explicit about the link between this area of the circular economy and carbon emissions and why you know, according to our own net zero promises which are actually legally binding promises, that we have to move away from that encouragement towards a kind of strong presumption. So a strong presumption for reuse and retrofit of buildings and a strong presumption against you know knocking down a building that is capable of reuse. Obviously not every building is capable of reuse because sometimes you have buildings that are incredibly dilapidated or you cannot build on top of them because they are just structurally not sound enough but I think we could be much much more clear in the NPPF that both in drawing up plans and in determining planning applications local planning authorities could be pushing this.

Ben: Yeah, we have seen that haven't we with the Oxford Street M&S where there is the debacle that you know sort of going from Westminster to Planning Inspectorate to Gove to the High Court and trying to work out whether this building could be demolished or not and we are now starting to see some local authorities, particularly in London, talk about this presumption against demolition and say look demonstrate to me from a whole life carbon assessment that demolishing it is the only way forward. So do you think we might see the NPPF pick that up or?

Will: I hope so because I think you are right that there are several progressive local authorities, including Westminster which as you say are pursuing a retrofit first kind of policy, maybe in draft form but that is what they want to be enacted, and I think the department, MHCLG, is very aware of this area. The last government did actually commit to acting on embodied carbon although they did not really set out how they were going to do that and unfortunately they never actually did anything but they did say that they would do something and I think this new government which of course has been elected partly on the promise of getting real about the climate emergency and moving towards a zero waste economy. I think there is a real opportunity here for the new government to actually do what it's predecessor failed to do and I am hopeful that there is a lot of clever people in MHCLG who will be telling ministers that.

Ben: Yeah, and it is not anti‑development is it? It is just making developers and their professional teams work a bit harder to demonstrate that demolition is the right thing.

Will: Absolutely, yeah, and it should not need to be said that is absolutely not anti‑development you know I think it is a different form of development as the kind of ideal but I do not think anybody in this space, including me, is saying you cannot do new build. We do need to you know face our challenges as a country in a range of different ways. New build obviously has a place we have got a housing crisis to deal with so new build has to happen but I think it is about trying to shift the balance so that reuse and retrofit, which is much more sustainable, becomes a big part of the pie if you like.

Ben: Yeah.

Emma: So, am I right Will in thinking that there is an open survey ongoing at the moment which has been launched by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government which seeks views on whether there should be a change to the NPPF and I understand you have co‑ordinated a response to that on behalf of the campaign that you are involved in. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Will: Yeah. Actually there is two different things going on. So there was an earlier consultation about the NPPF which set out what the government was intending to do with the NPPF and sought views on that. So I have co‑ordinated a response to that but that has now closed. Separate to that MHCLG is also looking more broadly at the question of embodied carbon and how to reduce that and what role demolition and reuse of buildings has. So that consultation I think runs until 30 October and I and lots of others have been encouraging people in the industry to take part because I think the more people take part the better but it is about telling government you know what the problem is and what government rules and regulation in the planning system might do about it.

Ben: And just following on Will from bringing up the M&S case on Oxford Street, obviously the High Court has made its decision and now it's going back to the new government to decide. What do you think flows from that, what is the impact of that High Court decision do you think?

Will: Well I think it showed really that Michael Gove, then Communities Secretary, was over‑reaching in arguing that, because of the need for radical carbon reductions, the NPPF gave him the power to point to this paragraph I mentioned earlier about reusing existing buildings. So what the High Court judge said really was that that wording was not as strong as Michael Gove said it was. So I think this puts the ball back in the court of the Communities Secretary, obviously now Angela Rayner, but I think if you agree with Michael Gove that this is an area of action in terms of net zero and carbon reductions then it is absolutely logical, it is inescapable in fact, that the NPPF has to be made more explicit on this. As I said earlier, it is too vague on why reusing existing buildings is so important from a carbon standpoint. So I think there is again an opportunity here for the NPPF to be updated on that basis. Now the High Court judge did not strike down every part of Michael Gove's reasoning and it actually left the heritage arguments intact so there is still the opportunity I believe for the Secretary of State to rule against M&S in this case which I think would be the right thing to do on heritage grounds. But the next thing they need to do very quickly is update the NPPF so that it is not just about heritage. Keeping a building is not just about the listing system or conservation areas or whatever else might come into play. It is also about the environmental side.

Emma: OK, thank Will. You mentioned that the new government's stated aim is to build 1.5 million new homes over the next five years. Instead of building 1.5 million new homes should there be a focus on more action to retrofit homes in your view?

Will: Yeah, absolutely and I think you know most commentators think that it is going to be an uphill battle to actually build 1.5 million new homes or whatever you call these homes in the parliament. So I think one smart way of doing it would be to provide a lot of those homes through adaptation of existing buildings and in fact the chair of Historic England, Lord Mendoza, recently wrote a piece, I think it was in The Times newspaper, which said that 670,000 homes could be provided by repurposing existing buildings. So that is a very big chunk, that is you know 40 something % of their target and you would be doing that in a much more low carbon way. So I think the message for the government is you know, we only have a certain amount in every industry to play with when it comes to carbon if we are going to hit our targets and construction and development is off track at the moment. So let us bring it back on track and you know avoid making one crisis worse i.e. don't make the climate crisis worse when trying to tackle the housing crisis, you know think of them together and that would be a sort of smart joined up way of doing things.

Ben: Do you think that would be a cheaper way to do it. You know, could retrofit be cheaper than building new.

Will: It could be. I think you know the new towns is an interesting sort of counterpoint to all of this. Obviously that is part of government policy and I think you know, done right, new towns can be very very good. But I think it is challenging because you are obviously starting with a sort of blank slate, you don't have the infrastructure, you don't have the transport links. It is quite ambitious to try and do that and I think that is why previous governments, including the Brown government, floundered when it came to delivering. They called them "eco‑towns" but same thing really. A lot of governments have really really struggled to do these. So I am not entirely sure whether it is cheaper but I think it is definitely comparable and of course has the great advantage of densifying our cities, which we know is the right thing to do, usually existing buildings are already plugged into infrastructure so again that makes more sense than trying to do it on a greenfield site. I think they have got to go for a combination you know and I am not saying we should not be doing new towns but I think, as I said before, a big big chunk of this 1.5 million should be done by adaptive reuse and retrofit.

Emma: So you talked before Will about the need for more joined up thinking. Do we need to be thinking then about carbon and retrofit issues right at the start, so designing buildings from the outset to minimise operational carbon but also to enable this easy repurposing or change of use in future without the need for demolition?

Will: Yes that is definitely a very important area that you have identified there. I think you are right that we want to build for flexibility, we want to build in a low carbon way, so using low carbon materials sometimes renewables so you know like timber ore reclaimed materials or things like stone which can be made into bricks effectively but much lower carbon footprint than a brick because it is now fired, it is taken from a quarry. But as you say, I think it is smart to think about the future and that is what we have failed to do with so much new construction over the last few decades. So they have got to be flexible as I have said. They haven also ideally got to have very good records of what is in the building so that you can move away from this demolition model towards deconstruction and we have written in the AJ, The Architects' Journal, about material passports as one of those aspects so that is having very very detailed digital records right at the start of every product and every material within a building so that it becomes a kind of kit of parts that you can take apart and rebuild in a different way should it become necessary.

Emma: It also kind of ties in with, we do a lot of work in building safety in my team and looking a lot at the golden thread and the need to you know, it ties in with this having a digital record of everything that has gone on in the construction of a building you know it serves two purposes doesn't it, the purpose you are talking about but also the, you know maintaining the golden thread of information for fire and rescue services and others.

Will: That is right.

Ben: Presumably we are seeing something like that with the HSBC tower over at Canary Wharf you know this sort of very recent tower office block in Canary Wharf which obviously you know a single occupier and then when HSBC decided to move out some of the designs to repurpose that building are phenomenal and presumably only possible because it is a recent building and they will have all the data and the structural information about how they can chop chunks out of it and what have you. But for a building that is 50 or 100 years old it is …

Will: And like you say, a single owner is important as well. As it is a single owner then they will probably have all those records, particularly in a building like the tower you have just talked about which is only 20 years old or 21 years old. Obviously lots of buildings have multiple owners over the years and then records get lost and you know it becomes much harder. I think the other aspect to your question though, in terms of building or designing and building for the future, is about adapting to climate change as well as mitigating because obviously we are seeing weather records broken every few weeks or even more frequently than that in this country and in other countries. So we are still designing and building buildings for a climate which no longer exists you know we need to think really really carefully about heat as well as just thinking oh we must make the building well insulated to deal with cold, it is also about heat, it is also about flooding, it is also about other aspects of extreme weather. So, yeah, I am, having just been to the Labour party conference, I am a bit worried that the level of know‑how, and I am not just talking about the new government I am just talking about the level of know‑how generally, does not really match up to our ambitions. We have got these very ambitious housing targets, which is great because I think a lot of people think this is absolutely the right thing to do, but we need to do it right. So we need the right know‑how to avoid making things worse and I think Lord Deben, former chair of the Climate Change Committee, was one of the voices saying how bad it is to deliver lots of new homes that will have to be retrofitted in ten years' time and that has been the case in recent years.

Ben: So whose responsibility is that because there is obviously you know to make a house, to make an office, there is developers, there is politicians, there is planners, lawyers, architects and what have you and obviously a lot of our developer clients are very focused on this and try and do the right thing but are there duties on the broad professional team to be acting on that knowledge even in the absence of clear instructions for a client to do that?

Will: Yeah, I think architects and engineers who are at the forefront of this need to be more assertive with their clients in saying what needs to happen because obviously they are both well respected professions that train for years to call themselves you know the architect or the engineer and I think you know the professional duties include social and environmental good, achieving that. You know, you cannot say that with a lot of construction sadly at the moment it's not doing that so I think architects and engineers and others with the know‑how need to speak up and they need to say "no" and I know that can be difficult if you are working in the private sector and you know you are worried about losing jobs and so on and so forth. But this is the future and you know people who develop obsolete buildings are not going to be in a good position. So it is actually in the client's interest to be told these difficult truths a lot of the time.

Ben: Well in the absence of support in, whether it is sort of a policy or taxation which is pushing people towards retrofit, what are architects and other professionals doing in the built environment to take matters forward?

Will: Well I think there is a real groundswell of action across the industry now and it has taken some time but that is encouraging. We launched our campaign called "RetroFirst" or "Retrofit‑first" in The Architects' Journal in September 2019, so it is actually pretty much exactly five years and unfortunately we have not achieved the tax and policy reforms that we have campaigned for but I think on the plus side we have really changed the language you know. Retrofit First is a term that is widely used across the industry. We have changed the kind of way that this area is thought about with lots of others of course. There has been various other campaigns that have been very successful, Part Z which is a campaign to reform the building regulations. Again that has not achieved that yet but perhaps it will with this new government. It certainly made a lot of noise and actually led to a private members' bill put forward by Tory MPs in the last parliament.

More recently I co‑founded a group called "Don't Waste Buildings" which now has something like, well over 900 members I am delighted to say on our LinkedIn page and we have not done any sort of marketing or spamming, that is just organic growth people saying this makes sense and we should be avoiding wasting buildings. So that has been quite active in starting to campaign on this area. I would say embodied carbon was the spark for that but actually the argument that we are making is that this has lots and lots of pluses. It is not just about how do we achieve our carbon target, it is also about what can we do about empty and under‑performing buildings all over the country you know that could be put to productive use. So we think there are lots of economic and social benefits of that kind of approach. You only have to look at High Streets up and down the country to see how many you know buildings are boarded up and you know it is a kind of a stain really on people's local communities a lot of the time and people want you know want productive things to be going on in their High Streets. They do not want this kind of disrepair that we are seeing. So we think the skills and jobs benefits and also kind of benefits to do with local pride and you know how people feel about their local area. So we are looking at it very much on a local area. We are obviously campaigning on a national level but we are also doing lots of building tours to places including Birmingham and Northampton, places outside of London to try and draw attention to what an opportunity this is for local councillors and local MPs.

Emma: Thanks Will. So one final question. If you had a magic wand, you know you mentioned the new Labour government and potential for change, if you were able to push through one or possibly two main changes what would they be?

Will: That is a really good question. I do not think we have worked out the answers yet and I think we have avoided a kind of prescriptive approach where we go to government and say, right this is the problem and this is the answer, this is what you should do. I think our approach is more that we want to work with government to kind of together work out the answers and I think we have a sort of menu of things that could be done. We talked earlier about VAT being one. But there is lots of other fiscal levers that I think you could pull to incentivise this sector, make it simpler and more profitable to retrofit and reuse buildings. So I would push back slightly on your question and say it is not one or two things that I would say, this is what you must do, it is more the knowledge. If I could do one thing I would want everybody in the country to know why this made sense, to know what a problem embodied carbon was, to know how wasteful our construction and development industry is and how it could be different. And I really noticed that at the Labour party conference where there was a great deal of energy, there were lots of new MPs, many of whom seemed very clever and full of enthusiasm and wanting to get their teeth into you know the work of an MP. But generally speaking there seemed a real lack of knowledge about this particular sector and maybe it is seen as a very technical niche subject but if I had a magic wand I would get rid of that niche aspect and make sure that everybody knows about it.

Ben: Great. Will, thank you so much for joining us on our podcast. It has been greatly informative and if our listeners have enjoyed it too perhaps they could go on your LinkedIn page "Don't Waste Buildings" and get you to 1,000 followers.

Will: We are definitely going to get there but I would like to get there you know in two weeks' time ideally so.

Ben: The challenge has been set, thank you.

Will: Thank you.

Emma: Thank you.