Save before generating

Uninsulated gable end wall, 1960s flats
at Austin Close, Frome, Somerset

It is good news that local communities will be supported to develop renewable energy generation schemes if the profits are to be used effectively to reduce energy demand. There are, however, major problems with most of our housing stock that are not being acknowledged by the construction industry, the green deal tick boxes or government, such as incomplete and badly installed insulation, including cavity wall insulation. There is also a substantial pre 1970s housing stock constructed of dense concrete blocks that the Government does not include in its 'hard to heat' homes categories (which it seems to think is confined to older solid walled properties). Much of this concrete-block housing was built as council housing and a lot of it is still occupied by social housing tenants on low incomes. There is usually an uninsulated concrete slab floor (= penetrating cold),  the walls don't "breathe", the cavities are narrow and difficult to fill, and once sealed in with double glazing these properties suffer badly from condensation and mould. Residents get blamed for the latter, when it is the construction that is the issue. A response (recently seen in one property) is to make a hole in the wall for ventilation - which means a constant blast of cold air and higher heating bills. Very few people, including those in charge of managing social housing properties, have a good understanding of what measures are needed to reduce heating bills and take people out of fuel poverty in this type of property. It isn't  solar panels that are needed, but training schemes and skilled people who will design and oversee projects to make houses warmer while using less energy.

Uninsulated sections of a property that have received
cavity wall insulation (blue). Condensation occurs
in these areas (see below), with consequent rapid growth
of mould - a serious environmental health problem.
This situation is experienced in many houses, especially
those built of impermeable dense concrete blocks, but it is also
being found in more recently-built (e.g. 1980s) houses.

My colleague Paul Buckingham and I, and many other contributors to Green Building Magazine, know that there are few builders who are competent to do the necessary work to an appropriate standard, and that green deal assessments are too superficial, just like the ridiculous Energy Performance Certificates. The one done for my house was completed by someone who didn't even visit it and who failed to record cavity wall insulation and a condensing boiler had been installed. This meant I had to complain to the issuing company, which subsequently had to redo the assessment. Similarly, I am now claiming under my Cavity Wall Insulation guarantee - as we have found installation has been incomplete - with large unfilled gaps found during our own survey of the property.


Investment into making homes warmer is far more of a priority than generating energy, and I am not convinced that profits from community renewables will be sufficient to unlock enough cash to address the mountains that have to be climbed to achieve energy-efficient housing in Britain. Another option could have been to use Quantitative Easing cash for this purpose, something my colleague Ken Neal has been pushing for. By this means money would be circulated within the local economy with multiplier effects (rather than being given to banks and effecting further increases in house prices).

Mould growing where condensation is occurring on the 'cold' bridge
which is the wall area above the soffits and under the roofline. This is a tenanted house privately owned. In this case the landlord is taking the problem seriously and engaging Paul and a local builder to do remedial work. This will involve taking two rows of tiles off the roof, removing the cavity wall closer, filling the cavity with vermiculite and placing insulation above the soffit on the outside wall. Loft insulation will also be increased and will link up with the new insulation, to effectively remove the existing cold bridge. Active mechanical ventilation will also be installed in the kitchen and bathroom to reduce the quantity of water vapour in the house. In an ideal situation the use of a heat recovery ventilation system would be better, such as the Lo Carbon Tempra kit that I have installed in my own kitchen. This will all help. However, the ideal would be a complete and comprehensive whole house audit and eco refurb but most landlords and house owners are not prepared for either the cost or the upheaval involved.

Hold back the floods

Waterlogged maize field near Frome, January 2014.The area in the foreground is also contaminated by leachate originating from a manure pile (not slurry as previously stated),  so it isn't just water and soil washing off the land into watercourses. Two springs rise in this field which is located on a heavy clay soil liable to waterlogging. Maize-growing is not an appropriate way to farm this land in an environmentally sustainable way.

Britain is once again under deluge. Prolonged bouts of heavy rain over the past couple of months mean the ground is waterlogged and low-lying land flooded.  Across much of the country, more water is reaches the floodplain more quickly because of land drainage in the catchment to enable more intensive farming. This has effectively removed the capacity of semi-natural vegetation (much of which has been removed or significantly reduced), such as associated with deep-rooted broad leaved herbs in pastures, wetlands, hedgerows and trees, to hold water back. Along with these land use changes, modern farming continues to cause vast quantities of soil erosion from fields and into watercourses. Even now, during heavy rain, slurry from dairy farms is also washing off fields – and this is another source of nutrient-rich silt entering rivers. This situation means many West Country rivers are now in a dire state and are failing to meet quality objectives for nitrogen, phosphate and fish. Watercourse maintenance is a vital tool in the box for reducing flood risk but it is overly simplistic, as many have suggested, to claim that all the problems being experienced now in the Somerset Levels and other flood-prone areas are due to a lack of river dredging. Moreover, in the past, over-deepening and over-widening rivers to facilitate drainage off low grade farmland and thus intensify farming practices have exacerbated flooding downstream. Some blame therefore lies with the former Internal Drainage Boards, the farming industry, National Rivers Authority (and predecessors) for colluding to create this situation that cost taxpayers dear, for the sole purpose of enabling landowners to reap agricultural subsidies for creating arable land, reseeding pastures and destroying flower rich meadows and other semi-natural vegetation – often in or adjacent to floodplains. The Somerset Levels is an area where this happened big time and tensions here in the 1980s and 90s led to farmers burning the effigy of a local Nature Conservancy Council official and then to the introduction of the Environmentally Sensitive Areas scheme. But this was the past and everyone needs to look at the now. Today, politicians, planners, the farming industry and all those involved in flood-risk planning, need to take a breath and work together to develop holistic, landscape-based measures that will overall improve the resilience of areas prone to flooding and treat a major part of the problem - runoff and silt from farmland at source. Such plans must also sit within a longer term adaptation strategy that will enable communities to adapt to climate change – including higher winter rainfall and sea level rise. 

The Somerset Levels is low-lying, most of it only just above sea level (20% is below mean high tide), necessitating pump drainage at times of high rain and high tides. The rivers also outfall into the Bristol Channel, which has the second greatest tidal range in the world. No amount of dredging will move water off from the area when it is underwater and when tides are high. Owen Paterson, having visited the Levels yesterday, has come in for a lot of flack from locals who are baying for the blood of the Environment Agency (apparently it is all the EA's fault the water hasn't disappeared) and want the rivers dredged. Paterson is correct in seeking to get organisations together to come up with a holistic plan (albeit on an unrealistic time scale). Work to alleviate flooding in all areas must get away from the old dredge, drain and pump approach and look to a much rounded set of long term measures. It is, however, a tragedy that the shambolic Common Agricultural Policy will continue to give money to farmers with hardly any strings attached. That is the money that could have been used to achieve the necessary land use change.

The Wildlife Trusts (www.wildlifetrusts.org/floods) and Chartered Institute for Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM) issued press statements in January, calling for the authorities and agencies responsible for managing flood and coastal erosion risks to prioritise natural and sustainable solutions in rural and urban areas. A spokesman from the Environment Agency said that there needed to be a pond in every field in areas where flood prevention is needed. Yours truly piled into the debate via Farmers Guardian’s 10 January leader article (see http://tinyurl.com/pwkopc2) while George Monbiot’s treatise (“Drowning in money, Guardian, 13 January) had received over 800 comments within a few days of it being published.

Progress on implementing natural solutions has been painfully slow, despite “upstream” measures having been a key recommendation of the Pitt Review of flooding, published in 2007. There have been a few pilot projects, but funding and difficulties of landowner/farmer engagement continue to be major stumbling blocks, while further agricultural intensification in recent years in some areas has led to more runoff and silt entering rivers. Mark Fisher, commenting on George M’s feature, lamented experience from the Ripon Multi-objective Project, saying that, “Despite ... positive findings ... the landowners proved unwilling to submit an application for planting floodplain woodland at any of the identified sites and a decision was taken to close the project (after 15 months).” He said that a primary reason for their recalcitrance was “the lack of sufficient payments/incentive to compensate for the perceived reduction in capital value of the land and loss of agricultural income, as well as for the increased risks associated with land use change”. Monbiot rightly turns the table away on the whingers who say that too little is spent on flood defences, highlighting the excessive spending on policies (especially the CAP) that make flooding worse. It all comes back to money. There is a lot of it around, but most of it (88%) will be used to support farmers' incomes, which will in turn keep agricultural land prices high. Delivering the necessary land use changes to deliver 'ecosystem services' will be unable to compete on price.

Upping the game

The recent issuing of licence to destroy buzzard nests to protect released pheasants demonstrates that some very uncomfortable truths about the game-shooting industry need to be outed but also that there is a lack of research evidence about the impacts of large-scale gamebird releases.

Do we know the real figures for the number of gamebirds released in Britain every year? It is estimated that between 40 and 50 million birds (that is pheasants, red-legged partridge and a smaller number of grey partridge) are released into Britain's countryside annually.  While the industry has carried out research into the benefits to the countryside from shooting, perhaps the research has been a little selective? It is all "a question of balance" (the title of a Game Conservancy [now the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust] publication about its research), so here are my research questions on the impact of these releases, and associated activities (including predator-culling), relevant to wildlife, farming and human health.

1) What is the impact of providing all this extra easy food on predator populations: i.e. fox, stoat, buzzard

2) What is the impact of predator-culling on their prey; and if this has an impact on those species, what is the effect? e.g. rabbit populations and impact on agricultural crops, whether grass or arable; is there an economic impact, if so, what is the cost and who bears this cost?

3) How many road traffic collisions are caused by drivers crashing into or swerving to avoid released gamebirds? What are the death and injury statistics? (I sadly remember a 17-year old who died because he swerved to avoid a pheasant when on his motorbike). What is the cost to the insurance industry and to the NHS? What are the social and economic costs to the impacted families who have been bereaved or injured?

Raptors have increased, but the recent request for a licence to destroy buzzard nests is just the beginning of what the game industry really wants, which is to get rid of more buzzards, shortly followed by ravens (nicely recovering after a century of absenteeism from large swathes of Britain) and red kites. In some parts of the countryside foxes are already very scarce, as shoots do not tolerate them and it is very clear from this that a substantial number of gamekeepers and shoot managers (and their landlords) will only be happy when they can see no raptors in the sky. Where will it stop? Surely, it's time to put the brakes on the game industry, not recovering wildlife. It is now time for those who love the countryside and its wildlife to up their game.

Signs of spring

Hooray, those sharp east winds have disappeared for the time being. This year's prolonged winter has many implications for wildlife, farming and food production. First, the wildlife. Spring migrants are late to arrive but I heard the first chiffchaff on Wednesday. Their arrival is about two weeks later than normal. The wild daffodils, usually at their peak around 8 March, were still at their best last weekend - one month later than normal. The cold weather has kept them in splendid 'suspended' animation. Barn owls will probably be suffering. At this time of year the females need to be nice and fat, ready to lay eggs, but insects and voles are probably scarcer, so the barn owls will either delay breeding, lay fewer eggs or perhaps be less fertile.

Farmland wildlife may also benefit from the huge acreage of uncultivated land that was too wet to plant last autumn and now, it is is too late to plant for this year. Many fields will need to remain fallow or planted up with a green manure, so will not be producing wheat, barley or oilseed rape this year. A lot of the oilseed rape has also failed - either eaten by slugs or pigeons. Meanwhile, take a minute to think about the challenges faced by upland farmers who have had to dig their sheep out of 7-foot snowdrifts.

For those of us with veg patches or allotments it has been too cold to get seeds going, so our growing season may be shorter - unless we have a nice mild autumn. Time will tell but I plan to get digging this weekend, (followed by a visit to the local  back man on Monday!).

Fewer flowers, where are the bees?

This photo shows one of the field-scale projects that I have supplied
seed for.  This 15 hectare field was sown with wild flower and
grass seed in 2004. Although the soil was in a very poor state after
having been 'mined' for arable crops for 30 years, the flowers
eventually 'took off' after about 5 years and are spreading every
year. It is topped in late summer and sheep-grazed in autumn, but
now would benefit from some summer cattle-grazing.
Before it was ploughed up in the 1970s this field grew very
good suckler beef. It could once more..

Sarah Raven's excellent new series, Bees, Butterflies and Blooms began transmitting yesterday on the BBC. The first programme featured what's happened to the countryside in past decades, whether village greens or farms, and showcased some positive stories of a farmer and rural community restoring wild flowers around an arable field and on the village green. Yours truly had a minor role, sweating it out on the hottest day in 2010 (you won't see the sweat, carefully edited out) in a Sussex wild flower meadow. Sarah and I agree that our wild flowers are in serious trouble in the countryside. Both of us and others, continue to play our part in getting some of them put back, but the truth is that much of the countryside, whether grassland  or arable land, is wildlife-poor desert devoid of most of the wild flowers which were abundant 50 years ago. Like Sarah says, we can't turn the clock back, but things could be a lot better (sometimes with little effort or cost).

The wild flower restoration charity, Flora locale, with which I am still associated as Technical Adviser, offers really good days out, showcasing methods for restoring wild flowers and their habitats across the UK. This year there are many rural-based events but also some on wildlife gardening and improving wildlife in towns. So, if anyone other than me reads this blog and wants to learn more, then why not visit the website and see what events are on offer this year?

More climate lies

Yesterday, David Rose, writing in the Mail on Sunday said 'Forget global warming'. Rose said new data from the Met Office showed that "the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years". He also said the figures "suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age" and that they also confirm that "the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997". Unsurprisingly the Met Office has issued a press statement confirming that Rose's assertions are no more than a pack of lies. Although 'pack' and 'lies' are two words not actually used in the MO statement, the word 'belief' is. 

Unsurprisingly this figure from the Met Office was
not published, if it had it would have clearly
shown that Rose's assertions were pure fabrication
on his part.

Undoubtedly Rose is a climate sceptic wishing to use his privledged position, as a journalist writing for one of Britain's most-read Sunday newspapers, to push his belief on to others who do not have the time or mental capacity to understand the complexities of global warming. This makes it ever more harder to convince ordinary people that climate change is real, a threat to the future of their children and grandchildren and that they have a part to play in doing something about it.

The Mail on Sunday does not have a good track record in telling the truth about climate change having published other features that encourage its readers to believe it isn't happening. This is not the only newspaper that regularly fails to tell the truth, or 'massages' storylines to peddle some kind of belief that fails to acknowledge evidence. So I was quite interested to find the Angry Mob website. Unsurprisingly, much of this excellent blog is aimed at the appalling catalogue of journalistic misinformation churned out by the Daily Mail and its sister newspaper. 

Back to Rose's assertions and the truth - the Met Office says it  "is absolutely clear is that we have continued to see a trend of warming, with the decade of 2000-2009 being clearly the warmest in the instrumental record going back to 1850". Don't bother to get the sledges out then, buy the suntan cream, collect rainwater and don't live in a place that is less than 10 metres below sea level.

Hedgerow management

So, are farmers are all doing a good job in looking after our countryside? Well, the answer to that is some are, but some are not. Unfortunately, it is the case that the way many hedges are managed is both bad and prehistoric, both in action and attitude. The outcome is bad for the landscape, bad for wildlife and bad PR for the farming community at large . The picture on the left, taken this winter, says it all. This is part of a Devon roadside hedge and is just one example of how many hedges are still flailed annually within an inch of their lives.

Another 'hedge' being flailed into oblivion,
near Great Shefford, West Berks

We knew about how to manage hedgerows well decades ago - using chamfered cuts, allowing the hedge to grow taller and by cutting less-frequently. Over that time, successive government agencies and others have given thousands of talks, walks and advice on the matter. So those who continue to manage their hedges in such a crap way  can't claim ignorance. You would also think that whoever pays to have the hedgerow cut, would work out for themselves that their bottom line could be a tad healthier if their hedges were less-regularly cut. My only conclusion is that those who are responsible for "managing" hedges like the illustrated examples must be severely lacking in brain cells or they just don't care.

Of course such hedgerow mismanagement is terrible PR for the farming industry at large and an indictment of the Common Agricultural Policy, particularly the Cross Compliance requirements which do nothing to prevent inappropriate hedgerow management, while the Entry Level Stewardship scheme just allows farmers pretty well to carry on with what they have done before, whether good or bad.

The good news is, that, by restoring good hedge-management some of the farmland birds currently continuing to decline will return - such as Yellowhammer and Bullfinch, especially if at the same time farmers maintain and restore good-sized areas of flower-rich habitat.

Good hedge management isn't rocket science but those who continue to do the opposite should be outed and, under CAP reforms, such individuals and businesses should (in my view) lose their eligibility to receive any taxpayers' money to keep them in farming. There are plenty of others willing to take their place who would love to farm and manage our countryside in ways that are in harmony with the landscape and nature.

Link to hedgelink