ADD2783 Adapting existing homes to extreme heat - proof of concept pilot in Chobham Manor

1.1.    The London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC) is a Mayoral Development Corporation, established by the Mayor of London in 2012. Its main purpose is to facilitate and coordinate the regeneration of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park (QEOP) and surrounding areas. Delivering a high quality and varied residential offer which responds to local need is one of the priority objectives outlined in the QEOP Strategy to 2025.
1.2.    Chobham Manor is the LLDC’s first family neighbourhood of 880 homes. It has a high proportion of households with children, particularly in the social and affordable rented homes. Approximately three quarters of all homes are three bedrooms and over a third are affordable housing. Many households in the area are multigenerational, where elderly residents live with younger family members, including children. The range of housing includes a mix of apartments, maisonettes, mews houses, and townhouses across various tenures supporting a broad range of residents.
1.3.    Post-occupancy evaluations reveals that a large portion of residents find summer indoor temperatures a challenge. Heat monitors installed in homes across the neighbourhood indicate average indoor summer temperatures exceed best practice building performance guidance. Chobham Manor, as with many other homes, represents a large segment of London’s relatively new housing stock that is at particularly high risk of overheating. These homes were designed and built before Building Regulations Part O (adopted in 2022) required design measures to mitigate against overheating in residential buildings. Instead, they were designed and built under Building Regulation Part L (2010) which focused on improving insulation and energy efficiency, with limited consideration of issues with summertime overheating risk. This has made these homes particularly vulnerable to rising temperatures. Estimates suggest that homes like this make up almost one in ten (8.9 per cent) of London’s domestic housing stock. Permitted development rights have been removed in Chobham Manor to protect the character of the neighbourhood and planning permission is required to erect external shading structures which poses additional challenges for residents that try to adapt their homes to cope with increasing temperatures.
1.4.    The GLA proposes to provide funding to the LLDC, in accordance with the GLA Contracts and Funding Code, to procure bespoke guidance to inform heat risk mitigation measures that could be deployed at Chobham Manor to reduce overheating risk in homes. The guidance will consider how these measures would impact the townscape to identify interventions that can receive buy-in from the community and LLDC. Small grants will be deployed to pilot measures in line with the guidance. The grants will seek to improve thermal comfort in homes, with positive health and wellbeing outcomes for residents, especially those who are particularly vulnerable to extreme heat. This pilot will deliver tangible retrofit interventions to mitigate against extreme heat risk and provide best practice and lessons learned which will help inform the implementation of London’s forthcoming Heat Risk Delivery Plan and the rollout of heat risk retrofit works across London.
1.5.    Under Delivering a Greener, More Climate-Resilient London programme (MD3384) the Mayor delegated authority to the Assistant Director, Environment and Energy as the Senior Responsible Owner for the programme to incur expenditure to ‘undertake proof-of-concept pilots to identify scalable ways to retrofit buildings to reduce the threat to Londoners from extreme heat’.
1.6.    The project has three parts for which the GLA will provide funding:
a)    Technical guidance (£40,000): LLDC will commission a technical consultant to develop bespoke guidance for undertaking heat risk retrofit interventions and prepare short guidance notes explaining the opportunities and risks involved in undertaking works to identify suitable options.
b)    Grant funding (£120,000): LLDC will deliver and manage the dispersal of small grants to support approximately 24 households to undertake heat risk retrofit works in line with the technical guidance. This will seek to support a mix of housing types and tenures receive support, with weight given to those at highest risk and with least capacity to adapt their homes.
c)    Monitoring and evaluation (£20,000): LLDC will monitor performance on overheating both pre- and post-installation to measure impact. The evaluation element will also assess the approach, impact and cost-effectiveness of interventions, sharing best practice and learning to support further roll-out of adaptation retrofit across London.
 

2.1.    The objectives of this proof-of-concept pilot are to:
•    Deliver tangible retrofit interventions to mitigate against overheating and improve the well-being of residents at Chobham Manor.
•    Inform the implementation of the Heat Risk Delivery Plan, demonstrating a commitment to early action to mitigate against overheating.
•    Identify scalable retrofit strategies to inform the roll-out of interventions to enhance resilience across London’s building stock, focusing on highly insulated buildings prone to overheating and extending to other types.
2.2.    The outcomes of this funding are expected to be:
•    Improved thermal comfort and fewer disruptions to health and well-being of residents of Chobham Manor, made up of high numbers of children and elderly residents who are at higher risk from extreme heat.
•    Demonstration of the effectiveness of low-tech, replicable adaptation retrofit solutions, to enable the roll-out of city-wide actions to enhance the resilience of London’s housing stock.
•    Increased funding and investment in adaptation retrofits, driven by new data and evidence on their costs and benefits, strengthening the business case for citywide implementation.
•    Demonstration of potential solutions to address barriers associated with delivering adaptation retrofit interventions, including those related to planning, community buy-in, and challenges relating to different property and tenure types.
 

3.1.    Under section 149 of the Equality Act 2010, as a public authority, the GLA is subject to the public sector equality duty and must have due regard to the need to:
•    eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation;
•    advance equality of opportunity between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not;
•    foster good relations between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not.
3.2.    The “protected characteristics” are age, disability, gender re-assignment, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation and marriage/ civil partnership status. The duty involves having appropriate regard to these matters as they apply in the circumstances, including having regard to the need to: remove or minimise any disadvantage suffered by those who share or is connected to a protected; take steps to meet the different needs of such people; encourage them to participate in public life or in any other activity where their participation is disproportionately low. This can involve treating people with a protected characteristic more favourably than those without one.
3.3.    The risk to overheating in homes is not spread equally. Elderly and young people are at increased risk during extreme heat events, as are lower-income households, because they sometimes present with pre-exiting health conditions and/or have limited adaptive capacity during these extreme heat events. Research indicates that families with young children and those from ethnic minority households face the highest risk of overheating in homes (Resolution Foundation, 2023). People who socially rent their homes are also at highest risk of getting too hot compared to those who rent and those who own their own homes respectively (Resolution Foundation, 2023).
3.4.    Chobham Manor is a diverse and family-oriented neighbourhood, almost half of the households include children (47 per cent), particularly in social and affordable rented homes, where 79 per cent of households include children. Many households in the area are multigenerational, where elderly residents live with younger family members. Chobham Manor is a diverse neighbourhood representative of the typical ethnic mix of east London. There is also a relatively high proportion of social rented flats (35 per cent). The pilots will aim to make grant funding accessible for households that are particularly at risk and those that do not have the financial means to implement necessary adaptation measures to cool their homes.
 

4.1.    There are not any currently known or foreseen conflicts of interest which would arise from procuring this work. The table below sets out the potential risks and mitigating actions.

Links to Mayoral strategies and priorities
4.2.    The Delivering a Greener and More Climate-Resilient London Delivery Plan aims to make London greener and resilient to the impacts of climate change. ‘Convening partnership action on climate resilience’ and 'Ensuring London's planning policies maintain environmental protections while supporting housing delivery and growth’ is part of the key strand ‘providing leadership’. To achieve these objectives, the Mayor has committed to produce a Heat Risk Delivery Plan and deliver adaptation retrofit pilot initiatives to improve the resilience of London’s building stock to extreme heat. This pilot directly responds to these aims as it will deliver tangible retrofit interventions to mitigate against extreme heat risk, demonstrate early delivery of the Heat Risk Delivery Plan, and identify retrofit approaches that can be scaled across the city.
Monitoring and Evaluation
4.3.    LLDC has installed heat sensors in some homes across Chobham Manor. This data was used to inform their post occupancy evaluations and will help monitor pre-intervention and post-intervention quantitative data to accompany qualitative data in demonstrating the outcomes of the interventions.
Conflict of interest 
4.4.    No conflicts of interest have been identified for any officers involved in the development of this proposal, or the drafting or clearance of this decision form. 
 

5.1.    Approval is requested for the expenditure of a revenue grant of £180,000 to the London Legacy Development Corporation under section 121 of the Greater London Authority Act 1999 to commission guidance to inform heat risk retrofit works and deliver small grants at Chobham Manor in line with the Delivering a Greener, More Climate Resilient London Delivery Plan (MD3384).
5.2.    As demonstrated in the table below, the expenditure will be funded from the Delivering a Greener, More Climate Resilient London Delivery Plan (MD3384) budget, under ‘Convening partnership action on climate resilience’ and 'Ensuring London's planning policies maintain environmental protections while supporting housing delivery and growth’, as part of the key strand ‘providing leadership’.

5.3.    The expenditure will be incurred in three phases to be accounted for within the Delivering a Greener, More Climate Resilient London Delivery Plan (MD3384) budget:
5.3.1.    £40,000 expenditure will be incurred in the 2025-26 financial year for the Technical Guidance (output A)
5.3.2.    £120,000 expenditure will be incurred in the 2026-27 financial year for the Grant funding (output B)
5.3.3.    £20,000 will be incurred in the 2026-27 financial year for the Monitoring and Evaluation component (output C)
5.4.    Future year’s budgets will still be subject to the annual budget setting process. Any contracts that cover future years will need to have break clauses. Any changes in the anticipated profile of spend across the years will be reflected as updates during the budget setting process.
5.5.    All appropriate budget adjustments will be made.