§ 16. Mr. Rostasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what proportion of educational buildings now meet the standards recommended in the Department's Building Bulletin 55 "Energy Conservation in Educational Buildings".
§ Miss Margaret JacksonThis information is not available, but the proportion is likely to be small. A recent sample survey of 15 local authorities showed that in the design of new educational buildings more than half the authorities provided roofs and over one-quarter provided walls with a standard of insulation at or above that recommended in the bulletin.
§ Mr. RostDoes the hon. Lady accept that the rising price of fuel means that better insulation is highly cost-effective and that it would save the taxpayer many millions of pounds in running costs if all school buildings came up to the recommended standards? How long will this programme take?
§ Miss JacksonNot only do I accept it, we have made money available under the energy conservation programme—£8 million in 1978–79 and £17 million for each of the three years after that—for this very purpose. In Oxfordshire, where an experiment has been running between my Department and two secondary schools, one of the schools has saved 12 per cent. in a year on its energy bill and the other has saved 29 per cent. I recommend to other local authorities that they study the examples of Oxfordshire and Warwickshire which are involved in joint projects with their schools and offering to share half of the savings on energy with the schools involved.