King hails unique opportunity for existing stock impetus

UK Green Building Council chief executive Paul King claimed that Government simply had to address the UK’s inefficient existing housing stock in the next year.

Speaking to Building Sustainability last week King said there was a “unique period” for the industry to put forward proposals to the Government.

King admitted that people “were entitled to feel a bit cynical” about the lack of action in previous years on the issue but that pressure on the current administration to do something was intense.

We have entered a political period where something has got to happen and all political parties accept this

Paul King, chief executive, UK Green Building Council

Speaking ahead of a two-week UKGBC consultation on the existing stock he said: “I think we have entered a unique period of time. Government is facing carbon budgets and targets and knows it needs to have a strategy to fundamentally address emissions from the existing housing stock. We have entered a political period where something has got to happen and all political parties accept this.”

Fragmentation

King said the stumbling block holding back previous attempts to address the issue was policy and industry fragmentation. “There’s been lot of measures based approaches policy-wise which have tried to tackle individual parts of the problem. This is combined with a fragmented industry. It’s a very complicated marketplace out there.”