Darren Evans: 0:00

So talk to me about rights of light. Why should anyone really care about it? I know why you need to do it and it's a pain for lots of people, and I know that when people come and ask us to do it in my consultancy they come kind of dragging their heels. I'm sure that you don't experience that. But yeah, okay, they come with open arms, yeah, so why should anyone really really care about it?

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 0:31

yeah, you're spot on, because it is the pain that people don't want to deal with. It's the last thing on the list a lot of the times, or historically, it has been where no one thinks it's ever really going to amount to anything. It's another cost, up front and long term if you're thinking about insurance or you know, negotiations with people or whatever the avenue takes you down. But it's a cost and it's a cost that isn't necessarily something that people factor in and even if they do factor it in, they want it as low as possible so that it doesn't impinge on, maybe, a funder's balance sheet and things like that. So, yes, you're right about the the heel drag. Some clients are great, some clients know about it, and they're the ones that we work with and the ones that we've been able to sort of explain to and get their buy-in of. Oh, actually, let's look at this at the start because it's going to be important later.

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 1:26

So to answer the first question, why should anyone care? Well, the risk is still there. The risk is is real. Things like this can go to court and really slow down your development program. Worst case, they can mean that you might have to knock down your building and start again. Best case, you might have to get some insurance and not worry about it, although that market is probably changing based on these. The latest case that's come through um. But they should care, because it's not something that needs to be done and a lot of the time the the funder for a project or even a purchaser further down the line, is going to want to know is that rights of like done and dusted, or where's it up to? Has anyone thought about it? Has anyone looked at it at an early stage? Because if they haven't, you're talking about bailing things out from from the back end, which is never really where you want to be. You want to be up front, knowing your costs and understanding where your risk is.

Darren Evans: 2:25

So that's why it's important so just talk just very briefly about what rights of light is for someone listening or watching that doesn't really understand it. They've heard of it but they don't really understand it.

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 2:36

Yeah, just summarize it yeah, in summary, it's an old english law that is still around today. It's something that, in its purest form, is about a window receiving light and if you're going to put a new building in front of that window or nearby or across the street, if you're going to reduce that amount of light that's currently going in, then there's a certain level that is deemed legally acceptable and it's quite an old style of measurement. It's nothing modern. I'm sure we'll talk about this later, but, in short, if it goes below that reasonable acceptable level, that is when that owner can approach the developer and say look, not happy with this, you're going to reduce my light beyond this certain level. Therefore, I'm either going to take you to court, seek damages, or maybe we can have a chat off record and see if we can work something out. In short, it's a reduction in light for buildings surrounding a development.

Darren Evans: 3:38

So if I own those buildings around that development, is that still applicable for me?

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 3:47

Depends. So it will depend on your the ownership structure. If you've put some leases in place and you have granted all rights to those leaseholders and they may be able to demonstrate their own rights, and if it's, if they're long leases, you know hundreds of years into the future, where your interest down is actually only 200 years away. Well, it's an interesting concept if you already own them, because you might say, well, look, I'm the ultimate freeholder, I already own it, I can't affect myself. That would be the base position. You have to have two separate owners. It would be quite complicated and interesting if it was a lease. In that situation you would probably draft a lease to say I can do what I want on my retained land. But yeah, in short, you have to have two separate owners so you couldn't claim against yourself. And if they had the rights themselves? Well, yeah, that would be one for the lawyers to get into.

Darren Evans: 4:41

Can you just explain the difference between rights to light and the daylight legislation that comes from planning.

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 4:50

Yeah, absolutely, and it's a key question as when we get asked all the time, when we do, when we're doing CPDs and things like that. So rights of light, as we've just gone through, that's your legal bit, that's the piece that's going to get you in with the lawyers and you're going to have to do a bit of search, and that's the piece that's gonna get you in with the lawyers and you're gonna have to do a bit of search, and that's that legal right piece. The daylight and sunlight piece is about planning and it constitutes different types of analysis, different testing. It's a different form and a different way of looking at daylight and how that reaches into neighboring buildings and buildings that you are designing brand new. So effectively, on one hand, let's say the left-hand side is rights of light and that's your legal piece, and the right-hand side would be the daylight and sunlight and things that feed into BRE guidelines.

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 5:40

I see these as more human. These are easier generally to understand than the rights of light piece because it isn't really a legal element in there. It's more of a lived experience of, ah, that's the light in my room. I understand. You know, we're all human. We see the light coming through the windows and we kind of get it. It's a bit more in touch with everyone's day-to-day lived experience. So the interesting thing is both of those can run at the same time and you can be. If you're a developer, you're looking at the rights to fight for the legal piece, but you're also working with your planning consultant and your design team to balance the daylight and sunlight piece because what you can have is you can have the building pass and be approved by the planners, but then still give yourself a legal problem if you've not got the rights.

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 6:31

Exactly right, dan. You can be, and this is again a common mistake. We're seeing it less these days because people are more informed, thanks to people like ourselves and yourself for telling people this stuff and educating everybody. But typically you might have seen someone who gets a planning permission and thinks great, done and dusted, and that right of light thing that's sorted, because the planning will always trump that. Well, that's not the case. You can end up with a great scheme on planning and on paper and the council can love it and you might even receive no objections. But you might receive a nice letter from someone in you know the house down the road that says actually I'm concerned about this right here, and that's another point.

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 7:07

Actually, daylight and sunlight is generally to do with impacts on residential properties, doesn't really always fall into non-residential uses. There's a couple of things like maybe hospital or school if there's a certain need for it, but generally it's sticking with the resi stuff. Rights of light can apply to pretty much any building and any part of a building. Really, you might have a commercial office space and you might have a back staircase with some windows to it and if there's a right light injury there, well, yeah, that's an injury and that needs to be dealt with, whereas the daylight and sunlight piece doesn't really. Even if a residential property is affected in daylight and sunlight terms, if that effect is in a staircase or maybe a back toilet, it's not really as important or it's not viewed as, in terms of the guidance, as something as strong as um.

Darren Evans: 7:56

Maybe a right supply position might be so let's get into the weeds now with the law. What does the law say that you need to have um? What is acceptable, what's not acceptable? And then you made reference to a, a case that um was in the courts fairly recently, um, and just just go into detail about what that was all about. Well, I should have brought a lawyer with me.

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 8:21

But, um, the the interesting thing with rights of light is it does drip through law, or there's almost everything you touch. Really you could easily get a lawyer to look at. Really, there's a surveying side and in its simplest form, this adequate level was devised over 100 years ago by this chap called percy waldrum and his dad, and they looked at the total amount of sky that you might see if you were in a field completely open sky and then what you might see if you are in a building and from a vertical window, what can you actually see out? Okay, so it's probably about half, maybe even slightly less than that complete sky. And then from there they sort of derived what you really need, what you actually need as a human, to be reading the paper or doing some work at a desk. Now, don't forget, this is over 100 years ago, this is sort of 1920s, and generally you're in and around London. It's quite an interesting fact that we still use this methodology today, because the world has changed massively. And, in short, the easiest way of thinking about the measurement that you need is it's one candle per square foot, or one foot candle to be able to read your paper or to be able to do your notes and things like that. So it it's this very historic measurement that isn't really applicable today. So that's what we're still working with.

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 9:57

That's where there's the legal line is then. That's the first element. The second element is how much of each room deserves, or should have, that amount of light. So if you had a big room and let's say it's 100 square feet, back from the window, effectively 50 percent of that, or 50 square feet, should have one candle per square foot across that surface area. And if it dips below that because of a new development over the road, that's when you've got your problem, your injunction, rescue or, you know, your negotiation, whatever it is. That's the cutoff point and that is again pretty malleable. That is a an easy yardstick and a rule of thumb to work by, which is still used in the courts today, because it presents quite a black and white scenario. Is it more than 50% of the room that's being reduced beyond that level? Yes, no, okay, great. And then everybody moves forward because it makes it a lot easier. In reality, even that old type of analysis is nuanced, but that's where we're at legally.

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 11:08

There's lots of cases over the years that have played into this effectively. It's a right of light case will hinge on whether it's a nuisance. And it's about whether a nuisance has occurred and it's about the tort of nuisance. Has the owner of that neighboring property that they're sitting in? Have they been caused a nuisance and inconvenience by that neighboring property? Just in terms of the light, the measurement is just a way to benchmark that. Yeah, right, so it's about that nuisance and have some of those cases that we refer to they're not even about rights of light, they're more about nuisance or noise because they set a precedent. So we as a community of rights of light surveyors and everyone in the field and legal professionals, we all get a bit excited when there's a new case because it takes about five to ten years. Sometimes between cases. A lot gets settled pre-court proceedings. Really a lot of people want to take it right to the edge and then they'll settle with the developer because actually they're just trying to. Maybe they're trying to extract money from the situation, maybe they're trying to frustrate a developer until something else happens. There's a lot of reasons why they wouldn't ever get to the court. Maybe they don't have a strong position and maybe they're just trying it on, and other times the developer really does need to pay attention and really get into a good negotiation.

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 12:26

The bankside lofts or bankside yards case that happened over the last sort of two or three months well, that was when it was, uh, getting decided and that's when it was in the courts. It's interesting because mainly about the methods of assessment. So we've talked about this old method of assessment and these candles and all this kind of stuff. It's obviously all done on computers now and that's how the things work, but it's still quite an archaic method and we're still doing this. Yes, no methodology.

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 12:53

What happened in that case is the surveyor was effectively trying to show well, look, we're in the 21st century and if you remember the daylight and sunlight stuff we were talking about before, that's measured using a completely different set of software. That's measured using bre methodology, the building research establishment, and they've got. You know, scientists have been working on this type of stuff for years. Last 30, 40 years, people have been developing these methods alongside all the other great stuff they do. Now we've got all this amazing science and evidence. Well, surely we must be able to measure this in a more modern way. One tricky thing is that's never really been tested through the courts it's been mentioned.

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 13:33

Oh, maybe use the new analysis combined with the old one, or what tends to happen is it's either or because this is either good for the developer or bad, and same on the modern side. So the surveyor on that side on that case was very much trying to say well, look, actually there's all these modern methods. These are a bit more sensible perhaps, and at least please consider them. And why can't we use them? It does this to the light, it shows that it moves in this way and it's more realistic. It takes into account reflected light. The old method, it's pretty plain, it's whether there's some light in the sky outside or not. The new method is, again, like I say, a bit more of a lived experience piece. So that's why this case has been so interesting, because the first one that's really brought to light pardon the poem that there is a modern set of of methods.

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 14:24

Unfortunately, what tends to happen is the community and the, the people in the field, really hang the hat and wait on this judgment and in the end the judgment is a bit more, a bit more minded to keep using the old method because it's so much easier for a layperson to understand. Is there a problem? Yes or no, rather than oh? Let's have a look at this diagram. There's lots of factors, there's lots of variables in these analyses and that's where, as an industry, we're at now.

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 14:53

There is the need to agree between surveyors really where we're at and what we want to use to make a measurement. If we keep waiting until there's a court decision, that could also be inhibit, you know, inhibit our judgment. So if this judgment had been different and said, right, okay, use this modern method, well, everyone would have had to suddenly flip to use the modern one. So to us and my peers and my colleagues who have been talking to, it seems to make sense that we get together as an industry and actually figure it out on our own, decide look, we think we should probably all start trying to use this, or maybe we could try like this, because otherwise I think we're just gonna keep waiting and nothing will really change. We'll wait for another five, ten years for a case and we'll be in the same bracket. Or there'll be a case that is really prescriptive and says don't ever use this and only use the old one, or vice versa.

Darren Evans: 15:49

So that's why it's been quite an interesting one to watch, and that really just comes down to the judge, doesn't it? The judge is understanding, because it's the judge that sets the precedent at that time, but the judge, obviously, is going to be a fay with the law as it's been taught to them, as opposed to the research and the new methodology from the BRE. Because we understand light now far better than what we did 100 years ago, exactly yeah. Light now far better than what we did 100 years ago, exactly yeah, we understand that light is a um, is a wave and also a particle. I don't know that we quite understood it back then, did we?

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 16:27

I mean, not to the same degree, surely not? You know, the simple premise was probably there, but I think I just I just think it boggles my mind how much technology and research is in these things these days. And, let's not forget about this is another field entirely. But electric light is used in a very different way these days and it's not as harsh as it used to be. You can change the colors, you can do lots of things with electric light and a lot of, for example, apartments are designed with that in mind. You know, if you've got a taskbar of a kitchen like a test bench, you're going to have under unit lighting which is going to be soft and it's going to help you do your tasks at the kitchen.

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 17:07

A lot of the old methodology says, right, well, your kitchen needs to be designed so it's right in front of the window. Well, not necessarily in an inner city apartment. So there's so much research that's gone into stuff. But you're absolutely right, darren, a judge is going to say well, actually, for the last hundred or so years, how people measured this? Okay, seems pretty reasonable to keep using this method because, yeah, it still gives me a nice yes or no and I can judge it based on what I think is reasonable. So yeah, it's, it's an interesting one, but I think for us the idea is to try and move the dial without just waiting until something happens, because I think if, if we do that, we just end up stalling for the, honestly, the next 20 years so coming together, definitely as an industry, to make that decision is something I'm a big fan of.

Darren Evans: 17:53

yeah, the reason I'm a fan of it is because you're exercising your agency and your ability to act instead of having to react to something that someone else has made a decision on and then there's I think there's more chaos by doing it that way.

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 18:07

Well, you can see it in the slightly outside of my field, but certainly something that hollers look at all the time and I come across it all the time just through my work with developers is the Build and Safety Act stuff, and the regulatory body's been set up. No one's quite sure how it's all going to work on day one, but there it is, it's ready to go, and then people are having trouble with it because everybody's having to react rather than go. Okay, how are we going to do that? It's getting a lot better Talking to our clients. We know that. It's getting a lot better talking to our clients. We know that it is getting better. The, the, uh, the, the regulation, um, and the regulatory body is got more staff and it's got more people trained up. But that is that moment when you flip a switch and everybody has to react and there's it's a scramble and we are trying to avoid the scramble rather than having to to all jump into it it.

Darren Evans: 18:56

It reminds me and this is kind of a childish way of looking at it, to be honest but, um, maybe this is just where my mind's at at the moment. But do you remember at school someone were coming with a big bag of sweets and they'd shout scrambles? Did you have that where you were grown up? And they'd throw the sweets in the air and they'd just be bedlam for ages and it's like and that's what it is like most of the time where it's like I just need to get myself in the best position possible, get the best resources behind me. I don't care what else is going on with anyone else, just need to look after my own interests. So, although it's a a childish example and most adults have been there when they were children, I think we still act as adults in that way when it comes to this type of legislation I think that's a great analogy and, um, yeah, it appeals to my sweet tooth as well.

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 19:45

So I always had the biggest pile. But yeah, it's, it's absolutely right. You end up looking after your own interest and, okay, that might mean that you're looking after your client's interest great, but maybe just in that one silo and that's not really helping yourself or helping the client. And you know the world I work in. It's quite a small industry. We know each other, we know the other surveyors and we all work together. There are already some industry groups who work together to think about new standards or ways of working, which is great.

Darren Evans: 20:19

So this is why these types of things need to be involved in those conversations. What are some?

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 20:28

of the common pitfalls that architects experience with regards to this topic. Yeah, we always. We love working with architects because we get to start at the ground level. Basically, in most situations we get to start with a flat site or an empty site and the architects are working with us and we're working with them to try and figure out, wow, what's the best massing. Now I look back to my time when I first started in this world, sort of yeah, around 10 years ago, and I think, wow, we used to do pretty much for every job, like an envelope study, for a jelly mold study, for the architects and for the client to say, well, actually, look, you can build up to this high and keep your building within this, and maybe you can poke out here and here and it should be fine, but we'll rerun that when you've got the massing. That was a really great way of working.

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 21:12

What has changed over the last few years is that those massings that will fit in the jelly mold don't. And the jelly mold sorry to start again is that is, giving you your rights of light and daylight in one jelly mold. To say, actually, if you go outside of these, you might see some problems. If you stay inside, you're all good, you're not going to cause any problems. Now what's happened over the last few years is those jelly molds don't really align with viable development because development costs are astronomical and everyone has this really uh funny view of developers when they're not working in construction or in property, that these developers are sitting there on an ivory tower with tons of cash and they're just building it all the time. I don't think that that's the case. The developers' margins are even thinner than they ever were and if they were to build within those sort of safe envelopes, they're just not going to get the returns. So it does come down to money a little bit. So we can still use those envelopes in some cases, and some sites are great for it.

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 22:17

Others we've Work with the architects to figure out where maybe different plots or different buildings might be able to move, or maybe different pieces of massing. So effectively it's gone from a more widespread here's your site you can roughly build within this jelly mode to more specific of look, let's try that block there and let's put that one there. Our analysis is going to say X, y and Z. Therefore, maybe you can put some massing there. Massing there, I'd say not many architects fall down on this. Really, analysis is going to say x, y and z. Therefore, maybe you can put some massing there. Massing there, I'd say, where not many architects fall down on this. Really, they're all. They're all very keenly aware that they need to adhere to these things as well, and I really feel sorry for architects because they have so many things that they have to adhere to and they've got all different uh, stakeholders sort of in their ears and the last thing they need is me calling them up and saying, right, okay, you poked out the envelope there, so what are you gonna do about?

Darren Evans: 23:08

that I wouldn't feel too sorry for them because I knew what they, what they signed up to when they decided to go to architectural school. Yeah, so it's part of the complexity, isn't it, of of being an architect.

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 23:20

So yeah, I think that, um, they're very keenly aware of the daylight stuff. Um, maybe more so the daylight, because that's where I feel like they start, because that is the planning piece and that gets them through the planning with the client and the planning consultant. That's everybody's sort of first key indicator of right. Is this even going to work from a daylight perspective, both in terms of the impacts outside and what we can build internally? Rights of light, because it is a bit more of a financial piece sometimes and it's a property right and it's the legal element that can be dealt with a bit separately In terms of pitfalls.

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 23:55

I think that the hardest thing architects have to do at the minute is when they're designing internally for their own spaces.

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 24:01

If they're designing a block of apartments, they have to try and make sure that they can get the right mix of units and the right mix of spaces that have maybe got two windows that serve it, or dual aspect nature, or that it's not too deep and single aspect and things like that. So I think that's the that's the hardest thing they have to do, because part of the bre targets and all that kind of daylight and sunlight for planning stuff is about what you are achieving internally in your own building, and they can be quite high those standards sometimes, and rightly so. You know, we've got to make sure that people are going to be able to enjoy these spaces. But that's where. That's where we do a lot of our work with architects and we'll do quite a lot of sample tests and things like that. So, yeah, it's uh, it's a really, it's really good getting into, we get into the design team at an early stage and speak to the architects, we, we have great fun and we design some really good stuff.

Darren Evans: 24:53

Then it's very on trend have a moment to build high rise and I use that phrase on trend kind of tongue-in-cheek a little bit, because there is a um, a need that we have to build more properties in a smaller space. So the place to go is up. Which um is not just a london thing, it's growing in manchester. The skyline in manchester is really really significantly changed. The same is happening, uh, where I live, in br, and I think it will happen across major cities across the country. How do you see that? Moving forward, specifically with rights to light, and then adding in the sustainability and ESG piece on top of that, when you've got solar panels, you've got solar panels, and then the complexity, maybe, of retrofit, with someone wanting to add a, a balcony or some form of skylight. What are things going to get? Simpler, moving forward, or more complex?

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 25:58

I really hope simpler it feels when you pose the question. I could tell in your mind there was about eight million things going on, because it is complex. Firstly, the high-rise piece is interesting and then it also feeds into that high-risk building piece and the building safety act and all that kind of stuff. But to stick in my lane, the idea that would be great to get to and maybe I'm thinking a bit philosophical here would be if we could help to unlock some of this stuff for the developer and for, frankly, the people who are going to be living in those houses. You know you don't want people waiting around. Developers are trying to develop government set housing targets. They're going to have to build some buildings and they can't all be housing estates on greenfield sites. They just can't because they've got their own problems too. You know you're introducing a whole set of maybe cars and traffic that weren't there before and all that kind of good stuff. So in many ways high-rise is in and around cities where you've already got transport. It makes the most sense.

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 26:59

The the rights of light piece. First of all, I'll stay on this left side for rights of light. If we can help to to unlock things with that combination of using rights of light methodology plus the daylight and sunlight methodology and we've got an interesting piece coming out on that soon we can hopefully get people through A through planning and B without those holdups or to help those holdups be eased and help mitigate them at an early stage. So I don't see it going away and in a funny way, because of cases like this and cases like this Bankside loss one that's been in the press recently and that's always a double-edged sword that it's in the press because it helps people recognize it, but it also is going to alert a lot of people to it. You're going to have rights of light Rights of, but it also is going to alert a lot of people to it. You're going to have Rites of Light. Rites of Light is going to be in the conversation. It's not going away and it's not going to disappear. Hopefully it can be managed better. I think that's the key message. The Daylight piece is really interesting and you touched on ESG stuff there, darren. That again slightly outside of my bracket, but it's something that hollis have been doing more and more over the last few years because we recognize that there's a need for it and I need to look at it interestingly. I think esg is going to be not its own thing in the end. I think it's going to drip through everybody's uh workflow and everybody's separate section. It will have those elements of esg and maybe esg will stop being right. Here's some esg consultants who are going to tell you about this. It's going to actually drip through the whole thing and it'll all get chopped up. So it was interesting.

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 28:37

I was reading an article this morning about um, well, there's a couple of things on solar I wanted to touch about. The first article was actually about how buildings in Europe are much more adept and just generally towns and streets are more adept at dealing with this. You know, these hot weather, these climate change events and maybe they're not events, it's just climate change, it's just happening and it's warmer. There was an article and it was about Seville and the way they deal with that is a lot of covered streets. I know that in Italy a lot of the streets are narrow because it encourages shading in the hottest parts of the day. So it's actually.

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 29:14

Can we help to design our buildings with a bit more of a European mindset, where we're designing maybe a courtyard that's going to be shaded or we've got houses that aren't south-facing so that they aren't getting blasted with sun throughout the day. You know it's funny. There's a juxtaposition in in this all of this. So the bre guidance talks about how nice it is if you've got a south-facing window. Yeah great, we, we like the sun in our living rooms and whatever. That's great. What? What about when it's 40 degrees for three weeks on the trot in 20 years? I don't know how useful that's going to be. I know the flat where I live has a north-facing living room and I go in it in the evening and it's brilliant because it's nice and cool and none of the room has been warmed by the sun throughout the day. Of course you've got the winter is going to, you know, bring in different equations. But can we look at europe and say, well, actually, yeah, they've been doing it for a while places in seville, they've got lots of lovely, uh, shaded areas. They know what they're doing. Can we look at that instead of building in in a more traditional british climate in our heads where we think it's probably going to be about 25 degrees max? It's just not anymore.

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 30:28

Solar panels that's another interesting one. So two elements on solar panels hasn't really happened yet, but there's more solar panels going on buildings going on everywhere, both residential and commercial. What happens when someone builds a lovely tall building right next to a solar panel and that person's solar projection, for their return on investment, for their what energy they're getting back in, what they're returning to the grid, whatever that is that going to change materially? If someone puts a big tower next to, or even a couple of roof extensions or something like that, there was a couple of cases a few years ago. They ended up being more planning based and there isn't, as far as I'm aware, there isn't a right to that panel. That panel doesn't act like a window in the way that a window acts in a rights of light sense. Can't see that changing immediately, but it might be more of a planning consideration or even just a commercial negotiation between two owners. If you've got a large warehouse roof next door and you've covered it in pv, all the panels and you're getting a great return, but then someone puts something just to the south of your building that's going to change you for the foreseeable. Well, that's going to be an interesting conversation and these are the types of things that I don't see yet from big institutional investors, developers. No one's really coming forward and thinking about those things. Our PV and solar team at Hollis, we're always talking about this and thinking right, okay, how are we going to mitigate it and what are we going to do and how are we going to tell the client about this? Because actually, if they are planning a huge PV array but actually in planning there's already two large buildings to the south, well there's no point in them spending hundreds of thousands of pounds putting large amounts of pv on this building if it's not going to get those returns. So either you can do something about it and speak to the neighbors, whatever, or you can just plan accordingly.

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 32:16

The other piece of solar that I wanted to mention here was and I'm sure you've come across these time the solar glare pieces. So solar glare is a really interesting topic and it does feel like it's catching a bit of press. At the minute. There was I don't know if you saw this story in Amsterdam in Schiphol Airport I haven't. So a PV farm, like a ground-mounted PV farm estate in belgium over the border, was set up and it's been, you know, generating its returns. Doing this thing and 78 000 panels was quite a few. So schiphol airport took these guys to a dutch court and have been awarded um in their favor the ability to tell these people to actually demolish these panels in this solar field, because there was 20 minutes consistent solar glare during march, for so the pilots were coming into schiphol and they were, you know, experiencing all this glare.

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 33:22

Now I don't know if any studies were done, it sounds to me like they weren't. The owners of the solar field said, well, well, you know, we can mitigate this, maybe we can put, like, a different film on the top of the panel, we could alter them. But the Dutch Corp went by on it and said, well, we kind of should have done this a while ago. So I guess there's two things there. And we do these types of assessments for, and so that you know, we're all in that field, we all need to be using, you know, know, the right software and the right, uh, the right tools and the right sort of mentality to advise our clients here. Uh, so there's a risk element.

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 34:02

But also it's about, again, that early engagement, because you can just imagine if two years ago, three years ago, these people had had a chat with each other and said I look, guys, we're going to put this field here and what do you think? And from what I've read so far, the panels that they chose I mean panels are designed to absorb light rather than reflect it. But there's different panels, again slightly outside of my expertise, but these ones are apparently more reflective than a darker panel would have been okay and therefore you've got this sort of this glare going into these pilot's eyes, which, again, there's a there's a bit of an irony there that than a darker panel would have been okay and therefore you've got this sort of this glare going into these pilots eyes, which, again, there's a there's a bit of an irony there that you've got this sort of green energy producing field and then you know a more typical polluter in an airport. But I think this is more about safety I think it.

Darren Evans: 34:48

It's more about lives, isn't it? It sounds like from what you're saying, and you could argue that the pilots don't need a view out of the window to be able to land the aircraft, which is true, but it's still off-putting and it puts people's lives at risk, because that is one of the most. I think takeoff is the most. Landing is the second most dangerous part of the of the flight process. But it's interesting, though, because they wouldn't have maybe taken into consideration the flight path and the altitude that they would have been at at that particular, at that particular time. And I'm not sure you guys use ies software, I yeah.

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 35:29

Yeah, not for solar.

Darren Evans: 35:31

actually there's a couple of other softwares that we use, but I'm not sure that that is built in the modelling programme.

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 35:38

In IES? I don't think it is.

Darren Evans: 35:40

But the others, which one do you use then?

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 35:42

So there's two types there's MBS and then there's something else called well, the company behind it is Forge Solar. So you can use those and they effectively simulate the whole year, yes, and all that kind of good stuff, and you can calculate all the different angles. And again, it's about that engagement if you speak to the aircraft uh, people on the air, people at the airport they will tell you what the flight path, yeah, the flight paths, and which land runways and all that kind of good stuff.

Darren Evans: 36:06

so, and I would imagine as well that they would be able to give you data on times and frequency of a particular runway that they're landing on or taking off from.

Darren Evans: 36:25

Oh yeah, I'd say so.

Darren Evans: 36:26

Esg sustainability and that kind of being a bolt on at some other point Most definitely that's what we found as a consultancy is trying to just help the clients understand that if you include us at the beginning, we can then look at things more holistically and be involved instead of waiting a little bit further down the road.

Darren Evans: 36:47

Or the other thing that I see as well is that in the esg space there's a propensity to get a junior person involved instead of leaving it with a senior person, so that the quality of the advice all the way through the project is not at the same level. It will dip down and then the senior person is then trying to get the junior person. Calculation, as it were, kind of out of out of trouble. I use that, I use that phrase, um, and so that's what we found is to have that senior person all the way through just reduces the risk for the client so that later on down the line we don't have a problem, yeah, or at least where there's regular touch points for that senior person to you know it, it's all.

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 37:29

We all know that the juniors in any industry need to Need to get experience. You need to get experience, you need to have a go. But you're right, we see it across all services really, and not necessarily in any specific one. But yeah, we like to have those touch points as well, because it helps people develop and then it'll give them points to say, right, well, actually the next stage is xyz. So, yeah, you're absolutely right, but the the late, the late engagement is the killer, isn't it?

Darren Evans: 37:59

that makes it tough for everybody then I've also had a conversation with someone and I'm interested to see how you see this, uh, in your consultancy, where the ESG thing is spread across, or say, energy and sustainability is spread into the MEP package, so it's a bolt-on within MEP as opposed to it's his own entity. Had a conversation with someone today and I'm like look, you need to just have this as his own entity spreading across everywhere, instead of a subset of an entity that is kind of maybe arguably been around for for a lot longer yeah, couldn't agree more.

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 38:39

We have our own separate piece and then they effectively feed in and that almost have oversight of all these other yeah, uh, traditional services, because all the traditional services realize, well, actually we need to start doing this and that's why we've got that separate team. They do their own stuff but, yeah, they, you know, they feed into all these other spaces and it's interesting because, um, you know, this is what the clients want towards.

Darren Evans: 39:03

You know, as we all move forward, it's what clients need and what what they're looking for really so, um, just to back now, just at the end of this conversation, to the rights of light and the courts and the way that the system is set up, that overlaid with the way that the world has changed and is continuing to change, that there is this need for us all to recognize that the way that we did things in the past is not going to work in its entirety.

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 39:38

Moving forward, exactly right there, darren. You've got some traditional methodologies which are still useful. You've got a traditional set of technology that's also still a bit useful, and we can all look back to the past and see examples of how that worked. But right now, what we need to do is use the innovations and the technology that we've all got to hand and that we all understand, combined with an understanding of the cultural change that's happened over the last 100 years or 50 years. If we can combine those two, that's where we're going to get a marrying up of human experience mixed with scientific and technological ability.

Darren Evans: 40:26

Most definitely, and I think that the more that we can embrace that, then, the better the buildings will be for the people that they're being built for, and one of the things that I'm talking more frequently to my clients and to my own team about is that these buildings are built for people, and that's what we need to put higher on the priority list. If you think about the most significant experiences that you have in your life, they're generally in a building births, deaths, last moments that you have with someone, maybe proposals, maybe parties, all of these different events, learning, connecting with people these are all generally happen in buildings developing a talent, and and that's what that's what we need to have in the forefront of our minds instead of treating buildings as a just a money machine I couldn't agree more you, you have so much experience in buildings.

Barney Soanes-Cundle: 41:19

Yes, there's some great ones outdoors as well, but a lot of those amazing things that you do in life are in the buildings. What we can all get caught up a bit in is what do the targets say? How do we get this through planning? How do we work the system? How do we make it do this? And we all get really caught up in that. Going back to the European stuff and that's something that our European teams look at we look at how we're going to design these buildings that are actually enjoyable for the people to use, because that's the key part. We're going to be in them. Let's enjoy them.

Darren Evans: 41:47

Good Brian, let's enjoy them. Good fine, it's been great having you on the podcast. Really appreciate your wisdom, your passion and your experience. Thanks, I've been brilliant to have you. Thanks for watching to the end. I think that you'll like this, but before you do that, just make sure that you've commented and liked below and also that you've subscribed.