Richard Scrope wants to do everything he can to save the planet. He has planted 20 trees in two years at his Wiltshire home. He lets the fields lie fallow so that wildlife can flourish. He keeps his own bees. And he’s desperately trying to reduce carbon emissions from his home, but he is not allowed to. The reason? It’s grade II listed. That means every alteration has to be approved by a conservation officer, for whom preserving the past trumps protecting the environment. Scrope, a 40-year-old buying agent, would like to replace his gappy single-glazed windows with double-glazed ones to stop heat loss. He’d like to replace the raised timber floor with a solid one to prevent icy draughts from below. But in both cases he has been advised that conservation officers won’t let him. So there’s no point in installing one of those air-source heat pumps that the government keeps banging on about; they won’t work properly in a house without underfloor heating, double-glazed windows and good insulation.
Which raises a very British conundrum: there are about 450,000 listed buildings in this country, most of them private homes. The government has a target to cut carbon emissions by 78 per cent by 2035, compared with 1990 levels. Yet homes are the third-largest producers of carbon emissions in the UK, and almost half of our pre-1900 housing has a failing EPC rating (for energy efficiency) of E, F or G, according to research by Savills estate agency. “Listed properties have terrible carbon footprints,” Scrope says. “It’s deeply maddening that we’ve got a government telling us to be more sustainable to achieve net zero and then we’ve got another government department saying I can’t make my house more eco-friendly. The planners and the conservation officers have to get on board.”
Scrope’s house is heated by an oil-fired boiler — a cardinal sin these days. The government is holding a consultation on banning the sale of oil-fired boilers by 2026. If they do, Scrope has a problem. His house isn’t on the gas grid and an air-source heat pump just won’t work in an uninsulated building, as they are a subtle form of heating. They heat water to much lower temperatures — 30C versus 60C-80C for traditional boilers — so require vast surface areas, in the form of underfloor heating, to achieve the same warm temperatures radiators would, and they take a lot longer to heat a room, according to Dr Sarah Price, technical director at Qoda Consulting, a sustainable engineering company. If heat is leaking from a property an air-source heat pump doesn’t stand a chance; your rooms would be cold and your electricity bills sky high. “You couldn’t run them on existing radiators,” Price says.
So what’s the alternative for Scrope? He could buy a biomass boiler, which are fuelled by wood pellets, but they require vast spaces for the machinery and to store the timber fuel. “And biomass boilers are £15,000 to £20,000, about three or four times the price of an oil boiler,” Scrope says.
Neither are biomass boilers the eco wonder they were once cracked up to be, according to Price. “They are frowned upon now. If the wood pellets are shipped from Canada the carbon footprint is higher. Also, you are spewing carbon dioxide and smoke into the local area, so it should be viewed as a last resort, only for rural locations.”
So what are the alternatives for owners of listed properties? “You could just get electric panel radiators,” Price says. “They get hot very quickly but they are only 100 per cent efficient versus 250 per cent efficient for an air-source heat pump, so your energy bills will be two to three times more expensive.”
Price is seeing more clients in period homes try a hybrid approach: buying an air-source heat pump to use in the spring and autumn when the temperatures are warmer — and it doesn’t need to work as hard — and then topping it up with a gas boiler on the coldest days of the winter. Nick Cryer, the founder of Berkeley Place, a building company that renovates historic homes in the Bath and Bristol area, has installed solar thermal systems on listed properties for £5,000-£10,000. These use small roof panels to convert sunlight into energy and provide hot water for a house, but not electricity — again, it’s a top-up, not a sole provider.
Price thinks a better model for the future is the retrofit of a grade I listed student halls of residence at Trinity College, Cambridge. At New Court, refurbished by the architect 5th Studio, single-glazed windows were replaced with slender double-glazed windows crafted in a traditional style and internal walls were covered in 60mm-thick insulation that stopped short of touching the cornicing and skirting boards and was painted to match the colour of the rooms. The better windows and insulation made it viable for ground-source heat pumps to be installed. The result is an 88 per cent reduction in carbon emissions.
So why can’t all listed houses be given the Trinity College treatment? The problem is that not all conservation officers are created equal, according to Price. They follow the guidance from Historic England at their discretion and interpret rules differently all over the country. “There needs to be more training for conservation officers, because there are solutions that are sensitive and can work really well, as Trinity College shows. But right now the answer is always ‘no, no, no’. It’s never, ‘But we could do this instead.’ ”
Yulia Romanenkova knows the sound of “no, no, no” all too well. When Home interviewed the Hertfordshire resident in June, her application to replace single-glazed windows at her grade II listed 18th-century house had been rejected twice by her local council. The windows in question are 20th century, the glazing isn’t historic (unless you count the 1970s) and her proposed replacements, traditional-style windows by Ventrolla, use slim double glazing approved by heritage experts. In November the planning inspectorate rejected her appeal.
“It’s ridiculous. They never even visited the house. The replacements are like for like. The windows face the garden and not the street. It’s 16C in my kitchen. Winter is here. I’m using fan heaters. It is a crazy situation, with all this talk of green energy and ecology and reducing fuel and electricity use. I am trying to follow the rules to help the environment and they are punishing me. After Cop26 the rules have to be flexible.”
The ban on double glazing in listed properties has to end, Cryer agrees. “I’m not saying they should replace windows in a building where Henry VIII had his name etched in the glass, but in a standard listed building you can easily put in double glazing that looks like single. The change is going to happen, but it’s not enough. If they’re not going to let you have a boiler, you have to be able to insulate walls, floors and ceilings to make a heat pump run efficiently. If you can’t, then the government is going to have to deliver cheaper electricity to the consumer so listed homeowners aren’t paying a fortune.”
Change may be in the air in the wake of Cop26. Duncan McCallum, strategy and listing director for Historic England, says: “Historic England is actively exploring with the government and other organisations ways in which the system of managing change to listing buildings can best address the urgent need to reduce carbon emissions.”
They’d better hurry up, says Richard Scrope. As a buying agent for JMChase in Wiltshire and Dorset, he’s noticed some clients are wary of listed properties. “One of my biggest concerns is that down the road, fewer people will be willing to buy listed homes if they are too expensive to run and you can’t make them eco enough. If nobody is living in them, they will become derelict. Either we adapt them to be more sustainable or we will lose them.”
