Anti-green Simon White doesn't know what he's on about
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I was interested to read Simon White’s recent column headlined ’Hot air spouted on green issues is a waste of energy’ (Mortgage Strategy June 7).
It led me to wonder whether the author, when not tapping into the zeitgeist of public opinion that is the man on the Clapham omnibus, leaves his office to conduct his property surveys with a booming cry of ’Fire up the Quattro’.
Apparently, White inhabits a world where nobody has ever asked him to comment on a property’s energy efficiency because the world at large “isn’t interested and doesn’t understand”.
What’s more, your intrepid columnist highlights a “bonkers” scheme to build houses out of “horse nosh” - that’s straw bales - used in buildings for quite some time that he says no lender would lend on anyway.
As a lender with a focus on all matters green, at Ecology Building Society - formed back in the no-nonsense 1980s - we realise that we are not going to be the national barometer of lender attitudes any time soon.
But most lenders and valuers accept that we have challenging targets to improve the carbon efficiency of the existing and new-build housing stock in this country, and that this will bring economic as well as environmental benefits.
To put this in context, there are an estimated 21 million homes in the UK in need of energy upgrading by 2050 to meet carbon reduction targets, and we see alternative materials and construction methods as two of the measures that can be used to achieve this objective.
As well as having a straw bale meeting room at our headquarters - yet to be troubled by horses - we lend on properties such as the ones White talks about at North Kesteven, even offering substantial discounts for the lifetime of the mortgage relative to the low carbon nature of such schemes.
Sadly, it seems we can’t ask White to conduct the energy performance certifications we need to help our borrowers take advantage of this given his lack of experience in the field. Still, there are plenty of others who can. It seems there is life on Mars after all.
PAUL ELLIS
CHIEF EXECUTIVE
ECOLOGY BUILDING SOCIETY
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