Why government policy must urgently support home thermal insulation

Last summer, my very old friend Jennifer reached out to me in a very difficult situation. She told me that the rear southwest-facing rooms of her split-level room became unbearably hot, with the temperature in her bedroom regularly rising to over 40°C.

Jennifer’s maisonette is located above shops in a 1930s block, opposite the A1 Holloway Road in Islington. The building is good. Jennifer has owned her duplex since 1989. It is stylishly furnished and has the last wooden windows in the block, typical of the period in which it was built.

We started discussing what could be done. I told Jennifer there were only two Bright ways to reduce heat gains from solar energy. One is to repair external sun visors and the other is to purchase an air conditioner. The latter was rejected due to CO₂ associated manufacturing and operating costs.

For many years I believed that buildings should be able to use external blinds to gain less heat in the middle of summer and lose less heat in winter. I did research on this at UCL.

Jennifer opted for external thermal blinds because they provided both sun protection and (some) additional thermal insulation. For these reasons, external thermal blinds have been installed all over the world for over 100 years.

After installing the shutters, Jennifer received three letters from Islington Planning advising her that she was in breach of planning regulations

We discussed the need for a planning application and Jennifer decided not to prepare one. The reason was that when (over 20 years ago) she approached the designers at the time with a proposal to install 25mm thick glass in the lower front windows to reduce noise levels, she was told not to bother with the application because “it’s just Holloway Road.”

Jennifer’s rear windows look out onto dilapidated extensions and courtyards leading to shops (mostly grocery stores these days), a driveway and a ground-floor warehouse.

Shutters were fitted and almost immediately afterwards she received three successive letters from Islington Planning advising her that she was in breach of planning regulations relating to listed buildings and conservation areas and threatening enforcement if the shutters were not removed.

The building is not listed or in a conservation area, but when this was told to the planning officer, the development manager replied that the shutters would have to be removed anyway.

A retrospective planning application was submitted but was rejected on the grounds that the shutters faced the street (not facing the street), would create a hostile street environment and detract from the appearance of the building.

AJ readers can make their own assessments:

As reported last month in AJ, the subject of the study is overheating caused by climate change, Heat resistance and balanced coolingwhich was prepared by the House of Commons cross-party environmental audit committee and published earlier this year.

A report has warned of a “blind spot” in government policy on the “silent killer” of overheating, even as experts predict “more frequent and more severe” heatwaves in the UK as temperatures rise.

Jennifer is elderly, disabled and frail. Shutters were installed to protect her health and well-being. She has reported this to Islington Planning on numerous occasions, most recently at the request of the case officer. He intends to appeal.

There is an urgent need to upgrade external blinds, blinds and thermal blinds in residential buildings to enable them to be built over, with planning authorities acting on the assumption that they should approve them in the meantime.

Stephen Gage is Emeritus Professor at Bartlett, UCL