Decarbonisation Plan Webinar 1. Introduction to decarbonisation

• Decarbonising a building is more than just adding solar panels
• Knowing how your building works will inform how you approach decarbonising it
• Appointing professionals is key to a ‘good’ decarbonisation plan
• Aims and objectives are important in defining your whole project

This is the Q&A session from the session. Questions asked by the chairs from questions posted in the question chat and from thoughts arising during the webinar. The answers were provided by the consultants Beatie Blakemore and Elizabeth Flower, who presented the webinar.

Adaptability of the Decarbonisation Plan guidance

Question: Can Decarbonisation Plans be used for organisations and buildings of different sizes, including smaller organisations managing smaller buildings?

Answer: Yes. The framework is deliberately adaptable to different building sizes and types. It follows a whole building approach that ensures decarbonisation measures are appropriate to the specific building, organisation, and available resources. The plan should be scaled so it is useful without becoming too complex or costly, particularly for organisations with limited funds, such as those in the cultural and heritage sectors.

Applicability to churches and religious buildings

Question: Can the decarbonisation framework be applied to churches, including typically funded or smaller churches?

Answer: Yes. While traditionally constructed churches can be challenging, the framework applies to this building type. Decarbonisation Plans must recommend measures that are proportionate and appropriate, respecting heritage significance and the way the building is used. The user experience and patterns of use are critical considerations.

Key organisational objectives and specific requirements should be defined at the outset. This allows the framework to be tailored appropriately to any organisation, including churches.

Focus on building use vs energy reduction

Question: Is the plan focused only on reducing energy use rather than improving how buildings are used?

Answer: The plan focuses on both. Improving how effectively a building is used is as important as reducing energy use. Some retrofit measures may increase total energy use if the building is used more often, but this can still be positive if it improves sustainability, usability, and financial viability.

Whole life carbon and ancient/historic buildings

Question: How is whole life carbon calculated for ancient or historic buildings?

Answer: Whole life carbon considers the embodied carbon of new materials against long-term energy savings. While this is important, whole life carbon assessments are not included at the Decarbonisation Plan stage because they are costly and complex. Instead, they are more appropriate for later stages when assessing and prioritising specific interventions.

Why the focus Is on buildings rather than users

Question: Why does the project focus on buildings instead of users?

Answer: Users are considered through building use and management assessments, including workshops with staff and users. These assessments identify usage patterns, comfort issues, and operational inefficiencies. While recommendations focus on building improvements, they are informed by how users interact with the building.

The approach is integrated; improving building controls and services is intended to improve user comfort and usability as well.

Impact of a single construction regulator on decarbonisation

Question: Will a proposed single construction regulator make decarbonisation more difficult?

Answer: A single regulator aims to reduce fragmentation in building regulation and improve safety. There is no clear reason this would negatively affect decarbonisation; it may actually support more coordinated and effective outcomes.

Integration with capital projects and maintenance

Question: Are Decarbonisation Plans only effective when linked to major capital projects, or can changes be incremental through maintenance?

Answer: Both approaches are possible. Early alignment with organisational goals, funding streams, and future capital works allows measures to be sequenced appropriately. Some actions can align with capital projects, while others can be implemented gradually through maintenance.

Decarbonisation Plans are designed to support incremental delivery as well as major projects. Many recommendations can be integrated into routine maintenance or implemented as low-cost operational changes. The plan helps normalise decarbonisation as part of ongoing building management.

Speakers

Beatie Blakemore: Associate Director, Project Lead & Architect at Haworth Tompkins

Elizabeth Flower: Associate & Architect at Haworth Tompkins

Dan Miles: Senior Sector Development Adviser, leading the Sector to Net Zero project, supporting heritage organisations on their journey to net zero at Historic England

Feimatta Conteh: Senior Manager, Environmental Responsibility at Arts Council England and Co- manager of the ACE-HE decarbonisation project

Feimatta Conteh: Well, hello everybody and welcome to the webinar today!

I've taken on introducing this afternoon's webinar. Dan and I are going to be sharing the hosting of the whole series across each other, and I'm delighted that you could all join us today. It's my first time using Adobe Connect, so hopefully I'll be able to do it. I'm going to do a little introduction to the project, and then I'll hand over to Beattie and Elizabeth, who are experts who will take us through the webinar.

So this webinar is the first of four, which is about an introduction to the Decarbonisation Plans. And so this project came about through a joint statement of purpose that we signed with Historic England— sorry, I'm Arts Council England, Dan's Historic England— which we signed in April 2024. So that was looking at how our two organisations as arm's-length bodies of DCMS could work together more closely on areas of collaboration and interest, and one of which is the joint sectors that we support of cultural organisations and heritage organisations based in historic buildings.

So we developed this project, and I'll talk a little bit more about that, by engaging with 3 organisations based in historic buildings and then commissioning a team led by Howarth Tompkins. And we've got Beattie and Elizabeth here today from Howarth Tompkins, and they led a multidisciplinary team working with Skelly and Cooch as the engineers on that, Gardner and Theobald, and Connersby. And this team worked together to develop decarbonisation plans for buildings, which then led into the guidance and resources which you can find on the Historic England website. And I can see a link's just been posted in the chat there to the website.

So what we aim to do with this project and what we were thinking about as we were developing it was to support cultural and heritage organisations to navigate the processes and steps. The phrase that Dan and I had in mind as we were developing this project is to support people to become confident clients when engaging with the process of engaging with consultants or commissioning surveys and assessments to develop decarbonisation plans.

So, you know, we were finding, particularly Dan in the work that he does, that people were finding lots of different resources, lots of different offers being made to them. So to understand, like, what a good decarbonisation plan could look like, and that's what we hope to do through this project. And I feel that Howarth Tompkins have really helped us and have made that happen. And the other part of that is to promote a whole building approach to decarbonisation adaptation works. and that's something that's come through from Historic England.

So looking at a building not just in terms of its fabric and construction, but the whole aspect of it, so its use and profiles and things. And so that's what we commissioned Howarth Tompkins to take on and do, and I think they've been incredibly successful with that. So we started off initially thinking that this project would be of benefit to cultural and heritage organisations that own or manage a historic building.

So, although being in a listed building was one of the criteria for the project, we think that what we've developed is useful even for people not in listed buildings. And then we've realised that actually there's a range of secondary stakeholders and beneficiaries of this project. So, organisations responsible for any commercial historic buildings, built environment professionals— so it's been really great in the chat to see a few built environment professionals introducing themselves. Who are commissioned to undertake decarbonisation works, particularly for organisations in the cultural and heritage sector, and funder and sector support organisations.

So we did some presentations to some sector support organisations before Christmas, and it's great to see colleagues from different sector support organisations in this chat. And like I say, the main speakers today are going to be Beatie Blakemore and Elizabeth Flower from Howard Tompkins. And it's been an absolute pleasure to work with them on this project, and I'll just hand over now to Beatie for the next slides.

Beatie Blakemore: Thank you, Feimatta! Can everyone hear me okay? Yep, good.

So, Feimatta, you've done a really good introduction to what the sort of purpose of the pilot study was. This is the first of 4 webinars that we're delivering. Hopefully you can all join the series, and the overall purpose of these webinars is to really demystify the process of commissioning decarbonisation plans, and in particular to explore to explain the different roles that the client and consultant team might play in the development of the decarbonisation plan, to explain the steps involved in undertaking a plan, and to introduce the suite of resources that we've developed as part of this pilot study.

So today we're giving you a bit of introduction to the project, and you'll probably find that some people in the room are very familiar with the content we're going to present, others less so. So, you know, we're going to try and keep it broad enough that it's of interest to all of you.

So I'm going to just do a sort of broad introduction of climate change in the built environment, and the pressure and need to decarbonise and retrofit existing buildings, and to talk about some of the relevant guidance and frameworks that are already in place supporting that kind of work.

And then in the second half, Elizabeth is going to explain further what we have developed in terms of the decarbonisation plan suite of documents and resources and to kind of set out how those could be used.

In the next 3 webinars, we're going to take you through the various steps of undertaking a decarbonisation plan in a little bit more detail. So, webinar 2 is going to focus on defining the objectives of a plan and gathering information. Webinar 3 is going to cover the types of surveys and assessments that might be commissioned as part of a decarbonisation plan and how these can be used to really understand how a building performs across those wide range of criteria that Faye Matter was mentioning. And then in webinar 4, we're going to explain how potential retrofit interventions can be appraised and prioritised as part of a decarbonisation plan and pathway towards net zero.

So, for the introduction to decarbonisation, so many of you will be very aware that the built environment makes a very significant contribution to global carbon emissions and consequential climate change and biodiversity loss. And the figures this sort of varies, sometimes 30 to 40% of overall emissions is mentioned. In the UK, it's estimated to be around 25% of the UK's total carbon footprint.

And when we're talking about carbon emissions associated with buildings, we're really talking about whole life carbon. So that includes the embodied carbon associated with construction and manufacture and supply and transport of building materials all the way through to their end of life. As well as operational carbon, which are the energy consumed and the carbon emitted in order to keep buildings comfortable for their occupants, so well serviced with heating, cooling, ventilation, lighting, etc. And the focus of this study is very much on the operational carbon element, and we might talk in a later session a little bit about where that intersects with whole-life carbon and embodied carbon as well.

The other key thing to remember, of course, is that buildings and their occupants are also quite vulnerable to the impacts of climate change through increasing temperature extremes, overheating in summer, extreme cold in winter, as well as increased rainfall, drought, and flooding. And it's really important to note that existing and historic buildings, just as much as new buildings, are going to be— need to be appropriately adapted to both reduce their energy consumption and improve their resilience to climate change in the long term.

So there are a number of legislative and statutory requirements governing the energy efficiency of new and existing buildings, so through Part L, for example, in the planning process. But in addition to that, the UK has committed to bring all greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. And as part of that kind of journey towards net zero, there have also been set a series of sort of stage targets, particularly with related— in relation to public sector buildings.

So, for example, the aim is that by 2032, in about 6 years' time, all direct emissions from public sector buildings should be reduced by 50% against the 2017 baseline. So these are quite ambitious targets, and have been very important in kind of shifting the dial and raising awareness about the sort of UK commitments to net zero. But what is net zero? I mean, until recently, there wasn't really an agreed definition of what that means in relation to buildings and the built environment.

So as a result, in the last few years, a cross-industry pilot initiative was launched by a series of different industry professionals that aimed to create a unified definition and methodology for net-zero carbon-aligned buildings in the UK. And this is known by the very catchy name of the UK Net Zero Carbon Carbon Building Standard, again published recently. And what that pilot does is set strict limits on both embodied carbon and operational energy. And it includes a set of progressively reducing energy use intensity targets, which are the kilowatt hours used by a building per metre squared, which are progressively reduced towards the availability of renewable energy sources expected in 2040.

And what's clear looking at this kind of pathway is that existing buildings are going to need to undergo quite comprehensive retrofit interventions to achieve those targets. It's very important to understand that the pilot has been developed to set some specific carbon budgets and targets for different sectors of the built environment, so different building typologies.

At the moment, there isn't a definitive target for the heritage sector, though that is still in development, and Historic England have engaging with the team developing the standard to make that sort of appropriate and applicable to traditionally constructed and historic buildings. It's also very important to note that the UK Net Zero Carbon Building Standard is one suggested route and methodology for net zero and is not yet considered mandatory by government. But what this is certainly doing is adding to a general sort of groundswell and movement towards understanding quite how important it's going to be to retrofit and address existing buildings as much as new construction.

So what is retrofit and decarbonisation? Again, apologies if I'm telling people what they already know, but for those who might be less familiar, so we understand it as the process of upgrading existing buildings with new technologies or features to improve their energy efficiency, performance and/or functionality. So this really aims to make buildings more comfortable and healthy and accessible, more energy efficient and lower carbon in their emissions, more cost-effective to operate, and resilient to long-term climate change.

Now, this is quite challenging in the cultural and heritage sector, where those opportunities to deliver retrofit measures may be affected by a number of sort of constraints. Heritage designations associated with listed buildings and conservation areas place particular challenges on what's permissible or appropriate to do to a building. Cultural and heritage sector buildings often involve quite complex or divided ownership structures and management structures, which make decision-making over measures quite tricky to sort of navigate, and very limited funds for both maintenance and repair as well as capital works.

One of the things we're going to be talking about quite a lot as we go through this series is that actually just maintaining a building and keeping it in good repair is actually very important when it comes to energy efficiency, so that's a really critical thing to consider. Some of you may be aware of the existing cultural sector initiatives that have been around for quite some time, really trying to drive change across the cultural sectors.

Julie's Bicycle, for example, has been around for decades, a not-for-profit organisation which supports arts and cultural organisations to respond to the demands of the climate crisis, and Julie's Bicycle provides a number of tools that have been available to cultural organisations to sort of work through that for many years. Theatre Green Book is also a very successful industry-wide initiative to work more sustainably in theatre in particular, and it includes a number of free resources and frameworks for planning change across all aspects of not just buildings, but day-to-day work in the theatre sector.

And the Gallery Climate Coalition is a sort of international community of arts organisations looking particularly to look at the sort of visual arts impacts as well. Alongside those kind of industry-driven frameworks are a series of kind of more built environment-focused guidance and frameworks that some of you may be familiar with.

So, LETI has produced a number of very useful guides which are directed not only at built environment professionals but also their clients, such as the Climate Emergency Retrofit Guide. There's also the PASS 2030, 2035, and 2038 Suitable Documents. Now, this is a British standard which gives us a very thorough framework for how to assess existing buildings, design and specify appropriate interventions, retrofit interventions, and how to deliver those, and the kind of competencies and different professionals that you need to do that properly.

And PAS is quite important because certain publicly funded projects need to adopt the PAS methodology in order to be compliant with those funding requirements. Historic England has also produced for many years a series of documents that support, again, both clients and built environment professionals in how to approach energy efficiency in historic buildings, and this webinar series forms part of that guidance, and it's underpinned by what's known as the Whole Building Approach.

The Whole Building Approach is a process that's been developed by Historic England over many years It's a systematic process for devising and implementing suitable, coordinated, balanced, and well-integrated solutions for energy efficiency.

And the key kind of driver behind that is that really….. it's really important that any retrofit interventions or energy efficiency interventions to existing buildings are based on a really thorough and holistic understanding of the building in its context. And how it performs in order that those interventions avoid harm to significance, that minimise the risks of negative or unintended consequences such as mould growth or damage to the fabric, that those interventions ensure and improve the environment for the occupants and also provide that long-term climate resilience and minimise environmental impact. While being proportionate and effective and cost-efficient.

So, the whole building approach really underpins our whole piece of work. Now, what you may or may not be aware of is how the whole building approach is structured. So, some of you will be familiar with the RBA Plan of Work, which is the kind of industry standard for how works to buildings are defined, developed through the design, procured, and installed. And that's a sort of 7-step structured process that is really the kind of agreed framework for how all building works are developed in this country.

The whole building approach effectively maps against those 7 RIBA work stages, from an initial gathering data and sort of undertaking surveys, through assessing and planning what might be required to a building, then designing and specifying procuring, installing, and using, evaluating, and maintaining that building over time.

So there's a lot of alignment between the two approaches. So, where does a decarbonisation plan come within that process? Well, we see it as broadly equivalent to Stages 1 and 2 of the Whole Building Approach, which is, we think, sort of similar to stage 0-1 of the RBA. So those of you who are built environment professionals, we think it's kind of equivalent to an early-stage feasibility study.

So the important thing to understand there is that the decarbonisation plan is essentially strategic in its nature. It's high-level. It starts to begin a conversation within a client team about how to move a building forwards towards Net Zero, and Elizabeth in a minute is going to sort of take you through that in a little bit more detail. Now what we would like to do now, just to make sure everyone's still awake and engaged, is to ask you a few questions about your level of sort of knowledge and understanding of decarbonisation.

So there are two questions which I think that Jess is going to bring up somehow by magic about has your organisation set decarbonisation targets of any form? And, you know, if you want to kind of qualify that answer, please do put some responses in the chat. And then we're going to ask you another question in a minute about what of the sort of content I just explained in terms of guidance and frameworks that are already available have you come across in your time as a client or as a built environment professional?

Speaker: Wow, it looks like the majority of organisations have set some sort of decarbonisation target, which is very positive to read. I'm just going to take you on to the next question now. So, which of the below have you actively engaged with in your work?

So, from Historic England's point of view, it's great to see that the majority of you have engaged with the whole building approach. Quite a few of you with the various PASs as well. And give you just a couple more seconds there on that one before we bring it back to the presentation. I can see that the least engaged with is the LETI Climate Emergency Retrofit Guide, but very interesting. I'll bring it back to the presentation now.

Beatie Blakemore: Thank you, Jess. So it sounds like there's quite a good level of knowledge and understanding in the room, which is great, and we're really looking forward to your questions and challenges to us at the end of the presentation. I'm going to hand over now to Elizabeth, who's going to take you through the kind of overarching framework of the decarbonisation pilot that we've been working on and introduce you to the suite of guidance that we've developed.

Elizabeth Flower: Great, thanks, Beatie! So yes, I'm now going to talk a bit more about decarbonisation plans themselves and what they involve, starting with what is a decarbonisation plan. So as Beattie's touched on, it's a strategic high-level assessment of opportunities to reduce carbon emissions associated with the use and operation of a building through measures that reduce energy demand, improve the efficiency of building services, enable the transition towards low and zero carbon technologies and renewable energy sources, and also improve resilience to future climate change.

So why is it useful?

A decarbonisation plan can provide a holistic understanding of the current performance and circumstances of a building, including its condition, inhabitation, management, and energy use. It should set out a range of measures to enable a progressive reduction in the building's energy use and transition towards low and zero-carbon technologies and renewable energy sources. And it provides a framework to help organisations plan next steps and identify funding and budgets, opportunities for design development, planning, and listed building consents and delivery. And it will provide a pathway which illustrates how measures can be prioritised and implemented over time to reach organisational energy reduction goals.

So there's two key ways in how a plan can be used. Firstly, to plan capital and ongoing maintenance work, so any future capital projects, it can kind of be aligned with to ensure that decarbonisation is properly considered as part of those, and also to support grant funding applications. Obviously, funding sources will be specific to each organisation, but mainly cultural and heritage buildings are publicly funded or are supported by funds such as National Lottery Heritage Fund, to whom promoting and supporting sustainability is really important. So having a decarbonisation plan in place can be really helpful to support those applications.

So what's the final output of a decarbonisation plan? What are we working towards?

So ultimately, the plan will culminate in a graph kind of such as this, which shows a decarbonisation pathway. You can see in green here the individual prioritised improvement measures that are implemented over time. So at the bottom, it's probably a bit small to see, but those are years moving forward from today, that then gives a progressive reduction in energy use and a gradual transition towards low carbon and renewable energy. The plan, as well as the pathway, should also outline the next steps involved in how to go about implementing those improvement measures.

So whether they need further design studies, additional surveys, or any other specific consultants that should be involved. And who should prepare a decarbonisation plan?

So typically, a decarbonisation plan will be developed for the building owner by a lead consultant, sometimes such as an architect, particularly with historic buildings, or a conservation architect, but working together with other built environment specialists, so building surveyors, building services engineers, and quantity surveyors. It's important to note that for projects that require certification under PAS 2035 or 2038, there are some distinct roles that are required to ensure compliance, so the professionals involved need to have the appropriate training and accreditation.

So in the next slides of the presentation, I'm just going to give a brief high-level overview of the outputs of the Culture and Heritage Sector Decarbonisation pilot study commissioned by Historic England and Arts Council England that we worked on. There were 4 key outputs from this study. Firstly, a decarbonisation plan template with accompanying guidance, a suite of information fact sheets, and 3 case study decarbonisation plans for 3 listed buildings. And all of these outputs should now be available on the Historic England website.

So the decarbonisation plan template that we've produced sets out the main headings and contents that a client should expect to see in a decarbonisation plan, depending on the scale and scope of the commission. So essentially, it is a long contents list that runs through the 6 steps process and gives a bit more detail to what each section should involve and contain.

As I mentioned, the process is a 6-step process through these various stages that provides a clear and practical framework for defining the scope and ambitions of the study, collecting and assessing and surveying information, evaluating the long list of options, shortlisting and developing those options to finally choosing a route forward and the resulting decarbonisation plan itself. So built into the decarbonisation plan template is some guidance on how to use it included within the plan, and that includes signposting sources for further information as well.

So it's, as we touched on at the beginning, it's targeted at both historic organisations to be able to use and see what a plan should contain, but also built environment professionals to navigate through the steps as well.

Alongside the decarbonisation plan template and guidance, we also produced a series of fact sheets that are all shown here. I say that these, if you're an organisation considering starting out a decarbonisation plan, these are quite a good place to start as they cover much of the terminology and things like information gathering, the types of surveys that may be involved.

Professionals that may be involved in a bit more detail. And also cover things about how, how best you can set up your building and organisation prior to commissioning a decarbonisation plan and making sure you have everything in place that you'll need or that the consultant team will look to ask you for. So as a high-level overview, just to touch on the 3 case study building projects.

Obviously, in the future webinars, we'll be going into these in a bit more detail and showing exactly how the plan was kind of navigated through for each one, but just wanted to introduce the buildings themselves. So, the first case study is Shire Hall Museum in Dorchester. It's an 18th-century former courthouse building, Grade I listed, and it was converted into a museum in 2018 through quite a significant capital works refurbishment project. And it's around 1,240 metres squared.

So you can see Shire Hall here, it's located on quite a busy high street in Dorchester, slightly away from the main centre, and is kind of nestled within all of the buildings that front that high street. These are some pictures of inside Shire Hall, so the Crown Courtroom on the left there, followed by the café and museum gift shop, which were introduced as part of the refurbishment works, the basement-level cells and museum experience, and then finally on the right, just showing how some new services were also introduced into this historic building as part of that refurbishment work.

So the next case study is the Littonville Library in Newcastle. A 19th-century library and community space with spaces for public hire as well. It's Grade II* listed, and this building was interesting because it's at the early stages of a capital project. So, they had another design team on board and were on the kind of cusp of submitting a planning application at the time we commenced the decarbonisation plan study itself.

So, they're around 2,000 metres squared. And you can see the Littenfield shown here in quite a city centre location of, in Newcastle, just a short walk away from the station. Internally, there are lots of spaces of high heritage significance, and it hasn't undergone any significant refurbishment in recent years.

And then finally, the kind of wildcard case study, the Royal and Derngate Theatre in Northampton. This is a much larger multi-phase theatre complex with a number of different buildings used altogether. So, some areas of the building are 19th-century Grade II listed, and then there's other later 20th and 21st-century areas that are not listed. This organisation is currently right at the beginning of developing a high-level strategic master plan. You can see this overview here shows the whole complex and how the spaces are kind of divided as part of our study.

So, the red area at the top is the original listed theatre with accompanying production facilities slightly to the right, and then the big purple area is the second auditorium, the Derngate, which was built slightly later in the 1980s. The two theatres operated independently before being joined together by a central foyer shown in yellow, and then later a couple of cinemas were also added on to the side. And so this case study was of particular interest to a larger organisation that may have multiple different occupants or different demises within one larger complex.

So these images just show some areas inside the Royal and Derngate, so the original listed theatre auditorium on the left, paint frame workshop in the middle, and the Derngate Auditorium after that, and then finally the shared foyer space between the two theatres. So that's it from my section. I think we'll now hand over to Feimatta and Dan to share some questions from the audience.

Feimatta Conteh: Yes, I've managed to unmute and yeah, so we've turned that on. Hello there, Dan. We've done that and I think BT and Elizabeth will be joining us now. The questions are in there. I think we're all getting used to using Adobe Connect, so there were a few comments that made their way into the question box and we'll be able to get those through. So, Dan, do you want to kick things off? I know you kind of had a question about, you know, how a decarbonisation plan might fit with different kinds of organisations.

Dan Miles: Yeah, just as a start, and we'll go through the questions in a second, but the first question, just picking up on something that Elizabeth was saying, looking at the different organisations, was, you know, how does it fit in terms of sort of size of an organisation, or different— can it be used for different types of building or actually size of buildings? So I know a couple of the examples we've got are medium to large buildings, but what about for smaller organisations that might be managing smaller buildings?

Beatie Blakemore: Shall I answer that? Yeah, so the framework that we've developed is inherently and deliberately adaptable to different building sizes and typologies, and really that's all because, you know, the whole building approach, which is which underpins this whole piece of work, is all about making decarbonisation works appropriate to the scale and the nature of the organisation. So that sort of site specificity is absolutely crucial to how you approach a decarbonisation plan.

And in the next webinar, we're going to start to drill down into that in a bit more detail about how you scale the sort of scope and complexity of the plan relative to the building that you have, and also importantly, the resources that you have available to you. I mean, I don't want to get into too much detail now because we're going to cover it in later sessions, but, you know, there are, there are a number of very, very detailed assessments, evidence-based assessments that you can develop to support a decarbonisation plan. And they're incredibly useful, and they help you understand in, in ever-increasing detail how your building functions in terms of sort of building physics, how your users interact with it, what your kind of business plan is.

All these things are really important to understand, but at the same time, we're keen to make sure that the decolonisation plan itself doesn't become too expensive or unwieldy to be prohibitive to particularly cultural and heritage sector organisations who tend to have limited funds. So that is the very first and very important step in developing the plan is pitching it at the level at which it's most useful to you as an organisation. Does that sort of answer your question, Dan?

Dan Miles: It does, thank you, perfect!

Feimatta Conteh: Thank you!

Dan Miles: Feimatta, do you want to look at the list and see?

Feimatta Conteh: Yeah, I was just looking down the list there and we were talking about applicability to a range of organisations, and there's a question that's just come in there, it's about case studies involving normal-sized or funded churches? I know we didn't really think about kind of religious buildings in there, but I mean, sorry to kind of just put it straight to you, do you think the resources and things that we've developed could be applied to churches, or is there something that's specific about those spaces that I'm not particularly aware of?

Beatie Blakemore: Well, I think— is that to us? That's to us.

Feimatta Conteh: Yes, yes, sorry.

Beatie Blakemore: I mean, I think, you know, traditionally constructed churches are some of the most challenging to adapt, and I'm sure those in the audience who come from that world will know that. But there's no reason why the framework that we've developed shouldn't be absolutely as applicable to that building typology as any other. Again, you know, the focus of the study is very much that, you know, there's no point in a decarbonisation plan that recommends internally insulating a, you know, a stone church, for example, where it completely undermine the heritage significance of that space. So we have to, have to look at measures that are proportionate and appropriate to not just the building, but also, as someone put in the question, most importantly, how it's used.

Feimatta Conteh: Yes.

Beatie Blakemore: So that's the human experience, it's the time of day that it's used, how often it's used, the different ways in which a building might be used. And I think one of the things that we've talked about quite a lot in the development of the case studies is that actually really increasing the efficacy of a building, so making sure it's being used to its full capabilities, is as important as driving down energy usage in real terms.

And sometimes retrofit measures that really expand the potential of a building to be used in a variety of ways may not even lead to reduced energy consumption in real terms because you might be keeping the building in operation for longer during the day or more days a week or through different seasons. But that's still an important thing to try to do, that we basically want our buildings to be well used and financially sustainable. And that's a key kind of consideration in this plan. So it's not just looking at a downward trajectory of energy use, it's also trying to get the most out of our buildings.

Elizabeth Flower: Also, just going back to the point on churches specifically, I think something that we'll discuss in the coming webinars, running through the first step of kind of defining the scope, is really getting a good understanding of any key organisational objectives, real specific requirements of each organisation form part of the brief for the plan from the outset. So any organisation could then kind of establish that brief to then use the rest of the plan.

Beatie Blakemore: Yeah, that's great.

Feimatta Conteh: Just reminding, because also people won't know, you're still able to post questions while we're going through this bit, or add things into the chat. I was just thinking there, Elizabeth, you were talking about churches and things and talking about old historic buildings, the very first question that came in, and I'm interested in this and I don't know how we'd work it out, but how is whole life carbon calculated for ancient buildings? And I guess first of all you'd be like, how do you classify an ancient building rather than a historic building?

Beatie Blakemore: Well, I mean, whole life carbon is a big topic of discussion, and we, and luckily we had that discussion this morning in a separate workshop with Historic England. So I think it's important to know, because that someone in a workshop this morning said, why aren't you including whole life carbon assessments in decarbonisation plans? And, you know, our response was, well, ideally, all works to buildings and their services should be looked at in a whole life carbon perspective.

So, you know, weighing up the embodied carbon of the, the measure that you're— the material that you might introduce versus the sort of long-term energy efficiency savings over the lifespan. So, you know, even for a historic building and an existing building, you can look at the whole-life carbon impact of anything new that you're bringing into that building, and that can form part of your assessment of its viability and appropriateness.

Now, we haven't included whole-life carbon measurements as part of the decarbonisation plan, and that's primarily because firstly we think it's too prohibitively expensive and complex to undertake this early stage of thinking, and also that we think it's something that might form part of the next stage of assessment and prioritisation of measures. So it's not that we don't think it's important consideration, but again we're thinking about what's the appropriate level of investigation and calculation and professional professional support needed to take the next step in decision-making around what you might do to a building.

Now, there's a lot of recommendations that come out of a decarbonisation plan that need further work. So that might include, for example, you know, if you are proposing to internally insulate a traditionally constructed building, then you might well want to carry out quite detailed, you know, modelling of the sort of, you know, passage of moisture through that altered construction. It's a really important consideration, and look at that in quite a sort of dynamic perspective over time. But it's not something that necessarily feeds into the decision-making at this stage of the process. It's something that we would identify as a next step in assessing the appropriateness of detailed design measures.

Dan Miles: Thank you! I'm just going to look at another one. I just see one, I think partly in the— what we've been talking about and the approach, but there was sort of, why is the focus on the building instead of the users? I think I could probably just sort of maybe clarify part of that, is that this project is part of, you know, work that Feimatta for the Arts Council and me in Historic England doing at looking at the whole sort of supporting organisations with their sort of carbon reduction, net zero across all the scope 1, 2, 3s, all, you know, how they're working and their organisation behaviour change. But this was specifically targeting the building.

But actually, looking at the question, it is really important because, you know, the whole approach that you and at BT and Elizabeth, you've put forward is about users, is about the building use. So I don't know whether you just wanted to sort of comment on that one in terms of the project.

Elizabeth Flower: I can talk a little bit about that. So for each case study, we did carry out a building use and management assessment, which involved some detailed briefing workshops with building staff and also building users to gain a really good understanding of how the buildings were used, any seasonal patterns or fluctuations in use. Different types of users, and different usage requirements.

I think certain things did come up through those conversations that were relevant to users as well, such as in one building, the heating was getting turned on very, very early in the morning for the cleaners, whereas in other buildings, the users were actually very, very cold because the heating was being quite poorly managed to try and reduce energy costs.

So the users are kind of considered within all of that context, but perhaps the recommendations are slightly more directed at improvements to the building rather than the users themselves managing it differently.

Beatie Blakemore: Yeah, well, although, you know, part of the recommendations absolutely involve things like, you know, how you can introduce a greater level of control over the services within within the building in order to improve comfort and usability of the space. So I'd say the focus isn't on the building more than the users. I think we see that as very much an integrated approach.

Dan Miles: Thank you!

Elizabeth Flower: Good.

Dan Miles: Feimatta, have you got another one you'd like to….

Feimatta Conteh: No, I mean, there's a question here which I guess I don't understand because I'm not a built environment professional, and Dan, It's made me smile and remember, you know, the role that we took in this project of being the non-professionals asking the questions so that we could understand things better and it could be useful here.

There's a question which is, hopefully, Beatie and Elizabeth, it makes sense to you, you can understand, whether you see any difficulty in achieving decarbonisation with the proposed single construction regulator. And that's just not a phrase I've come across before. So is single construction regulator something that has real kind of significance in the built environment sector?

Beatie Blakemore: So this is really looking at sort of reform in terms of how building regulations are monitored and seeking to avoid the kind of fragmentation across the industry that led to issues like Grenfell. So it's kind of focused on building regulations and safety. I mean, generally, I think if anything that's trying to kind of reduce that fragmentation and provide a coordinated approach to how buildings are both designed and specified and constructed is a good thing. Off the top of my head, I can't think of reasons why that would negatively affect the way in which we in the built environment would be proposing to achieve decarbonisation.

But I wonder whether— I'd love to hear from the person who asked the question whether you had something specific in mind on that? I mean, it's a big subject which may be too complex for this forum, but if anyone who asked that question wants to kind of add a bit more detail to the question, then please do. We'll try to answer it.

Feimatta Conteh: Yeah, there's a question that's come through, Dan, sorry, that kind of aligns with some of the thoughts that I was having. So let me see, I will ask the questions coming through, but for me it's about how does the decarbonisation plan process, as we've kind of developed in this project, sort of integrate with capital projects and other things?

I remember, Elizabeth, you were mentioning about the situation that's happening at Lytham Phil, and this question that's just come through, it said it seems as if the plans are best implemented when there's a major capital project. Is there scope for making changes in an incremental way as part of maintenance plans to better manage the size of budgets required? So I think there's sort of two things in that, but hopefully that's a question you could be answering now.

Dan Miles: It's a great question!

Elizabeth Flower: I think again it goes back to clear definition of organisational goals, funding streams, any other kind of capital works that are on the horizon at the beginning of the project, and aligning the implementation measures accordingly. Whether that is to a capital project or just to more of a kind of maintenance gradual approach. One of the buildings, as I said, did have a capital project on the cards, and that affected not the measures that we were recommending as part of the study, but the sequence and process in which they were implemented.

So some measures were brought forward to align with the capital project, whereas they may not have been the ones that were giving the best energy saving outcome. So it's all about, I guess, setting those objectives at the beginning and then tailoring the implementation and forward plan accordingly.

Beatie Blakemore: Yeah, and I think that, you know, to the second part of that question, that in a way that's exactly what the decarbonisation plan is designed to do. To show how these interventions could be delivered incrementally and absolutely as part of maintenance and repair and those sort of more kind of regular looking after the building as much as major capital projects.

And I guess, you know, the key point here is that we're not mapping purely a reduction in energy. What we're trying to map is an appropriate sequence, Elizabeth said, of interventions to align with how the building is managed and the funding that's available and whether or not there is a robust maintenance plan in place, because many buildings don't have a good one or can't fund one adequately.

So it's really sort of designed— the decarbonisation plan is designed to tease out some of those challenges and issues and open up a conversation about how the building could be sort of better maintained and managed over time, and whether or not there may be a need and an opportunity to go out to major funders and sort of roll some of these interventions into a single capital project, or whether it would be more efficient to kind of roll them out over time.

Some recommendations won't even need, you know, an external contractor or a design team to do them. Some of them might be simply about changing some of the metering or the way in which services are controlled, those kind of easy wins that actually are absolutely within the reach of an organisation already, they just might not quite know how to go about it without that initial support.

Dan Miles: Yeah, that's really interesting! We talked about it when we were looking at all this work, is the idea of sort of normalising decarbonisation into maintenance and repair, make it a sort of a consideration that it's just a normal part of how you plan maintenance, how you're thinking about it, very much how the whole sort of carbon reduction is normalized into how organizations are thinking about how they manage their businesses and their governance. It just becomes part and parcel of the decision-making process. So that's a really good question.