A Town Council taking the lead where Westminster Government shirks

In the September edition of Bruton’s community magazine, The Dove, I welcomed Justine Mallinson as Bruton’s new Retrofit Co-ordinator.

Many people are interested in reducing waste, making their home more energy efficient, and reducing its carbon emissions, but don’t know where to start. “Retrofit Bruton and Cary”, largely funded by a grant from Somerset County Council’s Climate Emergency Community Fund, is here to help homeowners in Bruton and neighbouring Parishes make a real difference to the energy performance of their homes.

Justine will survey your home, to draw up a bespoke “Retrofit Plan”. More than an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC), this Retrofit Plan will set out all the improvements that could make your home as energy efficient as possible, the best order to install them, and which measures would be most suitable, cost-effective and impactful. If you want to proceed, Justine can then give advice on how to work with Contractors to ensure that you get the improvements you want.

This new service will be free of charge in Bruton and its neighbouring Parishes. A charge will be made for a Retrofit Plan in Castle Cary and its surrounds.

For more details, and to request a survey, please visit retrofit.brutontown.com.

‘Retrofit’ means to make improvements after a home (or anything else) has been built. The UK has approximately 27 million homes, and we have not built more than 200,000 new homes in any single year since the 1970s, despite all of the incessant Westminster Government focus on ripping up our good Planning Laws to encourage volume housebuilding. It would therefore take us over 50 years (to 2070 plus) to make our homes energy efficient by building new, even if we wanted to, in historic Towns such as Bruton. We need to cut our carbon emissions to zero by improving our existing homes. By Retrofitting.

Some energy-saving improvements are easy. Houses built since the 1920s generally have cavity walls, which are easily filled with insulation. This has been done already, almost all homes now also have good loft insulation, and double- or triple-glazed windows (spoiler alert: Bruton’s Conservation area is discussed further down…).

We can also switch to lower carbon heating fuels. Britain “Dashed for Gas” in the 1980s and 90s, to wean ourselves off coal, in both domestic heating and power stations. I am sure that many Brutonians remember how soot-black Bath’s beautiful stone walls were back then, while receiving their deliveries from Snow’s (not so white) coal yard by Castle Cary Railway Station. Greenpeace campaigned successfully to stop the ‘Acid Rain’ clouds of sulphuric pollution that our power stations exported to the forests of northern Europe. This “Dash for Gas” is why the UK’s historic carbon emissions reductions still look impressive – we were able to clean up our act, mostly because our act was so dirty to begin with.

Bruton’s gas is particularly clean, because much of it is supplied from Wyke Farms’ anaerobic digesters. I think of these green domes as big compost heaps. Similar farm-scale ‘biogas’ from agricultural waste should be harvested around every Somerset Town. The Clothiers of Wyke Farms describe their epiphany as “Farming for Energy”, for which inspiration they have rightly won countless awards. It may have sparked from their first solar panels, but grew into a much Bigger Idea.

We can, and should, of course install solar panels on our own roofs, to reduce our personal grid electricity consumption; and also to heat our water, if we also install solar thermal panels. At the end of August, One Planet Bruton received its first Community Fund Payment from its “Solar Streets” offer – so £150 is now available to help even more Bruton community projects. Many congratulations! “Solar Streets” are still open; and solar panels are Permitted Development (i.e. requiring no Planning Permission) outside Bruton’s Conservation area – If you have not taken advantage yet, what are you waiting for?

So, the Conservation Area… More specifically, older (pre-1920) ‘harder-to-treat’ homes, with solid (non-cavity) walls, have been the key Retrofitting challenge for decades. They consume the most energy to heat, and UK has about 9 million of them.

The 2009 Government “Low Carbon Transition Plan” strategically targeted its Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (CERT) obligation on energy suppliers to fund improvements such as solid wall insulation in ‘harder-to-treat’ homes. While the more socially responsible suppliers got on with fulfilling this obligation, some focused far more of their energy on lobbying the Chancellor of the Exchequer to remove it – which the then Chancellor did in his November 2013 Autumn Statement. Since then, there have been no Grants available for insulating ‘harder-to-treat’ homes, other than for those on the lowest incomes; and the current Government’s abortive “Green Homes Grant” scheme, which was scrapped in March this year, after only six months! Not exactly “Planning for the Future”.

For this key reason, Justine will be focusing her efforts on providing expert advice to homeowners who are fortunately able to fund their own home improvements. You may have noticed that lots of building work goes on in Bruton – so we know that there are many who could value such advice to maximise their energy and carbon savings! Justine joins us from Severn-Wye Energy Agency, who are leaders in this field. She has developed a particular expertise in lime-based insulation, which is perfect for the pre-1919 ‘vapour open’ buildings, so plentiful in Bruton and the surrounding area, where ‘breathability’ is vital.

Justine also has experience through Severn-Wye Energy Agency in advising Landlords on compliance with the ever-tightening MEES (Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards) Legislation, which is expected to require an EPC 'C' rating by 2025. For Brutonians who live in privately- or socially-rented homes, Justine would love to be introduced to your Landlords.

The final words on Retrofitting are that older, ‘harder-to-treat’, solid wall, homes can be draughty and cold. In addition to saving money on fuel bills, energy saving improvements make homes warmer and more comfortable. The health benefits have been demonstrated to outweigh the costs of the work – a real economic “Win-Win-Win”. Successive Governments really have been foolish not to invest much more in our home economics.

Ewan Jones, Chair of Bruton Town Council.

(First published in the October edition of The Dove)