St John Notting Hill
This page forms part of the Diocese of London's Shrinking the Footprint microsite.
Generic Building Solutions is a project of the Diocese of London, in partnership with the Carbon Trust, and with the noted multi-disciplinary design firm Arup as consultants.
It forms part of the Climate Action Programme, itself one strand in the Diocese's strategic plan to address the challenge of energy use and carbon emissions from its buildings. See Route 2050.
The purpose of Generic Building Solutions is to find ways to meet our long term climate challenge, to reduce our energy use and carbon emissions by at least 80% by 2050.
We also have a short-term target of 20.12% reductions by 2012, and a medium-term target of 42% by 2020. We hope to achieve the first of these by comparatively simple measures – changing the lightbulbs to low energy types, using heat and electricity sparingly and avoiding waste.
Our longer term targets – which we share with UK government policy – will be harder to achieve.
The Generic Building Solutions project began in four of the Diocese's Episcopal Areas: Stepney, Middlesex, Edmonton and Northolt.
At the same time, Environmental Audits of energy, carbon, water and waste have been carried in churches in the Two Cities Area and also in other areas. This auditing programme shows how to achieve the short term target of 20.12% by 2012.
While Environmental Audits are progressing, we have been working on Generic Building Solutions – examining ways of getting to our long-term target of 80% by 2050.
Click here for more information about Environmental Audits.
The conclusions of Generic Building Solutions are available to any church in London (and to other dioceses too).
Also, at the same time as running Environmental Audits and Generic Building Solutions, we have developed a system of Energy-saving Benchmarking.
We might think we have till 2050 - four decades in which to deal with the question of climate change – why worry now?
Yet the changes needed will take all the time we can give them.
If we wait till 2040 then try to do everything in a hurry – that will be too little too late, we will have lost the battle against climate change.
We have to start now, as much as possible as soon as possible. And the finance needed for major alterations projects may take years to arrange.
Also we don't want to reorder our church for liturgical reasons, only to discover a few years later that it would have been more efficient to do it some other way! That way we could spend more undoing what we've done already.
So what are we doing to plan strategically?
It is necessary to look at all our buildings – beginning with the Church and Church Hall – how we use them, their age, size, design and construction, their heating and electrics.
Are the Church and Hall open once or twice on Sundays, or all week? All of the building or just part? How many people come in and out? Are the rooms the right sizes for meetings, and heated appropriately?
Are the boiler and controls up to date, the lighting low energy? Are there new technologies we could install?
Can the roofs be insulated?
Do other buildings adjoin the Church? Could services be shared?
Low-carbon design is a big challenge, even in new buildings. It is notoriously difficult to alter old buildings to improve their energy efficiency by 80% and upwards.
70% of our church buildings are listed buildings. Any alterations have to be very carefully considered to safeguard their character. That makes energy saving tougher still.
The London Diocese is thought to have as diverse a range of places and buildings as any diocese in England. We have ancient historic buildings, modern buildings built after World War II, very large Victorian buildings and tiny medieval ones, tight city centre sites and spreading churchyards in the suburbs.
What kinds of changes would work well for different sites and buildings?
There could be different alterations to buildings and their uses which will be best suited to the varied characteristics of these very different places.
For example a city centre church, with other buildings around it, may be able to install solar panels with comparatively little effect on its appearance. Whereas, the same alteration to a medieval building in the middle of a churchyard might be visually very intrusive.
So, we have carried out a sample survey of a range of our churches and sites. With our consultants, Arup, we have studied them to get a picture of how they might need to change, and how feasible that might be.
A selection was first made of 20 churches, as typical examples – which capture as far as we can the very diverse range of churches and sites in London. Then we studied their energy performance and how this might be improved; and analysed those features which might make it easier, or more difficult, to carry out the kinds of alterations needed.
Then we chose one church as a 'Model Church' – the basis for a worked example of potential improvements.
There is no charge for churches taking part in this study. That's because every church in the diocese should be able to benefit. This project is not just for those individual churches – they have been chosen as typical examples of all our churches.
A project report by Arup has now been produced. Download Arup's report at the foot of this section.
We have also produced guidance on how to approach energy saving projects for your church – based on the analysis and information we have gained from our typical studies – and how to approach any building project and make appropriate choices with energy-saving and sustainability in mind. Also download 'Options, Challenges, Solutions, Limitations' below.
In addition, we have prepared guidance on how to appraise any proposals which require altering a listed building or other church building. We have analysed this into typical 'Needs, Significance, Impact and Mitigation' issues. Download 'Significance and Needs' below.
This will help you with your faculty application – for which a Statement of Significance and Needs will be required (see www.london.anglican.org/DACMakingChanges).
See also Climate Action Projects.
We want anyone to be able to use this information. We hope that the information and guidance from Generic Building Solutions will become part of everyone's thinking on the best way to alter any church to save energy – whilst doing the least harm to its special character. Indeed we should be seeking to make exciting improvements to the uses and character of all our churches, whilst saving energy and carbon emissions too!
These downloads all have hyperlinks in their tables of contents, to jump to each section:
| Generic Buildings Solutions final report |
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| Options, Challenges, Solutions, Limitations |
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| Significance and Needs |
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Also, download this article from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) Building Conservation Journal, July/August 2011:
| RICS Building Conservation Journal article |
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A programme of training workshops is now under way:
All in London Diocesan House, from 2 – 6:30 pm. Pre-booking is required. See Events.
For more information on Generic Building Solutions, or about the Environmental Challenge, contact Brian Cuthbertson on 020 7932 1229, or email 
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