This project thrust the subject of retrofit as a means of carbon emissions mitigation firmly into the public spotlight, even though the construction industry had been building knowledge and expertise around the subject for many years prior to this.
Retrofit v redevelopment
Now, many local authorities are developing planning policies to provide additional guidance on how redevelopment and retrofit should be treated, rightly prioritising retrofit – where feasible – before pursuing justified demolition. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) has also released updated industry guidance on how to assess both embodied and operational carbon emissions during the design of buildings.
Knowledge and understanding is resulting in better engineering of structures, a new market for reused and repurposed building materials, and designing for longevity integrated into development briefs.
It is worth noting that, from a financial perspective, redevelopment is the least attractive option for asset owners. It takes longer, costs more and has much higher risk associated with it. If light-touch retrofits, not requiring planning applications, resulted in satisfying increasingly onerous tenant requirements for workplace quality, they’d be prioritised in a heartbeat.
As we are all aware, however, sometimes substantial demolition is required to develop a high-quality building that provides social and economic benefits within and without the scheme, and net zero carbon-aligned operational building performance.
Finding the balance
The Greater London Authority, as it mulls the development of the new London Plan, must surely have eyes on future policy that allows developers and local authorities to clearly understand how the various issues around embodied and operational carbon emissions should be assessed and balanced against the public need for the growth of housing, employment and leisure spaces, together with how the built environment can provide social value to local communities.
In practice, it’s difficult to determine whether XX tonnes of carbon dioxide is worth YY square metres of accessible public realm or ZZ additional visitors to local destinations. But this is the function of the ‘planning balance’ that sits at the heart of the National Planning Policy Framework’s definition of ‘Sustainable Development’, and is therefore the job of all planners in England.
It should also be noted that, for some controversial redevelopment projects, the issue of embodied carbon emissions is still being cited by anti-development lobbies. Again, standardised guidance on carbon emissions calculation methodologies and relevant policy targets would help to take the politics out of the science-based field of emissions reduction.
The need to establish certainty for developers
The acid test, therefore, of new planning policy has to be whether the additional guidance would provide the development community with certainty as to the criteria for which redevelopment would be acceptable, thus preventing costly and lengthy referrals to the planning inspectorate and secretary of state for higher intervention.
Any planning authority developing new ‘retrofit first’ policy should assess how the M&S scheme would perform as a check to see whether the lengthy and circuitous planning journey could have been avoided by better guidance.
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