In response to the recent extreme weather, the Environmental Audit Committee recently sent an open letter to the government asking ‘What action is the Government planning to tackle overheating in public buildings such as hospitals, care homes, schools and prisons’.
Recognising that heat waves are likely to occur with increasing frequency and similar or greater severity, other voices are also calling for action, with demand growing for investment to adapt public buildings, particulary schools and hospitals, to avoid the need for mass closures (schools) and declarations of critical incidents (hospitals), owing to heat related equipment failure (in tandem with increased demand).
As yet, it is unclear how government will respond but if new initiatives are to be launched – either nationally or via the increasingly empowered combined authorities – their designers should look to take account of learning from relevant previous policy interventions.
Of particular relevance, is the experience of the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS) (and the complementary Low Carbon Skills Fund) and its predecessor policy, the Public Sector Energy Efficiency Loan Scheme (PSEELS). These schemes, in varying forms, have been running since 2004, with their focus being the decarbonisation of the public sector estate. Since 2015, CAG has played a major in the first evaluation of PSEELs and the evaluations of PSDS Phase 1,2,3 and 4.
The PSDS, introduced in 2020, has demonstrated how the public sector might approach the challenge of establishing and running a large-scale (circa £1billion) retrofit public sector retrofit programme. With the operating body, Salix, in a position to provide a ready-made administrative mechanism.
With its focus being on decarbonisation, and the decarbonisation of heat in particular, there would be considerable differences in the types of technology that a programme focused on climate adaptation would be expected to include. Technology specific learning might, therefore, be of limited relevant. However, many of the general issues associated with building retrofit in the public sector such as access to finance, capacity and capability issues and the challenges associated with scaling an embryonic supply chain, appear likely to be the same or very similar.
To ensure that these lessons, particularly those relating to the education (schools) and health sectors, CAG will be undertaking and sharing a review of the PSEELS and PSDS evaluations published to date. Watch this space.
Bill Kirkup, Partner at CAG
Photo credit: Ollie Craig, Pexels