Demolish or refurbish: Streets of gold? (Special report on regeneration)

There's growing opposition to government plans to demolish whole swathes of Victorian terraces - but if we refurbish them insread, what's actually involved? Paul Howard examines the arguments.

Demolish or refurbish? It’s a deceptively simple question that is often at the heart of the debate about how to create ‘sustainable communities’.

It’s also a very emotive issue, especially for those whose lives are directly affected by the answer that is reached. Which is why the knocking-down of large swathes of our existing housing stock manages to generate as much controversy and ill-feeling as it does opportunities for redevelopment. The national press goes to town on stories of communities being rent asunder, in some cases with little justification.

Certainly, the statistics for demolition in the UK don’t bear out the public perception that much of our domestic architectural heritage is under threat. Between 10,000 and 15,000 houses are demolished in the UK each year. This compares with a new-build rate of nearly 200,000, and an overall housing stock estimated to be around 21 million properties. Even the much-loved Victorian and Edwardian houses, on which so much attention is focused, number up to four and a half million.

The forgotten option

In spite of this scanty evidence, there is a widely held belief, even within the construction industry, that refurbishment is too often overlooked as an alternative to demolition. This belief is reinforced by growing concerns about the sustainability – or otherwise – of older houses. The recent 40% House Report from Oxford University, for example, suggested more than one million Victorian terraced houses would have to be demolished by 2050 and replaced with more energy-efficient homes in order to meet targets for reduced carbon emissions.

To address these fears, the Building Research Establishment (BRE) has embarked on a number of initiatives to appraise the merits of refurbishment.

“These projects will show that demolition is not the only option open to us,” says David Strong, managing director of BRE environment. “There is another option that allows us to upgrade existing stock while avoiding the waste associated with demolition, and preserving the mix of architecture that makes our urban landscape a more humane and interesting place to live and work.”

Central to this is a new report entitled Sustainable Refurbishment of Victorian and Edwardian Houses.

“The aim of the report is to prompt people to think of all the options, rather than just being pushed down one route,” says BRE project director Tim Yates. “Knocking something down is an easy option, so the first presumption has been that it was best to demolish. Now people seem a little more willing to start from the presumption that buildings can be saved, and only when it’s not possible should they be pulled down.

“We want to encourage people to think about refurbishment and to demonstrate that you can achieve very high levels of refurbishment and sustainability in a market-driven economy,” he continues. “We have three case studies in the report that show what can be achieved. In London, there was a near 70% reduction in CO2 emissions achieved on a commercial project. Obviously there will be cases where the sale price will be lower and it may be harder to justify the investment required to make such improvements, but it’s not just happened in London – think of Urban Splash in Manchester, and another of our case studies in Nelson, Lancashire.”

Sustainable future

In spite of the suggestions of the 40% House Report, it is the sustainability argument in favour of refurbishment that may be its trump card.

“Whichever way you look at it, 80% of existing housing stock – too much to demolish – was built before the introduction of building regulations and there are lots of buildings out there that leak energy like a sieve,” says John Tebbit, industry affairs director at the Construction Products Association. “This is a more pressing problem than emissions from new buildings.”

The answer, he says, comes by way of a new proposal from the Association to link the relative carbon efficiency of new buildings to those of older dwellings. “We want a system that’s not insistent on new buildings being zero-carbon now, but one that sets longer term goals to reach this over the next 15 to 20 years. In the interim, carbon emissions from new buildings must be offset by a levy that would fund refurbishment work.

“This is the most cost effective way to limit or reduce net carbon emissions,” he explains. “A house built to current Part L standards is probably 2.5 times better than most existing houses, but on average it would cost about £15,000-£20,000 to get from this level to a zero-carbon house. Aside from the fact there isn’t the capacity to do this yet for all new buildings, you could spend that money more wisely elsewhere. It doesn’t cost much to make the significant initial savings on existing houses, which would mean that overall there are no new carbon emissions.”

This assertion is borne out by the fact that of the UK’s estimated 17 million homes with cavity walls, only six million have cavity-wall insulation. It also hints at the shortfall in skills and capacity to refurbish houses in a sustainable way.

“Mr Grout the builder isn’t yet au fait with the skills needed to install solar panels or heat recovery systems, but to meet CO2 targets, what we need is a system that encourages refurbishment of existing buildings to be at highest possible standard,” says Tebbit. “Perhaps this is not as sexy as new developments that are zero-carbon, but sometimes you’ve got to look at less sexy options.”

Talking about regeneration

If refurbishment can therefore be seen as a viable contributor to the sustainability agenda, its role as a tool for regeneration becomes even more vital. This importance is acknowledged by Tom Dobrashian, commercial director at Elevate East Lancs, one of the country’s nine Pathfinder housing-market renewal schemes.

Dobrashian argues that the debate should be rephrased so that refurbishment and demolition are not seen as mutually exclusive alternatives, other than on a house-by-house scale. “In some areas in East Lancs there’s 95% two-up two-down terracing with very few green spaces, not even school playing fields,” he says. “You have to ask how many properties like this are sustainable, and how many should be replaced by new houses of different sizes or just by new green spaces.”

Yet he insists a successful housing market needs a mix of housing, and this means including two-up two-downs. It also means refurbishment.

“If we had the money, there may be more pressure to demolish houses and replace them with new build. But we don’t and that’s not necessarily what we’d want to do anyway. The aim of housing-market renewal schemes like ours is to do ourselves out of a job.

“There will always be areas where you need to invest money and time and effort in retaining these properties, and the money we invest in refurbishment can act as a catalyst for private refurbishment, which is what happens in a normally functioning housing market.”

Given the costs involved and the limits on public spending, it is only by priming this private refurbishment market that regional regeneration can take place on any significant scale. And it is only through actively considering refurbishment that we can make any meaningful progress towards sustainable communities.

So what's involved in refurbishing old terraced housing?

One of the goals of the BRE report, and a key to getting clients and the construction industry to consider refurbishment as a redevelopment option, is unravelling the complex processes and decisions involved.

"Renovating and refurbishing older housing stock involves more complex decisions than might be immediately apparent," says BRE project director Tim Yates. "But a methodology can be developed to support decision making by establishing a benchmark from which the benefits of various actions can be objectively assessed."

Following the report, such a benchmark has now been provided using a scoring system developed from the recently-launched EcoHomes XB. But even if the merits of one option over another can now be compared, the practicalities of working in refurbishment remain challenging.

"It's difficult, as you have to deal directly with the public in their own houses," says John Rawson, senior estimator for Hambling Construction, which has worked closely on several projects with Elevate East Lancs.

Another significant hurdle is that the work content can vary considerably from house to house. "Every house is a one-off," says Rawson. "You can have doors and windows of different sizes, there can be different layouts. And we need the skills to match." Indeed, Hambling has a policy of investing heavily in apprentices - having one for every 10 members of staff - to ensure it has the right balance of employees.

"Even when you know what you're supposed to be doing, you don't know what's actually there until you're in," he continues. "If you find dry rot, you could add a few weeks to your project to eradicate it."

Such programme uncertainty is exacerbated by the inevitable limitations brought about by dealing with the public in their homes. which can have serious knock-on effects on the delivery of materials.

"And then you have to have a contractual framework that deals with this complexity," says Tom Dobrashian, commercial director at Elevate East Lancs. "Our individual contracts have guaranteed maximum prices, but then there are the contingencies, and to deal with these you need to know where the risk lies between the contractor and the local authority. In fact, we've just spent a good two years working on the risk register to set parameters for this."

Rawson concludes: "You've got to get your priorities right and make sure you've got the right critical path and the right expertise to get the job done. It's not easy to refurbish a house, but once you've accepted the constraints and adopted the right mentality it becomes second nature."

[Contract Journal, 15 November 2006, p 24-25]