the united nations' annual climate change summit has begun in egypt — with a warning that a year of extreme weather must be a wake—up call for the planet. now on bbc news, we are england: money and me — a home without bills? i don't know where peoplei think we've got the money to pay all these bills. it is frightening, actually. this is a joule victorum exhaust air heat pump. sounds very fancy.

it's about it being sustainable and affordable. hi, wendy. i knew from the moment he bought these properties that things were going to change. before this propertyjourney, i used to be a teacher. i played for a number teams — bristol city, reading, wolves. he weren't that good! that's why he was on the left. do you know what key it is? the only way to reduce bills is to spend more, which is a conundrum. so, cost—wise, what does that look like per year? £50 per year to run. i have to put this on my house.

so here we are. this is the latest project, the three coach houses in the middle. when did we purchase it? about a year ago now. about a year ago. this time last year. we actually met through our partners. the first time we met, i was in your seat watching your tv. with your controller. i don't know normally how well that would go down. we just built a friendship from there. that friendship ended up evolving into a business, similar ideas, similar sorts of objectives. we need to think about how we carry out this

renovation with the least disruption for the tenants. yes, definitely. do you know what key it is? one of them gold ones. wish me luck. good detail. it's an incredible building. our gravelly hill site, we have an idea of what we're creating there in terms of the amount of units. what's definitely up for grabs is the detail, especially around heating systems, lighting systems, electrics, insulation. all of those things. the technical spec. we know people, family members,

friends who have had difficult experiences with housing — it has been close to home so we do know that's an issue. so the main priority for us is to really try to keep the bills down — which at the moment, given the current cost of living crisis, is harder than ever. so we feel the only way is to try to get the buildings to be as efficient as possible. implementing different systems. this is our business and we need to make a profit, but at the same time it's important to make an impace and have a purpose. an impact and have a purpose. there's a lot to learn, it's something that's quite new to us. so it's a case of gathering as much information as we can, here to make sure this building is as efficient as possible.

how are you doing? i'm well. not too bad. have you noticed a big difference in how much you're paying for bills and stuff? i've gone from using £15 a week to 40 on electric, so monthly. that's literally trebled nearly. currently, this is the flat you're in, but what we'd be looking to do is use the garage space as habitable space so you'll end up with 71 square metres. wow! i think it's fabulous, scott. we're just now trying to focus on the actual efficiency of the building to make sure it's as cost effective as possible to run because i know the bills are becoming a problem for a lot of people.

we're hoping in a year's time these buildings will be a lot cheaper to run and remain that way moving forward. fabulous. the plans look fabulous — i can't believe _ you're going to use... i can't believe that. i knew from the minute he bought these properties— things were going to change on a rapid level. _ i'm really excited that he is going to be a lot of work. on these properties. so i'm really chuffed. i can't wait. the architecture's wicked. that corner glass there... did you say he's an architect? makes sense.

hello, there. really good to meet you. cameron and scott? welcome to the zero carbon house. i'm really keen to see | more retrofitting done for all our cities, but particularlyl in birmingham and balsall heath. i think it's very much part of the solution i for the 21st century. a zero carbon house means zero bills. it's about less carbon it is currently omitting. it is currently emitting. you're standing now in- the uk's first—ever zero carbon retrofit house, but it's made up of two parts _ this part here is an old house. 170 years old. and over the far side

is the new part. - 2009, just 13 years old. this was the old — two up, two down. tiny little house, typical- of many of our victorian streets. so what we've done is we've taken a bit of floor space _ and insulated on the inside here, but on the sides and the back, i we've insulated on the outside. so we don't lose the floor space. that's one of our biggest drawbacks. we're working in lots of old buildings — part of our understanding of raising living standards, floor space is important. so this is the front - bedroom where we've got the old windows here. we've put a lining of insulation, and this is what we've used. it's a very eco material. it's basically— chewed up newspaper. it's not expensive, and we've just pumped it in to the wall. -

so you've literally created a cavity? just pump it in under pressure. it makes like a big duvet. we have used it for the ceiling. it's probably only an extra £5- per square metre to get the extra thickness because all the other costs are fixed. _ the airtightness of the whole house has moved 28 times. i 2800% improvement. so the actual running costs of this building — what does that look like now? interesting question — _ we don't have any fuel bills here. this house is not consuming energy. it's generating more - energy than it consumes, and so suddenly fuel bills are a thing of the past. . i would suggest for these, you need

to set yourself a target that - you want at least 80% reduction in the energy use of that house, and that's achievable. we've gone 95% reduction here — maybe there are some things - here you think we can't go that far. but i would say 80% is easily doable. - the extra thickness of insulation doesn't cost a lot, _ but the extra that will knock off people's heating bills. - instead of a radiator in every room, that's what you need. _ i think what he's done is the pinnacle. the comforting thing is he's done it with a retrofit. to the buildings we own. so there's no reason we can't try to replicate what he's done there, tailor it to what we need and come out with a hybrid version that's

the blueprint we roll out moving forward. i'm 81 years old now, - and it doesn't take a genius to notice how much things, especially electricity and, l you know, the utility that most people use are going up. - it is crazy. absolutely crazy. i don't know where - people think we've got the money to pay all these bills.

you'll have the new roof. you'll have the new windows and doors, and then you'll have the insulation on the outside of the house. it's all geared up, believe it or not, to keep the warmth in. but then you've got the circulation of air, so it gets rid of any damp and mould. a few weeks ago, - i had an enormous bill and it was frightening, actually. when they started, we knew about it. scaffolding went up and, oh dear, oh dear, you wondered _ what they were going to do next. but as things have gone on, and it -

has been 12 months and more, you can see that it's going to be viable. last but not least. there we go. we've been promised it'll be warmer for a start, . which is very nice to think about. cos it's terrible — - terrible at the moment. in wintertime, it'd be warmer living in a tent in the field. - i'm just heading to site now, so i'll see you in about 20 minutes. so the project we're running down at all saints is going to cost in the region of 1.3 million. 500,000 of that is contributed by the government as a grant and the rest we are funding internally.

it's quite a complicated set of measures to put into a property. we want to make sure that our homes are genuinely affordable for people to heat. no tenant should be forced into choosing between whether to heat their home or buy their dinner. we live in a society that should be able to move away from that in this day and age. we have tenants who are having to choose between putting petrol in the car or buying food, and there's an irony there that you put petrol in the car to drive to work but you then can't spend money on food that you've worked for. you have to spend it just to get back to work and hope that you have something spare at the end of the month. it really is a situation that isn't good, and so we're committed as i say to try and do everything we can do to help that. ok, i can see some solar panels and

freshly rendered properties here. sam. good to meet you. how are you doing? cameron. good to meet you, cameron. good journey down? yeah, it was alright. we got lost but got here eventually. there were a few diversions through some farmland, dodging a few tractors and big vehicles but we're here. 0k, yeah, we made it. you made it one piece, . that's the important thing. coming from inner city birmingham, our social housing looks different so this was a surprise. like, hills and views and all of that, i was surprised. but you're from down here, though. not quite, bristol is a little bit more scenic than birmingham. i'd say it's still eye—opening to see this because social housing in bristol doesn't look like this either. shall we take a walk i around site and i'll talk you through what we've been doing? yes, please. so how many properties did you say

you have on this site? we've got around 30 properties on the site in total. _ these are electric boiler combinations? how are these...? so these are all electric. we don't have a mains gas connection to these properties, _ so what we've done is we've upgraded lthe heating system with that in mindl which is why we have selected an air source heat pump. - what have we got here, like spec and systems wise? so, starting from the top - to the bottom, we've upgraded the loft insulation, - new triple—glazed windows, new high performance doors, - upgraded the ventilation internally. we've also added the solar pv on the roof and air source heat pump. - so a fair bit has gone into it. so this is a two—bedroom house? yeah. have we got an indication of how well this will perform throughout the winter? so we've had comment from one. of the tenants on site that they've

seen their costs reduce - for electricity to about one third, between 25% and 30%, - as to what they were spending. 0k, which is really good. really good, really good. what would you say have been some of the kind of biggest hurdles with installing something like this? a lot of the technology that - we've been fitting is quite new. it's the first time we've fitted itj and the contractors themselves aren't particularly experienced in delivering it at this time. i most of the teething issues we've had haven't been - to do with the fabric, _ we've had those kind of relatively, you think, simple issues - like the hot water not kicking in or the heating won't kick in or vice versa. . yeah. if it was a gas boiler, - you'd get a heating engineer out and they could fix it very quickly. - so it's not the case ofjust calling a plumber now or having one of your electricians or whatever it is, it's actually somebody that understands that particular system? absolutely, absolutely. so that's something we would have to consider from a maintenance perspective. let me take you down —| we'll go and visit nancy. one of the last properties to be having the work done. -

there's been quite a bit of disruption on site. we started this - project during the end of the pandemic, and then - following on with the supply chain issues that we're still- experiencing as a sector. that has delayed work on site quite significantly at times. _ you can see here the installation that we've been fitting. - what's the spec of this insulation? so it's 170mm thick, stonewall. that's interesting, cosjohn was saying 300mm and this is 170, so a lot thinner. and it's super—dense. yeah. we specified it to bring _ the properties down to a heat demand of 50 kilowatt hours per metre squared. | yeah, makes sense. cosjohn was going for zero, wasn't he? yeah. but i think ultimately trying to reduce the bills, that's the main objective. yeah. if you can get them down two thirds, which is what you said earlier, like, who can complain? i think i had anxiety about the installation of 300, but seeing the smaller one and understanding that it has benefits...

hello. sam was saying about the teething problems— sam was saying about the teething problems and even the suppliers are not that_ problems and even the suppliers are not that familiar with the systems, it is still_ not that familiar with the systems, it is still new to them. we need to -et it is still new to them. we need to get people — it is still new to them. we need to get people out to maintain these things. _ get people out to maintain these things, it's been quite difficult. the best— things, it's been quite difficult. the best thing is probably to up skill our— the best thing is probably to up skill our guys and get them familiar with the _ skill our guys and get them familiar with the systems they are installing so they _ with the systems they are installing so they know how it went in and what could _ so they know how it went in and what could have _ so they know how it went in and what could have gone wrong and why.

in the next handful of years, i don't see how we don't end up in new builds and doing both. retro—things, and land. and build out. i think they're actually building it to the future home standards, which is really interesting. if we want to go down that path, building new builds, we really want to get ahead of the regulations. tony? scott. so this is one _ of our future home schemes. | what we're trying to do is we'rej trying low and zero carbon tech. we're really interested looking different technologies. -

what is a key challenge to mel is the usability of the systems. i'm excited to take a look in this plant room. this is a joule victorum exhaust air heat pump. j sounds fancy! it is! works as a ventilation system and an air source heat pump. and there's been a handful of these installed in the country, _ and we're really keen to see how they work in reality. _ this is the system put in place to replace our flat panel radiators and things like that? it produces hot water, which i are stored here in this cylinder, and in this property it is distributed through- underfloor heating. 0h, nice! so is the idea that essentially to have the heating

on low consistently as opposed to turning it up and down? exactly. these systems work so well — this is nearly 500% efficient. i for each unit of energy you put in, you get five units of heat - which bring electric costj down to lower than gas. this is incredible. we've done some research but seeing it in action makes sense how we implement it on our sites. can we take some pics? yes, go ahead! say cheese! we always have problems - with cupboards in older properties so it's perfect rather than boarding off cupoards or adding an awkward j shaped space to a room.

cost—wise, what does that look like per year? design data suggests it costs around £50 per year to run. _ £50 a year?! my word! fifty a year to run one single year? that's unbelievable. that's actually unbelievable. i'll have to put this on my house! i'm super—impressed by what we've seen. it's a lot different to what we thought. we thought it might be more futuristic that we've not seen but they've used your general brick and block. they actually look like the systems that we've already got, which makes this really achievable. even though there's

a bigger upfront cost, tony's told us to run one of these units... £50 a year — i thought that was per month. it's wild. it's blown my mind! we have tenants that are currently £40—£50 a week. the biggest thing for me is the insulation. we'll probably go with a thinner insulation on the front of the property. but that thick insulation we can implement that on the back of the property. providing power to the property, there's only solar recessed into the roof. this experience has been really good. i've learnt so much across the different sites.

we'll definitely use solar panels, the exhaust heat recovery system, that hybrid system they had at edgbaston. that's definitely something we'd look to implement. there is the things we took away from the sites we went to. rainwater harvesting, green roofs. have you seen these inlay solar panels? you can see that they're there and they look good and don't look bad. we're lucky because gravelly hill has got a black roof already. on the front of the property, we want to keep as much of the original facade as possible. we don't want to spoil what's there because we like that. we know that there's an added cost so we have to factor that in. so we might say, ok, a million pound renovation, which is likely going to be the case at gravelly hill — there's probably £150,000 excess on top of that to implement some of these sytems that we'd like to put in to reduce the bills. the projection of gravelly hill, the front is probably the best. we looked at that business—wise

and said, ok, that's probably 18—24 months for us to recoup that money back again over 22 apartments. and then obviously we're just into profit or savings, whichever way you want to look at it. we've got a date at the end of september for planning to be quarter of next year. what we're doing at gravelly hill excites me. i want to just play the game now and finish. i want it to be over so we can see the end product. i want to see it in full view. the thing i'm looking forward to seeing the most is the impact it will have on the tenants, and it is life—changing for them.

hello there. other we have had drier and quieter moments it has been pretty unsettled this weekend. some heavy rain for some of us. that and settle theme continues into the start of the new week but by around mid week things will settle down with high pressure building on. sunshine will be limited but notice will be very mild particularly in england and wales. low pressure in control for this afternoon and into the evening and overnight. we continue to see blustery showers and longer spells of rain spreading out from the south, moving north. the winds touching gale force across south—west extremities. temperatures falling to 7 to 10 celsius. from monday, a windy day, very windy across the south and west. spells of showers, long spells of rain moving

north, some heavy. some rumbles of thunder, blustery day for all areas, gusting 50 to 60 mph across more exposed to questionnaires. temperatures on the mild side, 12 to 15, it might not feel like it because of the strength of the wind.

this is bbc news, i'm ben brown. the headlines at 3: union leaders say nurses are likely to take their first ever national strike action before christmas. a senior government minister has denied that rishi sunak knew details of bullying allegations against sir gavin williamson before he gave him a job. in a keynote speech to party members, the lib dem leader sir ed davey reiterates his call for a general election, saying the current government, "does not have a shred of credibility left". the united nations' annual climate change summit has begun in egypt with a warning that a year of extreme weather must be a wake—up call for the planet. and coming up at 3:30, operation relocation, looks behind the scenes of one of the uk's biggest hospital's

transitions from old to new.