Is that a draught?

In my last blog, I think I tempted fate. I was a little optimistic about the cold weather starting to ease. Anyway, enough moaning, and at least the ongoing gloom and chill has got me thinking about double glazing.

Don't worry, I'm not planning a change of tack for My Greener Home. Instead, I would like to highlight the thorny issue of windows in listed buildings. As part of our move out of London to the country, we recently bought a house that is listed. It is fairly large and very draughty. With the recent low temperatures we have had a trial by fire (or snow) in our first few weeks of living there. Probably in common with many people, our last heating bill was very high. So why is it that we have been refused permission to fit double glazing? This is because it is nigh on impossible to get a planning department to give you permission to fit double glazing in any listed building.

In the past, I've spoken to quite a few people who've had the same problem, so I thought I would share a few numbers with you on the subject. In total, there are 419,505 listed buildings in the UK; 372,905 in England and Wales, 46,600 in Scotland. Of these, 38% are domestic dwellings – and all are subject to rules that are now more than 20 years old.

Since then, technology has moved on quite a lot. There are plenty of new window products that allow double glazing to look like a multi-paned sash window, but it can still be a massive battle to get these accepted.

Now, as far as I'm aware, this is partly a Government issue and partly a local authority issue, and, unsurprisingly, some are more co-operative than others. But at a time when the government is trying to meet targets on CO2, it would make sense for a slightly more sensible approach. Of course, I'm all for protecting our heritage, but it's about time it was realised that these regulations aren't really helping anybody.