We mentioned the government’s long-awaited Heat and buildings strategy in the article about zero carbon homes a couple of months ago. Now published ahead of COP26, the direction of travel is a little clearer. Here we summarise what it says, looking at how it will affect you and your decisions as your existing heating system reaches end of life – we’re not looking at standards for newbuilds here – they have their own paths.  A third-party summary written by Building Design is a useful primer along with a cautionary reader comment from Finland highlighting the intricacies of vapour barriers when adding new insulation inside or out.  A recent Guardian article usefully lays out the “hydrogen landscape” and the ongoing tests.

Key points

The strategy says many good things, with good aspirations, but the thing that really stands out for existing homeowners is that a hydrogen infrastructure remains a work-in-progress. The issue is still: Can it be made economically and ecologically “at scale”, and deployed using existing gas mains? The government has said it needs more time to run research projects and decide – another 5 years. Can the climate wait ?

As we said previously, the heat-pump route is more involved, and has more finely tuned parameters for success.  You might therefore want to nurse that old boiler gently into its dotage until the infrastructure research is done, because a replacement hydrogen boiler (already designed with prototypes available from, for example, Worcester-Bosch, with a negligible cost premium) would be a trivial replacement by comparison, especially in a typical Hammersmith period home.  Installation of so-called hydrogen-ready boilers could be a way to prime the pump for a national switchover, like the switch from town gas from 1967 – 77.

If you’re interested in a no-nonsense discussion between a boiler manufacturer involved in government-sponsored hydrogen trials, their ins and outs, plus heat pumps, and someone who’s actually installed both in the real world, then the video adjacent is for you. It should open your eyes to most issues homeowners are about to grapple with, and discusses many of the points here in more detail.

Bridge pedestal grit blasted

The bridge reopened on the 17th July to some small fanfare. This was after the council’s appointed engineers had blast cleaned the cast iron pedestals so that they could be fully examined for cracks, and the case for continued safe operation could be made. 

There are cracks evident in all pedestals to a lesser or greater degree, but they are now assessed as not being critical to structural integrity, provided that the pedestals are not overstressed, which means minimising the movement of the chains that run over them.

Chain heating arrangement (pedestal within housing)

Bridge Chain heater

The temporary solution, which allows the current limited use by pedestrians and bikes, is to heat or cool the chains that run over the pedestals to maintain temperature, so as to keep them in approximately the same place avoiding excess pedestal stress.  This is obviously a 24×7 energy-intensive business, a least-worst solution for the time-being.  It’s worth noting that even with only pedestrians and bikes crossing, the bridge still sways a little, it is very much a live structure.  The current and much reduced-cost proposal for shoring up the bearings on top of the pedestals (“stabilisation works”) is to replace them with elastomeric sliding bearings, at a total cost of around £6m as widely reported, a figure that doesn’t seem unreasonable.  Others can judge whether this is a good enough solution for the long term.  We’d prefer to be without the nagging doubts of the hidden cast iron bolted-in parts in critical structural positions, to allow the engineering of a robust 100-year + solution using easily replaceable bearings. This wouldn’t be expensive in the scale of the total repair bill, and as we described early this year, fixing the recurring problem effectively for good.

Without going into further exhaustive detail, which can be found in the references listed below, the main issue remains who will pay for the repairs. The most sensible option is to substantially dismantle the existing bridge with the COWI-Foster structure, or other temporary bridge in place for the duration. This would allow it to be properly repaired to a higher quality than can be achieved onsite, including replacing the troublesome cast iron, and might be quicker overall.  Consideration should also be given to lightening the structure via a lighter/improved roadway as we’ve mentioned before, so as to lower bridge loadings, potentially raise capacity a little, and we’d very much like to see wider pathways for pedestrians & bikes.

The latest update from the Task Force shows that our council leader and the newly re-appointed government minister responsible, Baroness Vere, are again at loggerheads, this time over the relatively small sum of £6m for stabilisation works, which is why they haven’t started.  If they can’t agree on this, how ever will they agree on the £100m+ full repair bill ?  We call for a ceasefire and end to hostilities by letter.

References

• Bridge Task Force documents
• New Civil Engineer – bridge reopening 
• H&F Bridge page including letters to and fro.
• Barnes Village Bugle (August) with significant detail and discussion of the proposed ferry, now mothballed.

Zero carbon homes are very much on-topic with the COP26 summit approaching in November, but to date rather more discussion has been around standards for newbuilds, downplaying the fact that by most measures 70-80% of the planned “net zero homes of 2050” are already built, 9-inch solid walls, warts and all.  “Decarbonising” them is now exercising government, councils, the RIBA and industry at many levels.

UK Domestic energy

You’ll probably have heard of plans to eliminate natural gas boilers by 2025 – certainly in newbuilds – but my house and yours won’t be so far behind.  Domestic energy use represents about 27% of UK energy consumption, with 85% of that apparently used for heating & hot water – as significant in climate effect as the usual suspects – cars and planes.

Brian’s home in Hammersmith

You may also be familiar with Tom Pakenham’s Passivhaus in Lena Gardens W6 from a few years ago, which sets a formidable standard for whole-house renovation with huge attention to detail to achieve the required standard.

But what if you took an existing Edwardian terraced family home in 2021, and made it zero carbon while living in it, but without gutting the interior, or adding 100+mm of hard insulation to the inside of all the external walls, ripping up the floors to insulate them, and possibly compromising or losing some of the period features we appreciate?  This is what our member Brian Thresh is doing – you may have seen him present the project at London Climate Action week in June.  He shows that it can be less intrusive than we might fear.

Let’s be honest for a moment, there are only so many builders in the world, and so many hours in the day, there is little practical chance of all the country’s millions of homes being laboriously superinsulated in the next few years – after all we’ve been talking about insulation for 40+ years already.  Brian expects to be able to demonstrate that his home is zero carbon, once the annual numbers roll in, through the combination of:

• Replacement of a gas boiler with a substantial 12kW air-source heat-pump
• 6.6kW of solar cells
• Battery storage
• A green & flexible electricity tariff, using a smartmeter

There’s an interesting tension here between expenditure on craftsmanship – a well designed and precisely executed complete refurbishment often with specialist materials – the Passivhaus – and the retrofit of a period home using modern mass-produced technology to achieve a similar net result, but with significantly less upheaval. 

It seems likely that the latter will prevail for the majority because of the numbers described above, with as much of the former as is practicable on the existing housing stock, but how do the finances and carbon footprint compare: Conversion / Running / Whole life?  Much of the public discussion is around carbon, and saving on everyday bills; rather less – a lot less – on Total Cost of Ownership, or Net Present Cost, important for those with shallower pockets. As Brian says, this stuff doesn’t come cheap at the moment.  It will be instructive to assess and compare over the years to come, particularly as technology improves, such that an optimised mix of solutions can be provided for each domestic setting.  Solar cells have already improved significantly, but you may not have owned any yet !

HS2 on Newsnight

If you saw the HS2 story on last week’s Newsnight, you might be surprised at how so much money has been spent, and how much digging done, including in this borough with parts of Wormwood Scrubs being churned up to break ground for Old Oak station, “the most connected station in the UK”, possibly without the project having been fully thought through.

HS2 Ltd has recently applied for a Compulsory Purchase Order on the area where they are doing works to divert the Sanford Brook Sewer, along the northern border of the Scrubs. 

HS2 is the most expensive high-speed railway in the world
– The Economist

The government’s own Major Projects Authority, like longstanding questioners including some of our members, seems have come to the conclusion late in the day that there could be more effective ways to spend huge amounts of capital, such as on East-West and local routes, but this isn’t news. At more than £33M a mile, the more than tripling of the original budget may have swung government thinking, but it was naïve to think this wouldn’t happen, given the expensive optioneering and some fairly obvious gold-plating, plus recent experience with projects like the almost identically overbudget 2012 Olympics – under the same leadership – and Crossrail, now over 3 years late. It is more than a little concerning that such projects continually require a somewhat childish suspension of disbelief, or more politely “optimism bias”, in order to get off the ground, only to wake up with a big government-largesse-fuelled hangover, discovering much of the budget has already been committed and/or spent – quite possibly inefficiently with questionable governance (Oakervee review conclusion 37), and perhaps not in the best place. 

In the case of the London Olympics, significant change or cancellation wasn’t an option of course, and we got new sports infrastructure and the repurposed housing via the Olympic village, plus a huge feel-good factor afterwards.  But HS2 has no medals, and fewer friends, dubbed by Sir Simon Jenkins as a “£100bn vanity project”, or more simply by The Economist “The most expensive high-speed railway in the world”.

HS2 Construction Old Oak/Scrubs [shepherdsbushw12.com]

Can an increasingly poor match with requirements now be blamed on COVID and a supposed waning of travel between cities – often a mainstay of the justification?  Not really, video conferencing has been around for decades, and the needs of ordinary people, now relabelled the levelling-up agenda, were secondary in the requirements – probably the root of the problem.  Members of the Society may have spotted the writing on the wall in the article a year ago where the gambit of high speed rail was set out using international comparators, and the reality of electric vehicles was suggested as potentially undermining its green credentials (if indeed they are as claimed, when the embodied carbon from concrete has been factored in).  We’d like to think Government read the article, but it’s unfortunate if ministers have again been captured by the allure of diggers & Hi-Viz, locally on Wormwood Scrubs, but in many other places too – Hammersmith Bridge excepted.

TBM “Florence” in the Chilterns [HS2 Ltd]

Looking at the situation more positively, and considering what has already been dug, a more appropriate project might be quite the reverse of what is mooted as a new approach – cutting off the northern legs. High Speed rail viability increases with distance up to about a 3hr journey time – the Birmingham route is right on the lower limit of accepted high-speed viability at 100 miles, more a sop to get the project off the ground at lowest(!) cost – the Oakervee Review concurs in conclusion 54.  Distraction by way of mooted “high-speed” links Leeds / Manchester, is muddle – in 36 miles, half the length of Crossrail, “high speed” wouldn’t achieved for long enough to be worthwhile.

Proposed Hammersmith parliamentary constituency boundaries 2021. New proposed boundaries shown in red, 2017 in blue

We’ve been alerted to new proposed changes to the parliamentary constituency boundaries, and there’s a distinct feeling of deja-vu.  Checking the annals, it was in 2017 when the last proposal surfaced.

At the time, Tom said that the “changes to parliamentary boundaries seem bizarre” – perhaps someone listened as they were quietly parked.  Equally bizarre this time, in an effort to even up constituency sizes to around 75,000, Hammersmith is again split from Fulham, with a nod to the old borough boundary of 1968, but the significant change is the proposed East-West merger to create a “Hammersmith and Chiswick” constituency, split between two separate councils and administrations.

The north of the existing Hammersmith constituency would move to Ealing/Acton as proposed in 2017, though the line is further north matching the northwards march of the H/F boundary.

It would radically alter our sitting MP’s constituency, meaning Hammersmith being represented by two MP’s (North / Central), with a total of 3 MP’s across H&F (North / Central / South), all of whom would have split constituencies (the other halves being Ealing / Chiswick / Chelsea) to dilute their efforts, and potentially reduce the voice of Hammersmith.  Or perhaps more is better? Make your views felt in the consultation.

The proposals shown above, despite their apparent non-political origins, could also appear to be politically motivated according to BBC analysis, as they may favour the ruling party.  The proposed new boundaries are shown in red, the 2017 version in blue.  More information can be found on the Boundary Commission website, where the consultation runs until 2nd August.

Her Majesty’s Government has decided that Gigabit broadband (FTTP) will help overcome recent economic woes, bridge the digital divide, and level up, and has declared £5 billion public funding for the first million homes and businesses. Initially, it correctly prioritises those most in need – often in rural or semi-rural locations – but at £5000 a pop, it needs to be worth it. Time to look closer to home, and see how this relates to Hammersmith – and our conservation areas – if and when it’s promoted widely here.  Some green markings have appeared adjacent to “Post Office” manholes hereabouts, so this may be sooner rather than later. 

You’ll doubtless know that so-called “fibre broadband” is already here – but what might “Fibre To The Premises” (FTTP) mean – and should you opt for it ?  Below, we look at the implications for you and the streetscape, the technologies being deployed, and, by running the numbers, show that provided you and the Telcos are doing the right thing – several of which are mentioned – your home would be hard pressed to need the virtues of FTTP for a good many years to come – if ever.

The slowest 20% get 17M, the average 56.7M, and the top 20% get 150M

Hammersmith FTTC Broadband Cabinets

Recent street markings

Currently if you have “fibre” and aren’t on Virgin, you’re unlikely to have FTTP, you probably have fibre to a green cabinet less than a few hundred metres away, known as “Fibre To The Cabinet” (FTTC). Then, most often, the familiar phone wires, but somewhat shorter than before, which, with some updated tech in the green box and your home router, yields a big speed-up.

Local Broadband map (Thinkbroadband)

Here in Hammersmith, as one of the denser areas of London, we’re quite well served for broadband, with one or two known not-spots (the Western side of St. Peters Square being one, where our affiliate SPRA is exploring FTTP provision), but generally above London average speeds   Published stats show that the slowest 20% get 17M, the average is 56.7M, and the top 20% get 150M.  That suggests most are already on FTTC – or better.  Several companies are now offering FTTP, Openreach (BT) being just one.

Openreach fibre digging [perhaps your front garden?]

Prompting this article, your correspondent recently sat in on an IET Zoom presentation “Holes & poles : fibre to the home”, exciting stuff if you’re into that kind of thing. The clear message was that the industry has managed to wring out as much as it can from the ancient pair of copper wires that provide landline phones – now rarely used – and diggers are needed for what comes next.

There’s been a substantial discussion about the problematic last few metres from your garden wall or gate to front door. In fact the last 5-10m – never mind the last mile – is often the biggest hurdle, as we discuss later.  Logistical, cost and maintenance reasons mean wireless is ruled out, and, as the existing wires have had it, digging up the garden is likely if there are no usable ducts, followed by new holes in the front wall for a fibre “cable” and boxes on the wall.  Fortunately fibre being fibre, it’s completely safe, and the consequences of an errant garden fork are inconvenient rather than dangerous, so it need not be buried as deep as main services.

Would it be transformative locally ? 

Changing Rooms [BBC]

So-called property porn continues to make up a good percentage of the TV schedules 25 years after Changing Rooms started Building the Dream in a Location, Location, Location for The Poshest Sleepover in Millionaires’ Mansions, then over to The Great Interior Design Challenge, creating some Grand Designs, and moving on to daytime TV with rather lower budgets and more prosaic ambitions with House Doctor and Homes under the Hammer. 

More than one of these shows is approaching its silver anniversary, and you’re sure to have seen many of them – perhaps the daytime offerings too – and possibly even been addicted to one or two ?

In a roundabout way, they’re all selling the story that rising house prices are a Good Thing. The recent publication of the new London Plan ahead of the delayed Mayoral Election this week, presents a good opportunity to take the long view of the property market, and test this hypothesis in the real world.

Over the last two decades, there has been a 46% increase in the number of young people aged 20-34 living with their parents ^🔗

The evidence from first-time buyers is that spiralling prices are not such a good idea, especially post-COVID.  Excluded from markets such as our own local one, where one bedroom flats start around £250k, younger people have wondered how they’ll get on the mythical ‘property ladder’ for a while now.  Having been locked-down for much of the last year, they may be further destined to stay at home with mum’n’dad for the foreseeable, their best hope of ‘moving out’ may be to convert the garage to put a door between parents and the resultant substandard bedsit, or take a government help-to-buy mortgage – one that possibly helps stoke prices more than helps make housing affordable.  A poor show all round.

Housing Completions 2020 (MHCLG)

Classic economic theory says that rising prices stimulate the economy and increase house builder’s appetite to build.  The statistics don’t bear this out, with completions only just approaching the levels of 15-20 years ago, having been in the doldrums through periods of huge price inflation (with the real possibility of correlation), London being a particular “white spot” despite the highest price rises.  Hereabouts there are many factors at play, land availability being just one of them; the theory is too simplistic.

And what of this cash – where does it come from ?  From not spending in local shops and hospitality, or just adding to a debt mountain.  Neither are good for the real economy, locking away income for the foreseeable, and once on the ladder, the next step involves an increasing gap as prices rise, so any increased disposable income is – disposed of.  Best start saving now, or better move up quickly, perhaps by taking on an uncomfortable level of debt, before the price gets out of reach.

There remains a widespread assumption that existing homeowners subscribe to the benefits of rising prices.  Pragmatic Marxists might even tell you that releasing equity is a way to feedback escalating values to the proletariat (that’s your children, by the way).  But older voters (always sought after, unlike Auntie or marketers, forever chasing the young – discuss),  may soon get tired of their children still at home in their 30’s and even 40’s in London, as the direct effect of rising prices, and may start voting otherwise.  With the equivalent escalation of the average age of moving out, parents may become too old themselves, and disinclined to move at the time they might be able to release equity, and enjoy it.  Taking on what looks & feels like debt, in the form of equity release, probably having spent many years paying down a mortgage, may also be a bitter & alien pill, albeit perhaps a sensible one – for an economist.

Median London House Prices 1995-2020, sorted by 1995 price (ONS)

Hammersmith has the 5th highest median house prices in London.  It’s slipped one place since 1995, the graph adjacent is sorted by 1995 prices, when it was 4th, which may surprise you. 1995 prices are shown as the tiny blue bars.

Whatever nuances there are between H&F and anywhere else in town, property inflation has been huge in absolute terms, as shown in the second graphic, and much greater than elsewhere in the UK. H&F is middle of the range at 700%, explaining its 1 place fall in the above race, but the lowest priced boroughs in 1995, such as Hackney and Newham have seen the largest rises in a rather misplaced levelling-up exercise, many would call gentrification. Examine the demographics, and you’ll see the volume of younger people who have moved to those places on an affordability basis, if no other.  By contrast, average incomes have doubled in the same period but have been static in inflation-adjusted terms, meaning housing is 350% of the cost 25 years ago (c.f. ratios below), although interest rates are a lot lower if you’re borrowing the money. If you’d been what used to be called prudent – and saved for it – bad luck. Prudence was made homeless a while ago.

Percentage rise in London property by borough (ONS)

Our elders tell us that sky-high London property prices were ever so.  In the 50’s and 60’s, newbuilds were cheaper than period properties; in the age of the Space Race and (if only they’d known it) mid-century modernism, bright shiny and new was still less popular than ‘period’, and while affordability continued to decline, property aspirations remained as conservative and static as life’s DNA, a fact confirmed in the government’s recent Design Guide.

It’s now just over six months since the Bridge was closed to pedestrians and cyclists, and over 22 months since it was closed to traffic, yet there is neither a Bridge repair contract nor an alternative crossing facility in place. Repair work will not progress until there is forward funding to pay the estimated £128M cost (over and above TfL funded temporary stabilisation works). Government funding has been offered conditional on a LBHF contribution of £64M, 50% of the cost, as reported in last weekend’s Observer. This is evidently way beyond the LBHF resources; whilst there has been media reference to the potential of council reserves, the 2019 external auditors report states “…Council do have ongoing financial pressures, which need to be addressed in the medium term… As a result, the Council is now maintaining a reserves position that is below the average when compared to other London Boroughs”.  Government funding for local authorities has been considerably reduced in recent years, and an uplift in council tax, aside from social and political issues, would only generate additional income of around £650K per 1% rise.

Foster & Partners bridge proposal

Hammersmith Bridge would seem to be a unique and most deserving case for special funding, and it is so frustrating that the critical issue of project financing is not addressed in the government Task Force meetings, despite its obvious importance. However we understand that, separate to the Task Force meetings, LBHF have been exploring initiatives which draw on the private sector, not only in the Foster/Ritblat temporary bridge proposal, but also investigating the viability of private funding, secured on an income stream provided by a toll: this financing method which has been used for a number of other UK bridges, including in London, the Dartford Crossing. LBHF residents would be likely to cross toll-free. We understand LBHF have now submitted a comprehensive financial plan to Grant Shapps based on this funding approach.  Consideration might be given to 1% of the toll to be set aside for social funding in Hammersmith, similar to the arrangement on the London Eye ticket price.

Some valuable comparative information has emerged regarding the financing of other London bridges. For the recent £9.6M repairs to Albert Bridge, RBKC paid £2.6M in line with many other bridge repairs as recent research indicates, while TfL paid £7M. The £9M refurbishment of Chiswick Bridge was paid for by TfL. Since TfL are out of funds, the recent upgrade of Wandsworth Bridge was paid for by Wandsworth Council – but since the bridge is a simple cantilever structure, fabricated in steel in 1940, the overall cost was only around £6M, less than 6% of the bill for the 1887 Hammersmith Bridge.

These comparative repair costs highlight the unique problems with the bridge, an ornate, Grade II* listed structure constructed from cast iron and wood in 1887, two years after the first internal combustion engine came off the Benz production line. Before the traffic closure in April 2019, over 20,000 vehicles and 2,000 single-decker buses were crossing the Bridge daily; until total closure in August 2020 16,000 pedestrians and cyclists were crossing daily. Until 1998 heavy goods vehicles and double-decker buses were using the Bridge.

The Bridge is clearly not fit for this purpose. If the outward appearance of the Bridge is to be retained, then within the decorative outer claddings the structure has to be not repaired, but replaced, to create a Bridge which is able to sustain the demands of 21st century traffic.  We discuss this in more detail in the accompanying article.