The Green Deal is aiming to help over 60,000 homes become more energy efficient and allowing for these improvements to be made through a charge on electricity bills as an incentive. However the government is considering a training scheme for specialist Green Deal assessors to deal with older homes due to fear that green energy installations could harm traditional buildings. Douglas Kent from the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), said the body is in discussions with the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) over the idea. Other traditional buildings experts say that attaching modern non-porous insulation to breathable solid-wall buildings could lead to damp problems as well as other damage and also be hazardous to health for residents.
Almost 20% of the UK’s building stock was built before 1919 and therefore likely to be affected by this issue. Before Christmas a group of conservation bodies, including SPAB and the Institute of Historic Building Conservation hit out at Green Deal proposals as flawed and some of its recommendations as extremely harmful to old buildings.
