With over 40% of the UK's carbon emissions coming from the built environment, the British Property Federation (BPF) has welcomed Sir Nicholas Stern's report on the economics of climate change.
The BPF has been taking steps to ensure that the country's largest property companies can improve the energy efficiency of their buildings. The BPF, with funding from the Carbon Trust, is developing a blueprint for assessing landlords' energy consumption that will in turn enable the assessment, benchmarking and improvement of a building's energy performance.
Liz Peace, chief executive of the BPF, said: "The BPF is at the forefront of carbon reduction strategies in the built environment through our work to evaluate the energy performance of buildings and to identify vital measures to reduce CO2 emissions. This is part of an EU initiative to introduce energy performance certificates. Our research will provide the clarity and framework needed to enable property owners to improve their energy efficiency and to help the government meet its emissions targets. We hope the final toolkit can be used to support national implementation of the EU Energy Performance of Buildings Directive. We recognise the need to make the cost of carbon more obvious to business. We believe energy performance certificates will be an important measure in reducing energy use, and will become a significant factor in the future marketing, and ultimately value, of buildings."
BPF response to Local Government White Paper
The BPF has welcomed proposals in the Local Government White Paper to encourage strong local leadership, allowing councils to choose an executive model of governance best suited for their area, and has supported measures to simplify public consultation procedures under the new Planning Act, but urged the Government to include in the reforms a suitable amount of financial devolution once the Lyons Review is completed.
Chief Executive Liz Peace said: "For the development community, the real priorities are to attract the right quality of people into local government, reduce bureaucracy and delays, and simplify procedures. This is more likely to happen where local authorities have strong executive leadership and are allowed sufficient scope to make a whole range of decisions themselves without unnecessary interference from central government. There is evidence that strong local leadership in the form of elected mayors and local executive leaders has benefited a number of cities, demonstrating how visionary leaders can drive forward social and economic development and regeneration. We welcome the Government's move in this direction, but for genuine empowerment to occur, it is likely that local authorities will need some level of finance-raising powers and the retention of a proportion of the income generated from new development. We await the forthcoming report of the Lyons Review of Local Government, which is expected to set out a range of innovative finance-raising options for local authorities to promote growth and fund infrastructure. For the property industry, the combination of strong executive leadership and local financial empowerment could lead to genuine change in the way local government manages regeneration and development in the UK. The BPF very much welcomes the Government's decision to repeal the requirement for the independent examination of Statements of Community Involvement by the Planning Inspectorate, since this would have been an unnecessary administrative burden in an already lengthy consultation process."
