Cutting The Cost of Cold

How can we improve our housing stock and strike a balance between public health, cost and environmental impact?

In her seminal work in 1991, Brenda Boardman, who introduces this book, defined the problem of fuel poverty and introduced the concept of Affordable Warmth - the notion that everyone should live in a building which allows them to be free from illness and discomfort, from cold and damp, at a price they can afford. This book is about the issue of affordable warmth and the ways to achieve it. The 34 authors of the 20 contributions are a wide-ranging multi-disciplinary group of leading British experts in the field.

Cutting the Cost of Cold is divided into four sections:

1. Current research: looking at the latest medical and building-related evidence about the causes of illness to cold and damp homes.
2. Tools for research and practice: presenting approaches to defining the problem of our inadequate housing stock and evaluating its medical and economic cost.
3. Inter-agency working in practice: presenting the methods by which a variety of bodies - health authorities, local authorities, academics, architects and interest groups have worked in experimental partnerships to try to solve the problems caused by fuel poverty.
4. Ways forward: in which three leading experts show the role which local authorities, health authorities and the building industry might play in working towards affordable warmth for all.

This is a powerful reference source and essential reading for those in the medical and architectural professions, local authority departments and welfare groups with an involvement in this increasingly important area of interest.

Edited by Janet Rudge & Fergus Nicol

Published by E & FN Spon, ISBN 0-419-25050-6

©LEARN, Low Energy Architecture Research Unit
Courtesy of JK Solomon