No Climate resilience
Housing development is always a very hot issue in Thanet but Deb Shotton, Green Party candidate for Pegwell and Cliffsend, (pictured above) is shocked by the wasteful design of luxury houses being built on a new scheme in the ward.
“We all know that we face a climate crisis,” Deb says, “but these new houses are still going up with no built in climate resilience and no regard for sustainability. It is so wasteful. There are no solar panels, no rain water harvesting and all the houses are fitted with new gas boilers.”
“Hilariously the only nod to the climate emergency is they have all been fitted with electric car chargers!”
Missed opportunity
“They’ve missed a perfect opportunity to provide solar, rainwater harvesting and ground source heat pumps. All of which are much cheaper and efficient as part of a new build.”
“Thanet Green Party will do everything it can to ensure that planners work with developers so that sustainable methods of heating, cooling and saving water are fitted as standard. In the long term this will not only be good for the environment but it will save the residents a lot of money. It should be enforced at the planning stage for all new residential and commercial developments.”
greener and cheaper
Deb’s expertise in this field is based on many years experience in housing, property management and development. With her husband Phil she renovated a large early Victorian house in Ramsgate, fitting a heat pump, solar panels, rainwater harvesting and excellent insulation, to create a very warm, efficient and cost effective home.
“The capital outlay involved in the installation will have been dwarfed by the savings we make in energy costs by the end of 5 years, two years inside the usual 7 year pay back or return period. In mid-winter, with us and our Ukrainian refugee family in permanent residence, and with regular visits from family, our energy bills for a large five bedroom house were no more than £230 per month. This includes charging our electric car. In the summer months our bills last year hovered around the £30 - £50 mark per month.”
“As I said, we were lucky. We were in a position to retrofit and could afford to do so. Not having gas, we save more than £100 on standing charges alone, and feel much safer not have gas in the house. “
“However the costs of installing vastly more efficient ground source heat pumps, huge rainwater harvesting systems and solar panes in new housing developments are about a third the cost of retrofitting."
New houses should be built to be sustainable
Why is this not mandated? Why are buyers of new homes not being protected from rising energy prices and worldwide supply problems? Under our sunny coastal skies, solar panels are prodigiously effective. There should be no excuse for not covering every single roof with as many as they can take. Can you imagine the difference this would make!
Those politicians who excuse the lack of progress in this are by stating that the sun doesn't always shine, completely miss the point, just as they do when they claim the same for wind, and wind power. These resources are clean and free for us to harness, the technology is improving all the time, the sustainability of panels and turbines is increasing vastly and the sun will shine and the wind will blow.
Rainwater harvesting, which in our house we use to flush most of our toilets, is another superb opportunity to grasp when building new developments. Permeable surfaces to minimise run-off and water harvesting rob the water companies of their biggest excuse for discharges of foul water into our seas and waterways.
I believe it is close to criminal to waste the energy nature brings. The house-building lobby have had their way for far too long. They need to be obliged to build to passivhaus standards and provide real value for money for the people who are going to live in them while world energy and clean water supplies continue to be problematic at local, national and global levels."