New Guidance From Historic England on Adapting Historic Buildings for Energy Efficiency

This week, Historic England published a new advice note:  Adapting Historic Buildings for Energy and Carbon Efficiency (HEAN18). The advice note aims to provide clarity on key considerations and to support consistent decision-making in a global climate emergency.

There seems to be a rapidly increasing acceptance of the benefits of sensitively adapting historic buildings to reduce their carbon emissions. Recently, we have seen decisions to allow solar panels on the Grade I listed King’s College Chapel and the use of Listed Building Consent Orders to install double glazing and solar panels.

While we may debate if there is a philosophical tension between the need to reduce carbon emissions reductions and the protection of our historic environment,  Historic England’s note provides welcome guidance on practical retrofit measures in historic buildings and how these should be approached in the decision-making framework.

The advice note recognises that the appropriate adaption of buildings should employ measures to reduce carbon emissions but that doing so in a way that protects historic significance and character can be a challenge for local authorities, weighing up the climate benefits on the one hand against potential harm to historic significance on the other.

Two things jump out of the guidance: firstly, the guidance recognises that some measures may be harmful to the special interest of a listed building, but part of the justification would be that the works to mitigate climate change make a ‘meaningful’ contribution to carbon efficiency. Secondly, the importance of scale and balance – a high degree of heritage harm for minimal environmental gain is unlikely to be acceptable, but those measures which mitigate harm to the building while offering longer-term environmental benefits may be favoured in the balance.

Practically speaking, the advice is clear that works to enhance the performance of buildings need not necessarily be harmful, indeed many simple measures to maintain a building can be complementary to the aim of adapting to climate change. Of particular note is a greater acceptance of the use of double glazing, where this does not harm the significance of the building, and similarly, solar panels and internal insulation. At the heart of the guidance, as Montagu Evans will often advocate on behalf of our clients, is the need to properly understand the effect of such works on the value of the historic asset.

As ever, the effect of proposals on any given asset depends on the circumstances of the building, but the Historic England advice note seems to offer some welcome flexibility and guidance to planning authorities on how to approach proposals for adaptation to listed buildings where they may offer genuine sustainability benefits; in particular, I welcome the recognition of paragraph 164 of the current NPPF, which gives ‘significant’ weight to low carbon technology in existing buildings.

Now, we need to wait and see how the forthcoming draft of the NPPF under the new Government tackles these issues.