The RIBA wants to promote the role of architects in the government’s proposal to green all homes by 2030.

RIBA head of public affairs Anna Scott Marshall confirmed the institute would lobby hard for architects to play a key role in the draft heat and energy saving scheme, which energy and climate change secretary Ed Miliband announced last week and will now be subject to a three-month consultation.

Miliband wants to hear views on how best to slash carbon emissions to meet a series of targets including cutting carbon by a third in 7 million homes by 2020 and extending this to all homes a decade later.

Last November, RIBA president Sunand Prasad called for a nationwide green retrofitting plan for homes, which he claimed would provide architects with a bumper workload despite the recession.

Scott Marshall said: “Architects will be able to advise on all sorts of things, and it’s a good opportunity for them to diversify into other areas. In terms of our response, we’ll be reinforcing the role architects have to play.

“Quite drastic changes [to homes] could involve architects.”

Associate director of housing specialist PRP, Greg Slater, said more architects were bound to get increasingly involved in residential refurbishment with work including over-cladding and specifying high-performance insulation materials.

He added: “It hasn’t been seen as fashionable to refurbish existing stock but if [the government] is to achieve the cuts being talked about there is an amazing amount of work to be done.”

Slater said he expected social housing work to lead the way because councils and registered social landlords had the biggest amounts of stock on their books.

He said: “They’re educated clients and they have got a lot of homes that can be treated in one go. That scale of stock gives confidence to firms to invest in this. There is work in this for all scales of practice.”

A spokesman for the UK Green Building Council also backed the RIBA’s efforts, claiming architects would be vital in helping design out inefficiencies in heating and energy.

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