Committee publication · Correspondence · 25 November 2025
Email from Luke Cannell, Communications Support Officer, Local Government Association, regarding Protecting built heritage oral evidence follow-up, 11 November 2025
From: Culture, Media and Sport Committee
Inquiry: Protecting built heritage
Summary
The Local Government Association provides written follow-up evidence to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee's Protecting Built Heritage inquiry, responding to Question 183. The LGA outlines the challenges councils face balancing conservation of historic buildings with climate adaptation and energy efficiency, citing maintenance backlogs, retrofit difficulties, and funding gaps since the Public Sector Decarbonisation Fund ended.
Key findings
- Local government holds extensive historic building portfolios (town halls, mills, castles, libraries, piers) that require new uses but face conservation protections limiting climate adaptation and energy efficiency improvements.
- A decade of council financial pressure has created substantial maintenance backlogs, with historic buildings particularly hard to heat and insulate, posing dual challenges for climate responsibility and cost reduction.
- Current planning context and lack of central guidance inhibit retrofit solutions; no standardised training programme exists for conservation and planning officers to confidently approve necessary interventions.
- The end of the Public Sector Decarbonisation Fund has created a significant funding gap for heritage building adaptation; councils lack affordable pathways to retrofit historic properties for climate resilience and housing use.
- The LGA produced a Culture Service sustainability routemap consolidating best practice but recommends government embed this in formal training and introduce replacement match-funding schemes aligned with the Warm Homes Plan.
Recommendations
- DCMS and arms-length bodies should embed the LGA's Culture Service sustainability routemap into training provision for councillors and planning/conservation officers.
- Government should introduce replacement funding for heritage building retrofit, specifically match-funding projects that would otherwise be unaffordable or unviable.
- Replacement funding should be aligned with the Warm Homes Plan to accelerate historic building adaptation for housing, supporting the 1.5 million homes target by end of decade.
Tone
ProceduralTopics
Key actors
Local Government Association, Luke Cannell, Councillor Julie Jones Evans, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, DCMS, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero
Notable line
“However, they are also hard to heat and insulate and pose a particular challenge for councils and organisations having to adapt both responsibly to climate change and also need to reduce costly …”
Key Quotes
“Local government is a major owner of historic buildings, from civic town halls, mills and castles to Caird libraries and Victorian piers. They hold these buildings in trust for the local community.”
“The pressure on council finances over the past decade has meant that basic maintenance has often not been carried out as frequently or as extensively as many councils would like, and this leaves a substantial backlog of repairs.”
“There are solutions for retrofit but no central repository of information or training programme for conservation/planning officers to give them the confidence to make decisions about interventions.”
“… the end of it has left a significant gap. o We recommend that Government looks at introducing replacement funding, aimed at match-funding projects that would not otherwise be affordable or viable to retrofit.”
Source · parliament.uk record ↗