Magnificent May? Then turn up the radiators!

Town & Country Planning, June 2008

It has been unseasonably hot over the past month, at least here in Crystal Palace. I’ve enjoyed it, but I’ve been fascinated – morning after morning – to sit down in the waiting room in Norbury railway station and find the heaters on.

On swelteringly hot days I found myself climbing on the chairs to switch them off – only to find them back on again the next hot morning. I’m still not quite sure why this is. Perhaps the passengers switch them on in the cold early mornings, and there is nobody to switch them off.  Perhaps the station staff – who I have never seen on the platforms – have instructions to switch them on.

But I did have a clue. During the hottest week of the month, my mother-in-law arrived at the local-authority-run college in Croydon where she teaches part-time, to find that the central heating was on. It was particularly sticky and sweltering. During every spare moment, she set about the long business of tracking down somebody who had sufficient authority to turn off the radiators.

If you have been wondering what on earth the radiators in the local college have to do with localism, it is about the disconnect between those responsible for decisions, and the information and experience they need to take decisions efficiently and effectively.

My mother-in-law is one of those people who can make things happen, very gently but determinedly, but – even for her – getting the radiators turned off in the sweltering heat was no easy project to take on.  The principal of the college wasn’t responsible. Nor were those responsible for the college at the local authority. Most of them not only had no power over their own heating, they also had no idea who had – a familiar experience in centralised public services

these days.

Towards the end of the day, she tracked the right person down. It was a man with a laptop, somewhere in the council building which also houses the education officers. He was persuaded to act, and – at the click of a mouse – the radiators went off.

I remember, in those heady first few years after the Berlin Wall came down, when I used to write a regular newsletter for the energy lobby group IIEC, there were always anecdotes about the energy use in the great Soviet-style apartment buildings on the outskirts of Moscow or Budapest – pumping heat into the surrounding atmosphere whether it was hot or cold.

We used to laugh at this. We used to be amazed that nobody could turn off their ancient totalitarian radiators. Yet we seem to be in a similar situation now in centralised Britain. Maybe we always were, and I just never noticed. The point is that we have been sold centralisation, over the past generation, because of its efficiency. Maybe there are a few decisions which are more efficient when they are taken centrally. But my point is they are massively outweighed by the sheer inefficiency of the little things.

I don’t have any evidence for that. People don’t research the

inefficiencies of centralisation, as far as I know – probably the ESRC doesn’t approve. But just think about the mismatch between the centrally decided heat levels and the actual temperature.

My wife was, until recently, a teaching assistant in a primary school also in Croydon, where the same sweltering situation

pertained. Extrapolate that to all 30 or so primary schools in the borough, and the 15 or so secondary schools. Then to all the other official buildings in the borough, from the police to the hospitals – then extrapolate that to the nation as a whole.  Never mind the carbon; think of the cost to the poor taxpayers – and all because it is considered ‘efficient’ to give no responsibility to the heating of buildings to anyone who actually has to work in them.

But it isn’t just temperature either. It’s the same with a whole range of small decisions which have been removed from local officials. I remember hearing, some years ago, about the London buses that replaced the much-lamented Routemaster, and how quickly their engines wore out – because, unlike the Routemaster, they were in the back and the drivers could not hear precisely how their driving was

straining the engine.

That is exactly the situation we face in our massively centralised systems from one end of our public services to the other. It’s all about engine strain and system breakdown.