Abstract
Article 19 of the Energy Efficiency Directive requires EU member states to address split incentives for energy efficiency between the multiple owners of buildings. But, building governance has been relatively neglected by researchers and policy makers working on Europe’s trajectory to a highly energy-efficient building stock. Taking a socio-legal approach, this paper illustrates the complexities that occur with retrofit of mixed tenure (social and private) apartment blocks and, more broadly, how building governance is a determinant of the costs and outcomes of refurbishment projects. Forty-two percent of Europeans live in apartments and mixed tenure apartment blocks and neighbourhoods have become more prevalent in Europe in recent decades. The paper focuses on a detailed study of a large refurbishment project of five tower blocks by Oxford City Council, involving external wall insulation and other energy efficiency measures. In addition to the Council’s social tenants, these blocks house significant numbers of private owners who have challenged the Council’s attempt to recover from them a share of the refurbishment costs. The experience of the Oxford project raises questions about aspects of property law, allocation of project costs and benefits, and issues of communication, engagement and decision-making. The paper also presents qualitative data gathered from social housing providers through a survey and roundtable meeting to provide an indication of the extent to which these issues are affecting energy efficiency refurbishment projects across England.
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Data availability
The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available as this is ongoing research but, as far as possible within data protection regulations, the anonymised data will be available from the corresponding author on reasonable request following completion of the research.
Notes
We use the term ‘mixed tenure’ in the rest of this paper to refer specifically to a mix of social and private ownership in an apartment block. The term can also be used to refer to different mixes of tenure in buildings (e.g. private short-term rented/privately owner-occupied) and to tenure mix across a neighbourhood.
See Quick v Taff Ely BC (1986) QB 809 (CA).
Assethold Ltd. v Mr. N M Watts (2014) UKUT 537 (LC) at [45]–[49].
The Report to the City Executive Board by the Director of Housing Services also cautions: ‘…there may be further costs associated with delays caused by these works to the overall contract and potential changes to our other blocks following further DCLG testing of other cladding systems’.
And the ability of OCC to increase rents for social tenants is strictly limited by national legislation.
In April 2016, one leaseholder claimed that ‘£60,000 makes for over a half of the typical market value of affected properties (in my case, 65% of the actual purchase price).’ See Oxford City Council 2016b.
Borrowing commercially to finance the costs may not be an option for the flat owners as many lenders will not lend on RTB flats if they are above a certain storey (commonly five) in buildings with concrete construction.
From 2018, the rental of F- and G-banded properties will be restricted on the private rental market in the UK. Further, English environmental health practice and official documents identify most F&G banded homes as constituting a serious health and safety hazard because of the risk of excess cold: see Energy Saving Trust 2010
Wilmott Dixon sold off their energy services division in the course of this project. The new company is known as Fortem.
Statements in this paragraph from Oxford City Council, direct communication, March 2017
Calculation from the Energy Saving Trust online Home Energy Check tool available at http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/resources/tools-calculators/home-energy-check
Though the leaseholder quoted in The Guardian claims that their EPC provides an overall estimate for the savings from improving thermal insulation, none of the 13 OTB EPCs reviewed by these researchers identify the savings from installing wall insulation.
Newbolt has also written with TPAS a detailed guide for SHPs to good practice in leaseholder engagement: see Newbolt 2015
Based on the median value for 28 respondents who told us the number of flats in their total stock and the number of flats in private ownership.
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Funding
Financial support for the project is provided by the Oxford University John Fell Fund.
David Weatherall’s work on this project is supported by an Oxford University Knowledge Exchange Fellowship.
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The research underlying this paper has received ethics approval from CUREC, University of Oxford, ref no. R46808/RE001.
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Bright, S., Weatherall, D. & Willis, R. Exploring the complexities of energy retrofit in mixed tenure social housing: a case study from England, UK. Energy Efficiency 12, 157–174 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12053-018-9676-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12053-018-9676-y