29 August 2019
On the 25th July 2019 Mayor Ros Jones presented to the full Council the Doncaster Plan for 2020-2035. In her presentation she identified the housing crisis that exists in Doncaster, that the market had not delivered the kind of housing needed to meet the local needs of our Doncaster communities and that future housing developments must include affordable housing.
She wanted local homes for local people, to raise the standard of housing in Doncaster, to use the land assets that the council had to provide such housing and if necessary to purchase land to support the current and new residents of Doncaster linked to the industrial strategy laid out in the Doncaster Plan.
Whilst all of this commendable, Doncaster Green Party wants to put forward a plan for the future linked to the provision of much needed housing both social and privately owned as well as new and current public and commercial buildings.
The timing and production of the Doncaster Plan is a major turning point and affords a great opportunity to plan housing for the future that not only provides decent, comfortable homes but to build those homes to standards that have been proven to reduce fuel bills and will make a major contribution to meeting the climate change targets. Targets that have been set by national government and are to be adopted by the Doncaster Council at their meeting in September 2019.
Such building standards have already been developed and are known as Passiv Haus. Developed in Germany, the standards create zero carbon homes by having high levels of insulation, low energy use and the potential to reduce heating bills to below £150 annually.
The standards can be incorporated into any design build and can be used for refurbishment and retrofit of current housing, thus helping to maintain the heritage buildings we have in Doncaster. Councils can work with developers and contract them to build to Passiv haus standards on any housing or commercial developments in their area. Such contracts could be built into where they are selling council owned land on which to build, building council properties or private and commercial buildings.
Areas that have already introduced these standards into house builds are Exeter, Norwich, Kirklees, Sheffield (Kelham Island) and many other examples around UK. The Norwich street is being submitted for an architectural competition award. Kirklees invested £1.1 million from Housing Revenue Account to initiate using the standards with local developers and even held a competition for builders to build homes to Passivhaus standards.
Local authorities that have adopted Passiv haus have found that homes are built to better building standards and that costs have been shown to be similar to usual building costs. They have reduced energy usage and therefore reduced costs in private and public buildings. This all works to meet climate change and carbon reduction targets.
The Passiv haus Trust provides training for builders in the incorporation of the standards and this could also be linked to our local college to train in the Passiv haus standards.
Other potential to links to building to Passiv haus building standards are the incorporation of solar panels to both housing and commercial properties and sell surplus energy back to the grid. This could be an income for the local authority.
We all know that the big costs for any family are rent and fuel. If we can reduce those costs through lower rents and fuel bills it not only increases the available personal spending power of the family it also increases the potential for available spend in the local economy.
The loss of social housing since the 1980s has created the housing crisis we now see around us. It fuelled massive increases in house prices and rents and the appalling and distressing increase in homelessness.
Doncaster Green Party wants to see this change.
The Doncaster Plan has identified the need and now has a massive opportunity to tackle all of this and to plan for a zero carbon future in new house and commercial builds in or town. Doncaster Green party will play it part in pressing for a new approach to house building that meets the needs of the community and plans for to meet the targets for climate change.
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