Agenda item

There will be a presentation on this item. Presentation slides are attached.

Councillor Sarah Warren, Cabinet Member for Climate and Sustainable Travel, and Jane Wildblood, Strategic Manager: Climate & Environmental Sustainability, gave a presentation which covered the following:

·  Introduction

·  Update on current action

·  Energy @ Home – advice service

·  Sharing householder experience

·  WECA Retrofit Accelerator Hub

·  Exploration of B&NES level approach

·  The Panel asked to consider…

Panel members made the following points and asked the following questions:

Councillor Hirst asked the following questions (Officer/Cabinet Member replies shown in italics):

·  Have we got enough expertise and relevant strategic leadership within the Council? The leadership has been building over the last year, we now have a Director of Sustainable Communities and Head of Green Transformation.

·  How soon until we can drill down and set clear targets, for example setting out the number of households within a timeframe. There is currently a lot of discussion around this – certain issues are being discussed such as what depth of retrofit constitutes a retrofit. There are also issues around the type of housing (some need deep retrofit).

·  Regarding funding – do we have partnerships with funding organisations to help people? The authorities with large projects on this are the ones with housing stock. There is the Energy at Home Scheme for advice and signposting to available funding for householders. We have proposed to WECA Retrofit Accelerator Hub to try to develop an energy loan scheme.

Councillor O Brien asked the following questions (Officer/Cabinet Member replies shown in italics):

·  Do you have raw data to feed into the new software? The tool uses national data on Energy Performance Certificates. 60 thousand homes in BANES have EPC’s and this number is gradually growing as people buy/sell properties.

·  Some of the jargon used such as ‘retrofitting’ and ‘low carbon heating’ could be amended to ‘cost saving’ – this language may make it appeal to people more and be more accessible. More should be done to get solar panels on roofs, they can repay faster than expected. The officer stated that this makes sense and is a good point. Every household is different and we need to be flexible.

·  Curo are starting work, this is a massive task due to the condition of some of the properties.

Councillor Johnson asked the following questions (Officer replies shown in italics):

·  The main problem is the cost to households. The cost-of-living crisis means this is not everyone’s priority.

·  Is there a cost for the assessor part of the process – do the Council provide this? We will feed this into the development process, the WECA Retrofit Accelerator Hub will be looking at assessors.

·  Could we fund EPC’s on houses that we do not already have them for?

These are great ideas and will be fed into the process.

Councillor Bromley asked about engagement with the private sector and suggested that maybe people don’t always know what ‘retrofitting’ means or what it involves, it can feel overwhelming. We could suggest small steps to begin with. Maybe community engagement would help to show people different types of property and examples of the possible costs savings. The Cabinet Member stated that she liked the idea and gave an example of Bathford Parish Council who did a study with thermal imaging cameras which showed heat leakage in different properties.

Councillor Crossley asked the following questions (Officer replies shown in italics):

·  What are the festival dates? 24th September – 2^nd October 2022.

·  Are all libraries involved? Agreed that it should involve all BANES libraries, we are in conversation about this.

·  Is the traffic increasing on the energy webpage? This is variable, if we are promoting it, traffic increases.

·  I do not think housing surveys should be free, they have a value. How can we sell them? We will consider a different angle.

·  Retrofitting should be seen as an aspirational career, there is a heritage element and it is a skilled job. Yes it should be aspirational as a career as it is highly skilled. We need to get this message into schools.

·  Heritage organisations should be on the list of organisations to work with. Planning policies are being upgraded which will bring more advice on listed buildings as does the recently published updated Supplementary Planning Document.

·  We should sort out our own buildings, such as the Guildhall, so that they have the best rating that they can. We are tackling our own buildings with renewables and retrofits where possible. We are in conversation with Property Services to make this part of their maintenance programme. An example of a current project is Pixash Lane Recycling Centre.

Councillor Dr Kumar asked why the solar panel scheme was closed to new customers and asked why grants were not available for people to install solar panels. The officer explained that the solar scheme was a WECA scheme – it is now closed and in the installing phase. There will be a review mid Autumn after installation. The officer agreed that solar panels should be promoted as part of retrofitting.

Councillor Malloy asked how people who are not online would know about Hub activities and offers/schemes. She asked about a possible physical hub. The officer stated that this was a useful idea, she explained that there was a show home in Bristol and pointed to the Bath Green Homes scheme.

Councillor Malloy asked if advice could be given to promote porches regarding heat retention. The officer stated that this advice could be added.

The Panel RESOLVED to note the presentation information and that officers had taken on board their comments.