To receive a presentation on retrofitting Council buildings – recent progress and next steps. 

The forum received a presentation from Dominic Millen, Group Leader Transport Planning and Policy on retrofitting in domestic and council buildings. 

1.            Presentation

Dominic Millen highlighted the following in his presentation:

·         In the Climate Action Plan the aim is for the Council to be carbon neutral by 2030 and for the whole borough to be by 2040. 

·         Retrofitting buildings involves making changes to improve energy efficiency, decarbonise heat and increase renewables and offsetting.

·         Carrying out retrofitting is challenging but very worthwhile as buildings are responsible for most of the Council’s carbon emissions. Borough wide housing on its own is responsible for 38% and retrofitting leads to healthier and wealthier neighbourhoods. 

·         There are specific challenges when dealing with conservation areas and heritage buildings, which might require different skills and approaches.

·         The Council is joint lead borough for Retrofit London (alongside Waltham Forest), which is an opportunity to deliver retrofitting measures at scale across the capital. 

·         The Government Green Homes Grants Voucher Scheme was meant to support home-owners in carrying out their own retrofitting projects, although the take up has been lower than expected.    

·         Two retrofit pilot projects are taking place in Edmonton: one in thirty six individual homes using the Energiesprong model and another in a twenty two storey block, which includes replacing cladding combined with environmental and fire safety measures.  

·         The outcomes would be reduced running costs, improved health, the opportunity to test the approach and identify retrofit archetypes for future use. The challenges involved securing funding, delivering with the residents in situ and timescales and sector capacity. 

·         The possible expansion of the Energetik network into other boroughs will increase its reach. A retrofit pilot is looking to connect around 20 existing properties to the network. 

·         There is a long-term programme of investment in corporate retrofit including in schools, corporate buildings and leisure facilities. 

·         Recently Enfield had secured £3.8m from the Government for decarbonisation of corporate buildings.   The main investment is likely to be at the Civic Centre but with various other sites also benefiting.

·         Work was also proceeding on offsetting and renewables.  The Council was helping to restore woodland in the North of the borough, investing in more street trees, looking at the approach to renewables in the community and taking part in the solar together group buying scheme. 

·         The priorities for 2021 were the delivery of the existing projects, council housing asset management sustainable strategy implementation, development of a pipeline of corporate retrofit projects including in schools, the retrofit London programme (with delivery of the related action plan starting in the Autumn) starting in the Autumn and lobbying government for funding and powers.   

2.            Questions/Comments

2.1       The material used to replace the cladding on buildings affected are the most effective materials from both a fire safety and retrofitting perspective.

2.2       A Schools Climate Action Network has been set up to support their journey to climate neutrality.

2.3       The current civic centre works involved the replacement of rotten wooden window frames along D block which is locally listed. 

2.4       In the future suppliers will have to meet environmental standards and requirements will be included in tender documents. There were already standards for Non-Road Mobile Machinery (NRMM) as part of air quality measures.   

3.            Summing up by the Chair

The Chair thanked Dominic Millen for his interesting presentation and hoped that the forum could return to this subject in the future.