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Action on overheating missing from government’s climate change plans, says UKGBC
A national effort to adapt homes against overheating is “largely missing” from the government’s latest climate change plans, the UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) has said.
The third National Adaptation Programme, or NAP3, was published by the government on Monday 17 July.
It set out how the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and other departments will adapt the UK’s homes, buildings and natural environment to deal with climate change from 2023 to 2028.
The plan included new funding for research and projects that focus on climate resilience and pointed to recent amendments to building regulations to reduce the risk of overheating in new-build homes.
However, Louise Hutchins, head of policy and public affairs at UKGBC, said that a nationwide strategy to install shutters, reflective paint and insulation was lacking from the plans.
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“Extreme heat, flooding and drought hitting Europe right now leaves little to the imagination about what climate catastrophe will look like, and makes clear that the UK’s homes and buildings just aren’t designed for this new normal,” she stated.
Ms Hutchins acknowledged that NAP3 is “an important step forward” and sets out “some welcome new initiatives including mandatory water efficiency labelling”. However, she added that it needs to be “an urgent and ambition plan to adapt to increasingly severe, frequent and extreme weather like last year’s heatwaves which took nearly 3,000 lives in the UK”.
She added: “That nationwide approach to adapt our homes and workplaces is largely missing. We need a national effort to install measures like shutters, insulation, reflective paint and water-efficient fixtures and fittings in our homes and buildings, and shady trees and green spaces in our neighbourhoods.”
NAP3 points to the government’s forthcoming planning reforms of the National Planning Policy Framework due in the autumn, which said the updates would support adaptation and mitigation efforts.
But Ms Hutchins said that “the government has an open goal” in the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill – which is currently in its final stages in parliament – to accept amendments that would “align the planning system with our climate change and nature restoration goals, and put an end to a range of measures that make no sense given the climate emergency, such as new homes being built on flood-planes without proper protection”.
In June 2022, an overheating requirement was introduced through building regulations to enhance the resilience of new homes to high temperatures.
The paper also said that the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and the Building Safety Regulator will investigate the risk of overheating in homes that have been created through a material change of use in 2022-24.
Meanwhile, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero will develop retrofit measures for existing homes in ways that minimise risks from overheating, according to NAP3.
