Green Roofs Masterclass

So, this week we sent all our installers on the Green Roofs in the Townscape Masterclass, delivered by @greenroofsuk in the presitigous surroundings of Northamptonshire’s Lamport Academy. And of course, as anyone familiar with the green roof sector in the UK knows all too well, there is always something new to discover with this endlessly innovative approach to low-impact construction.

While the GRO guidelines, which adapt the more stringent German FLL code for the UK construction industry, provide a national standard for green roof installation, one of the themes running through lively discussions throughout the day was that green roofs in the UK suffer from a lack of understanding on the part of clients, contractors and architects about their rationale, design considerations and post-installation care and monitoring requirements. It was a frequently expressed hope that with better training amongst green roof installers, the ethos underpinning good green roof design – letting nature show us the way and do the work – can be communicated to and understood by our fellow construction professionals.

The course covered a number of key issues, and there were particularly significant developments discussed firstly in terms of current green roof policy in London and around the UK, and also in best practice regarding drainage systems in the design and installation of successful long lasting green roofs.

Policy developments

We discovered that while the lack of any formal obligation to install green roofs is likely to remain, that the expectation of the GLA that new developments in London will have them is starting to produce substantially more green roofs in the capital, and that two factors were likely to see this both increase and spread to other important cities: the first is that in the next 7 years EU guidelines will begin to fall in place that require national governments to demonstrate how their cities are delivering green infrastructure; the second, relatedly, is that the Water Act passed by the last Labour government contains a little-heralded clause that water runoff be dealt with ‘at-source’. With 63% of London’s footprint being roofs (roads 23% and vegetated areas such as parks only 10%) it is clear that efforts to better manage unpredictable storm water will move to the rooftops in earnest in the coming years.