Since I joined Nottingham’s planning committee nearly three years ago, I have made sustainability a big part of all the comments I make. It’s much more cost effective to include sustainable measures in buildings during construction than to retrofit them to a building after it is completed.
Since I started asking the question “how green is this building?” details of sustainability now normally get a specific paragraph in every report. And during my time on the committee, the Council took advantage of new Government powers to include a “Merton rule” in our planning policy that says that new buildings over a certain size or covering a certain amount of land now have to find 10% of their energy requirements from sustainable sources.
My next battle is about getting a wider recognition that 10% is a minimum, not a target. The helpful tool “Building for Life” has as one of its 20 questions, “Does the building out-perform statutory minima?”
This week’s planning committee on Wednesday was one of the shortest I have ever been at, with only three planning applications. The first of these was for a new FE college on Carlton Road, and had an excellent sustainability statement that covered many of the things I talk about every month. You can read the full report on the Council’s Committee Online page (opens a Word Doc) but here is the sustainability section:
Sustainable design has been key to the design of the building and it has been confirmed that a Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) ‘Excellent’ rating will be achieved. In order to achieve energy efficiency the building will incorporate a wood-fuel boiler plant; heat recovery; exposed thermal mass; positioning of building to maximise daylight; natural ventilation; minimisation of heat loss; rainwater collection and the efficiency of plant and systems will be maximised through the use of a digital Building Energy Management System. It has also been clarified that an intranet connection will be available to allow teachers and students to view the energy that the building is utilising as a teaching resource for energy efficiency.
In addition to that, we heard that the college are considering bat and bird boxes on the trees and open spaces on the site, which helps tick a few more biodiversity boxes.
We also had three “issues reports” where people who are going to be asking for planning permission in the near future and get the chance to test the waters at committee. This is usually only for very big applications, and this week we discussed a potential private hospital in the new University Boulevard Science Park (unlikely to pass – Science Parks are not good places for hospitals); new student housing on Alfreton Road (fairly good scheme, could be improved) and a stunning scheme for a new dual use church-cum-conference centre.
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Deciding on sustainability of developments in urban areas such as Nottingham can be straight forward. Good examples are as you say starting to come through.
Do you have thoughts on how you would view a development in rural areas. If a housing scheme ticked all the boxes of the code for sustainability, but would result in increased travel (compared to if it were in an urban area) would it still be good?
Rural development is not something I have any experience of, since Nottingham’s boundaries are so tightly defined we have very little rural responsibility, and what we do have is firmly greenbelt.
Sustainability is a big word, and it’s tempting to see it solely in the light of easy technological solutions like solar panels. A new development does need to be judged against many criteria, including proximity to resources. A new development entirely in the middle of nowhere might indeed not be helpful. However, in a rural context, lots of people are forced to drive a huge amount anyway – particularly now that some former village hubs like shops, post offices and pubs are closing down. I can certainly see that some rural development – for example the new housing in Church Stretton discussed on Radio 4’s Open Country this week – might actually reduce travel. Arguments can me made that lots of people are commuting into Church Stretton to eg work in the care sector, who can’t afford to live there.
I live in Burton on Trent and my interest comes from the local council volunteering to take 12,900 addition homes to assist GOWM meet their targets. The Tory controlled council favour an extention of ’70s and ’80s urban sprawl to supply this number. Next door, barely 3 miles from Burton, in South Derbyshire there is a proposal for an “Eco Town” of around 7,000 homes.
Having been to a presentation about the Eco Town I can see the attractions of this concept.
Have you visited the Hockerton housing Project near Newark? I went in March last year and it changed the way I think about rural (and potentially urban) housing. In the last 40 years new rural housing has been almost exclusively detached for people commuting into urban areas. Going back 100 -120 years the “new” housing in rural areas was terraces. It may sound strange but my grandparents on both sides of the family lived in Victorian rural terraced cottages in Suffolk. Including The terraced approach in schemes would lead to more of a community.
On your list of places to visit, if you are interested in beer and brewing, the National Museum of Brewing in Burton is being closed by Coors in June. A post election visit this year will be your last chance to see it.
I thought part of the point of eco-towns was that they were reasonably self-sufficient – not just building new homes, but also ensuring a public transport infrastructure, new shops, community centres, doctors surgeries and the like. If “eco-town” is just another ruse to ram existing schemes through the planning process with not significantly better infrastructure, then it is a betrayal.
You also need to make certain that the new homes meet agreed national standards far and away above building regs. Some to consider are BREEAM Eco homes, Lifetime Homes – a system of checking a house can be adapted to meet with the various challenges you might meet over a lifetime, and Building for life. If you make a developer do all of these, you’re likely to get excellent development which mitigates to some extent the environmental harm.
Any new development needs to meet the planning authority’s criteria for affordable housing, one way or another. Planning authorities need to be encouraged to go for the max they can and enforce it within developments, rather than letting developers buy off their obligations with a S106 contribution.
Terraces are unusual but not unheard of in new developments – I can think of at least two in Nottingham. They do tend to be a way of fitting houses on an awkward site, and greenfield development more often than not has nice square sites developers can use as they please.
I am familiar with Hockerton, and I’ve written about it before – I visited in 2005, and for me it was real eye opener, pointing out that green living can be des res and not necessarily hair shirt. However, although Hockerton is a brilliant project, it’s not really a model for large scale development. They have a huge land take, with five families occupying 25 acres of land, a scale of density far below any commercial development.
Nile, I really enjoyed this article. We here in the States are facing the same problems when it comes to getting people to realize that the minimum (10%) should not be the norm. One company is actually offering a Demand Response system where they are paying large businesses like hotels and businesses who consume a lot of energy to regulate their usage.