A central plank of the Labour government’s plan to tackle the UK’s ongoing housing crisis is to develop 12 new towns across the country, in a drive towards the ambitious goal of building 1.5 million new homes over the course of the current parliament. There is clearly a need for new housing, with the number of households on local authority waiting lists being alarmingly over a million. But there is no reason that all of these homes need to be new builds.
There are more than one million empty homes in England according to the Action on Empty Homes campaign, with 261,189 of these being ‘long-term empty’, in other words unfurnished and not lived in for more than six months. This unutilised capacity could be part of the solution to the housing crisis, and given the high carbon impact of new buildings compared the much lower impact of retrofits, this would also help the government aim of creating a growing green economy. However, the current tax and policy landscape acts as a roadblock by dis-incentivising retrofit activity.
The lack of tax reliefs for retrofitting old buildings or repairing electrical goods is in stark contrast to those being granted to fossil fuel consumption and the building of new homes, for instance. This adds weight to the notion that the UK tax system is geared towards a high-carbon, linear economy. This archaic system continues to hinder the transition towards a greener economy and needs updating.
As society evolves, so should our tax policies. Indeed, there is already an ongoing but underreported debate about transitioning taxes from individuals and renewable resources to non-renewables. This shift extends beyond fuel and mineral resources to include assets that yield unearned income such as real estate, intellectual property, financial transactions, capital gains, and data.
Such a tax shift would be environmentally beneficial, promoting reuse and prolonging the life of products, materials, and components while discouraging the extraction of virgin resources. This approach could also drive job creation since recovery and recycling require substantial labour. By reducing taxes on wages and production profits, the economy benefits from increased employment, investment, and entrepreneurship while discouraging raw material consumption and asset speculation. There is also a suggestion that a pivot from labour to pollution and resource consumption could boost GDP, and lead to overall reduction in environmental harm, as highlighted in research conducted with the Ex’tax project in the Netherlands. In short, a win, win, win.
Avoid building communities from scratch
The carbon impact of building new houses is one factor, but the huge benefits of retrofit must not be overlooked. Vacant homes, shops and offices exist at the heart of existing communities across the country. Building New Towns creates the challenge of also creating new communities from scratch. This includes a myriad of considerations not least the social infrastructure, energy infrastructure, transport infrastructure, the list goes on. In contrast, by reusing existing buildings we would benefit from a double carbon saving by not having to build the infrastructure to support them.
When we make old buildings habitable again, it's an opportunity to invest in and enhance existing infrastructure rather than extend infrastructure into new land. So in fact, by making vacant homes habitable and vibrant, we are benefiting existing communities socially, economically and environmentally.
With economic growth at the heart of government plans, town centres should be a key focus for retrofit. The decline of the high street over the past decade is well-documented following the rise of online retail, the continuing impact of covid-19 and the cost-of-living crisis. This has left swathes of vacant retail space, including shopping centres, right at the heart of our communities in prime locations for allowing sustainable lifestyles. It is not that we do not need vibrant high streets providing services that everyone can access, but rather that as our needs for retail space shifts and town centres potentially become more condensed areas of activity, vacant space as such could be a prime location for conversion into homes.
We are in a different place now to when new towns were built in the 1970s, we can now use technology to help us solve these challenges around an existing building stock. Especially as a lot of these challenges are multifaceted and require collaboration between different parties, technology can support in facilitating this collaboration and also enable solutions to be tested, helping to prioritise where to invest first and ultimately support data driven decision-making.
Much-needed new homes will be built, but they shouldn’t be built without first considering what we already have.
Got a story? Email news@theconstructionindex.co.uk
