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Regenerative design

Regenerative design

Charlotte Walker 11 Mar 2024
For decades the development industry has been re-thinking and re-designing ways to reduce the impact buildings have on the environment. Increasingly, there is an understanding that for the industry to best respond to our environmental challenges and natural environments, thinking needs to change from development ‘being less harmful’ and ‘doing more good’. This shift in approach to the way we plan for, construct and live in our built ‘environments’ is being achieved through regenerative design.
 
This blog reflects upon some of the opportunities and challenges that a regenerative design approach presents.
 
Defining regenerative design
     
 
Regenerative design is best understood as overlapping with the concept of sustainability in planning and architecture by seeking to reduce resource consumption. Whilst sustainability often means developing a site to have little to no impact on the environment during construction and operation, regenerative design goes beyond this to create a net positive impact on the environment, ecology, health and society.
 
     
Therefore, regenerative design asks the question: how can development proposals reverse ecological damage, replenish natural resources and enhance ecological and social systems?
 
What can regenerative design achieve?
Regenerative design seeks to renew and promote the health of social and natural systems so communities thrive. For example, a development can be ‘carbon positive’ by using materials that take carbon out of the atmosphere and aiming for a building that generates more energy than it consumes[1]. Interventions can also include restoring lost public footpaths that connect to a site to have a positive impact on the wider community.
The Environment Agency has reported on the increasing need to manage water demands[2] and it therefore seems pertinent to consider the value in examples where wetlands are designed for in masterplans to capture and naturally store stormwater to replenish the underground aquifer, or examples of design codes that rethink how our buildings can capture and treat rainwater. Designing places and buildings in this way could be a solution to improving water supply in the long term.
Regenerative design in practice
Lichfields are assisting Latimer, who are the master developer, and their appointed design team, to bring forward the Tendring Colchester Borders Garden Community[3]. The Garden Community is the largest strategic allocation in the North Essex Authorities’ Shared Strategic Section 1 Plan for between 7,000 and 9,000 new homes, 25 hectares of employment land, university expansion land, community, leisure, retail and other associated uses and development. Regenerative design principles can be identified in the emerging Development Plan Document (‘DPD) for the Garden Community which sets out how the new Garden Community will be designed, developed, and delivered in phases, in accordance with a detailed set of principles. For example the emerging DPD’s vision for nature in the Garden Community is to “provide a natural support system for both people and wildlife” and the draft Illustrative Framework Plan shows thoughts on the development of an ecological network across the Garden Community in the aim to support native species to thrive and existing habitats to be enhanced and connected.
 

Challenges

In development and planning, regenerative design requires:
  • collaboration, commitment and the right expertise to grapple with environmental and societal challenges;
     
  • a multidisciplinary team to take a systems-based approach from the outset of a project and be driven by evidence and metrics that clearly define design principles and objectives;
     
  • teams need to use data and establish performance metrics to test ideas and be innovative. This is a key part of the process. In this way, regenerative design does not ‘fit’ a proposal to a site, it does the reverse and designs are truly context-led to restore and enhance existing systems;
     
  • to achieve the above, teams need an in depth understanding of place and communities. This is why continual engagement with communities and stakeholders is essential.
     
Regenerative design therefore is inherently complex and requires quite a considerable shift in mindset; it challenges us to re-examine how we view property, ownership, rights and public goods and asks questions such as what you might need to change in yourself, in your practice or the way you work with clients or stakeholders to be more outcome-driven.

Opportunities

Two key ideas to remember:
  • regenerative design can apply to projects of all scales. For strategic sites, regenerative design needs to be embedded into the masterplan and for smaller sites, from the initial scoping and site analysis stage.
     
  • Regenerative design can apply in plan-making. The legal and policy context for addressing the environment and climate change is evolving rapidly in the UK. For example, the Environment Act 2021introduced a number of new duties for local authorities which are of relevance to nature recovery and biodiversity[4]. These agendas are changing the approach LPA’s are taking to plan-making, shown by recent research findings from the Planning Advisory Service (PAS) [5]. PAS found that some LPA’s are suggesting that an alternative approach to plan-making would focus on environmental recovery and starting with a map, add designations, then green infrastructure and other environmental assets, and then consider how development can fit in.
     
 

Case Study: Colchester City Council’s Local Plan Review

Colchester have commenced work on a green network and waterways framework, to think about opportunities to enhance the green network and waterways through the Local Plan Review Issues and Options consultations. Such opportunities will then be considered alongside the sites submitted as part of the Call for Sites process. This is so that new housing allocations, which will be needed as part of the Local Plan Review, could facilitate new green spaces including creating better linkages between existing green spaces and waterways for the benefit of people’s health and wellbeing and for wildlife. This is a great example of how plan-making can take a regenerative design approach towards the environment and create synergies between local plan objectives.
 
     
Final thoughts  
Regenerative design as a practice is evolving and another part of the puzzle will be how we retrofit our existing built environments and adapt systems in order to make them regenerative. Nevertheless, it is encouraging and exciting to think that local plans in the near future could not only support regenerative design practice but also promote it. It seems that now is the time for regenerative design be more mainstream and adopted more widely.

 

 

[1] RIBA Journal article

[2] Securing England’s water resources: right now, and for the future - Creating a better place (blog.gov.uk)

[3] HOME - Tendring/Colchester Borders Garden Community (tcbgardencommunity.co.uk)

[4] https://www.local.gov.uk/pas/topics/environment/nature-recovery-local-authorities#what-is-nature-recovery-and-why-is-it-so-important

[5] https://www.local.gov.uk/pas/topics/environment/planning-better-environment/how-can-we-plan-better-environment#5-what-does-this-mean-for-plan-making

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The new NPPF: Energy Efficiency and tackling the Climate Crisis
The amendments to the NPPF introduce some important changes in relation to the environment. A new paragraph 164 in the amended NPPF states that when determining planning applications, local planning authorities should give significant weight to the need to support energy efficiency and low carbon heating improvements to existing buildings, both domestic and non-domestic[1]:
“164. In determining planning applications, local planning authorities should give significant weight to the need to support energy efficiency and low carbon heating improvements to existing buildings, both domestic and non-domestic (including through installation of heat pumps and solar panels where these do not already benefit from permitted development rights). Where the proposals would affect conservation areas, listed buildings or other relevant designated heritage assets, local planning authorities should also apply the policies set out in chapter 16 of this Framework.”
Existing buildings are one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the UK, indeed the heating sector in the UK accounts for roughly a third of the UK’s annual carbon footprint[2]. We all therefore need to be considering ways of reducing the carbon footprint of our buildings and retrofitting can play a key role in this. The amendment to the NPPF in relation to the environment is welcome but can it make a difference in achieving the UK’s Net Zero targets and addressing climate change?

 

Energy Efficiency and PD Rights

When it comes to retrofitting existing buildings, including through the installation of heat pumps and solar panels, there is a lot which can already be installed under Permitted Development Rights.
The permitted development right of Class G allows you to install, alter or replace an air source heat pump on a residential property without planning permission (with certain limitations applying). This can be a house, bungalow or a block of flats and you are permitted to install it either on the property itself or within the curtilage of the property.
Changes to permitted development rights rules announced by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities in November of last year will also mean more homeowners and businesses will be able to install solar panels on their roofs without going through the planning system.
The Government has confirmed that homes with flat roofs can now install solar photovoltaic (PV) panels without planning permission, which brings rules in line with those for businesses. As part of the confirmation, the Government also removed the 1MW capacity restriction, which required businesses to apply for planning permission if its solar panels were to generate over 1MW of electricity[3].
The intention is that the changes to permitted development rights rules will slash the wait-time for rooftop solar installations caused by the planning system, which can include waiting over eight weeks and accruing extra costs and encourage more people to install solar panels on their homes.

 

Energy Efficiency and Climate Change targets – what’s the story?

Retrofitting of existing buildings is a fundamentally important decarbonisation solution and can play an important role in the UK’s drive to net zero. The use of heat pumps for example can offer carbon emission savings of around 30% when compared to conventional natural gas boilers. The Government has set some ambitious targets around energy efficiency and low carbon heating improvements to existing buildings including the commitment for 600,000 heat pumps to be installed per year by 2028[4]. The National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) has also stated that around eight million buildings will need to switch from gas boilers to cleaner alternatives by 2035 to meet the UK’s 2050 net zero target[5].
However, the big problem in the UK to date when it comes to heat pumps is the level of uptake. While most of the world's heat pump uptake has risen, the UK is lagging behind drastically, with only 72,000 heat pumps being sold in the UK in 2022[6]. In terms of heat pumps per capita, the European Heat Pump Association notes that the UK ranks 20th out of 21 European nations. The European average is 4,016 heat pumps per 100,000 people, compared to 564 heat pumps per 100,000 people in the UK[7]. This means the UK would need approximately seven times more units to meet this standard, a total of 2.7 million heat pumps! The huge numbers of heat pumps required to help achieve the UK’s net zero targets therefore seem a long way off.
Reasons for the lack of uptake so far in the UK range from limitations in heat pump performance and skills shortages to high cost (typically it costs £10,000 to buy and install an air source heat pump). This is despite the Government offering subsidies to reduce costs through for instance the Boiler Upgrade Scheme in England and Wales, which provides grants of £7,500 for air-source heat pumps, and £7,500 for ground-source heat pumps.
Despite the low numbers of uptake to date, things may be about to change as the technology improves and a wider range of heat pumps become available on the market – whereas older heat pumps might have struggled to heat some homes adequately heat pumps are now able to supply much higher temperatures without incurring efficiency losses. This could therefore entice more homeowners away from fossil fuel-based boilers.
The increase in solar panel installations offers a more promising picture. Solar is the most common domestic renewable energy source in the UK and latest data suggests there are over a million UK homes with solar panel installations. Solar panel installations almost doubled in 2022, compared to 2021 and should continue to increase as technology improves and solar panels get more affordable in the coming years[8].
The Government has set a clear target to achieve a fivefold increase in solar power by 2035, from an existing capacity of 15GW to 70GW[9]. There is a long way to go to achieve this target but a continued and sustained increase in solar panel installations on existing buildings will make an important contribution to increasing capacity.

 

Planning for Climate Change

Decarbonisation of the UK economy is essential if we are to stand any hope of achieving Net Zero by 2050 and keep temperature rises below 1.5°C to avoid the very worst impacts of climate change. Retrofitting existing buildings and switching to renewable fuel powered systems from fossil fuels can make a difference.
Eliminating stumbling blocks on the way to reducing GHG emissions and climatic impacts is essential and strong in-principle policy support for energy efficiency is therefore encouraging.
What is clear however is that if the UK is to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, a rapid acceleration in the use of renewable fuelled power systems such as heat pumps is required. The scale of the challenge is enormous and we must embrace it.

 

[1] The National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), 20 December 2023.

[2] House of Commons. Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee. Decarbonising heat in homes. January 2022.

[3] The Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) (Amendment) (No.2) Order 2023.

[4] HM Government. Heat Pump Investment Roadmap. Leading the way to net zero. April 2023.

[5] National Infrastructure Commission. The Second National Infrastructure Assessment. October 2023

[6] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/23/heat-pumps-are-hot-property-in-europe-does-britain-have-cold-feet. Accessed January 2024

[7] https://www.ehpa.org/market-data/. Accessed January 2024

[8] https://mcscertified.com/. Accessed January 2024

[9] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/untapped-potential-of-commercial-buildings-could-revolutionise-uk-solar-power. Access January 

 

 

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