The need to balance retrofit with well-designed new buildings

COMMENT Despite the looming climate emergency, we still live in a throwaway society. Many new products have built-in obsolescence and we can see a similar attitude to buildings. Take commercial office blocks, for example, where often carbon-neutral space is needed but it’s too expensive or difficult to bring old buildings up to this spec, so the option pursued is to demolish and build new. The flaw in this approach is embodied carbon. The problem involved in building new, with high-embodied-energy materials such as steel and glass, is that the carbon wasted and released by demolition, together with the carbon created by new construction, can vastly outweigh any saved by a zero-carbon building over its lifetime. Old and new go hand-in-hand Whatever being the chief executive of Historic England might suggest, I know that building new is important and has its place. Despite some recent narratives, the Historic England I lead is proudly pro-growth and pro-development. We do not exist to block development or to stifle architectural creativity. We are here to be constructive, to collaborate, to negotiate. We are consulted on around 13,000 applications for planning permission and listed building consent every year and of these we formally object to just over 1%. We work hard to ensure new development embraces the historic character of our towns and cities to help them grow and become better places – more prosperous, more sustainable, and healthier for everyone. We know that old and new can go hand-in-hand when it comes to our built environment and many current developments embrace this. Silverthorne Lane in Bristol springs to mind, with its collection of both listed and unlisted industrial buildings that, with some creative thinking and compromise, will soon be the site of 375 new homes, a new school, student accommodation and workspaces. There are sites like this being transformed across the country. But we also have the stats from our own Heritage at Risk Register that tell us more than 1,400 Grade I and Grade II* listed buildings are currently at risk, with many more thousands of Grade II listed and unlisted historic sites standing neglected and underused while new-builds rise every day. This doesn’t make sense. Recycling is not a new concept. My parents, belonging to the immediate post-war generation, were reluctant to throw anything away or replace it. We can apply similar logic to buildings. Still so many re-purposable buildings are demolished to make way for new developments. Take our formidable old mills in northern England as an example. They have huge potential to be converted into striking new homes and to inject some life into forgotten corners of our urban landscapes. Market economics may be stacked against retention and conversion, but when social value, historic character and placemaking are factored in, the picture is reversed. This approach actually supports growth. A form of sustainable growth allied to social value. Doing more to reuse and enhance what we already have of course presents a challenge. We have calculated that on average we need 86,500 skilled workers every year from now until 2050 to meet the demand for “upcycling” existing buildings by retrofitting them to make them more carbon-neutral, which would also generate around £12bn in direct annual economic output. England has the largest percentage of historic buildings in its overall residential building stock compared with the rest of Europe, so progress in this area could make a significant contribution to reducing our carbon footprint. Embodied history Carbon saving is a very strong argument for retaining and reusing historic buildings. But there are others which are equally strong. The term “placemaking” wrongly implies that places have to be made afresh. But many of our most valued places embody hundreds of years of history in their fabric and that is the core of their appeal. They represent the struggles and lifestyles of previous generations – the people are long gone, but the places remain to tell their stories. We can still keep the best of what we have, we just need to see it as an opportunity, not a blockage or an inconvenience. Yes, it often needs careful, creative thought to keep it, but surely it is worth the effort? At Historic England we are here to help with that effort. Our door is open. Duncan Wilson is chief executive of Historic England