Richard Greer and Poppy Szkiler.

Q78 The Chair: I welcome our witnesses to the committee’s seventh session in its inquiry into the effects of artificial light and noise on human health. In this first session today we are focusing on noise. The witnesses are Richard Greer, fellow and director at Arup, and Poppy Szkiler, CEO at Quiet Mark. The session is being broadcast on parliamentlive.tv and a transcript will be sent to you shortly after this session for you to make any minor changes and corrections. If there is anything that you feel you did not get a chance to say or that you left out but would like us to have, we would be delighted to receive further formal written evidence from you after the session.

Thank you for coming. I shall kick off by asking each of you to briefly outline for the committee your area of expertise and how you have been involved in advising on, designing or implementing noise policy or practical solutions to reduce noise pollution.

Poppy Szkiler: I am the CEO and co-founder of Quiet Mark, which is the first and only global certification company for solutions to noise reduction and finding the quietest product in the world. My grandfather, John Connell OBE, lobbied Parliament in the 1950s and established in Parliament the Noise Abatement Act. Noise pollution became a pollutant known for the first time. My mother is Gloria Connell OBE, who is the chairman and co-founder of Quiet Mark. So I am a third-generation noise campaigner.

Richard Greer: With regard to this inquiry, my main areas of expertise are environmental noise, major infrastructure projects and the built environment. I have 35 years’ experience in that area, 27 of which are at Arup, one of the largest employee-owned companies in the UK. That business model has enabled us to invest in new areas of innovation around acoustics, particularly SoundLab, which makes noise much more accessible to stakeholders, communities and decision-makers.

I have designed and advised on practical solutions to reduce noise for some of the biggest infrastructure projects in the UK—High Speed 1, High Speed 2, Thameslink, Crossrail, the Queensferry crossing, the A14 from Cambridge to Huntingdon, the Heathrow expansion, the Luton expansion and the Thames Tideway, among many—variously advising either the Government, promoters or objectors. I am particularly proud to have worked on HS1 from 1990 to 2015, delivering it on time and within budget, comfortably beating its very demanding noise commitments and providing 20 years of reliable service, with a transformation along its corridor across the south of the country.

Regarding policy, when I led phase 1 of HS2 I worked with the Government and stakeholders to shape the implementation of the Government’s then new noise policy statement for England. As the expert witness for Thames Tideway, my evidence and the Government’s decision letter have since framed precedent for the implementation of government noise policy. Lastly, in my time on the board of the Association of Noise Consultants, I sponsored and helped to shape the cross-industry professional guidance on planning and noise for new residential development. I hope that is of assistance.

The Chair: I am sure we will want to quiz you about a number of those issues.

Q79 Viscount Hanworth: How well are we doing on the UK policy response to the problems of noise pollution? Is the problem being given appropriate priority by the decision-makers?

Poppy Szkiler: I would say no. We will be happy when we see noise pollution on a par with emissions or energy focus. We still feel, even though there is progress, that noise pollution and a focus on acoustic design are still a very low priority. There is hope, but unfortunately there is still an awfully long way to go, to be honest.

Viscount Hanworth: I was asserting, and I do not know if you can substantiate this, that considerable attention was given to noise pollution in the 1960s when jets were very noisy, but bypass jets are much quieter, so airport authorities seem to be paying less attention now. Is that true?

Poppy Szkiler: My expertise at Quiet Mark has nothing to do with airports, so I would probably have to refer to other expertise on that.

Richard Greer: I will be a bit more generous than Poppy. Overall, I would say that, on policy, we are at about seven out of 10, and our current airports are at about six out of 10. That is because noise has been a long-standing issue for the communities around airports. As you have noted, a lot of work has been done on aviation technology with the airlines and manufacturers, which has improved things substantially over recent decades. A lot of work continues to be done to improve the way aircraft fly and how that reduces impacts.

Viscount Hanworth: What are the worst instances of noise pollution in the workplace? How well are these problems being addressed?

Richard Greer: Noise in the workplace is covered by the noise at work regulations, which have been very effective over the years and now require all employers to reduce noise to being as low as reasonably practicable and, having done that, to introduce noise hearing protection to avoid any risk of hearing damage.

Viscount Hanworth: Are we talking about sawmills, steel forges and so on?

Richard Greer: Indeed so.

Viscount Hanworth: I think that does my stint.

Q80 Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I have some interrelated questions. Do you think private actors are sufficiently aware of the noise pollution implications of the products they are developing or the infrastructure projects they are involved in? Do you think they know what factors they should take into account when considering noise pollution? Do you think the planning policy that includes advice on how to reduce noise pollution has a sufficient impact on development? The policy is right, in other words, but acousticians and technical expertise are often not on hand during the development stage.

Richard Greer: For infrastructure, I see private sector actors as being private sector developers and design and build contractors.

I can say from experience that they are very aware of noise and their responsibilities to control it. You asked how the Government might assist. In my experience, the greatest influence is clear and strong regulation that provides flexibility to the private sector in how it delivers that.

There are planning reforms currently in the Lords. There is a move to environmental outcome reporting in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill. It contains a new infrastructure levy, which might be very helpful in supporting private sector developers and local authorities as they improve soundscape, which I think the committee has heard about, in placemaking, as well as reducing noise in our cities and towns. Another area is incentivising noise reduction as part of government procurement. HS2 is a good example of that in incentivising quieter trains.

You asked about the involvement of technical experts. For big infrastructure, as you are probably gathering, experts are very much involved. It is in new housing and wider town and country planning where technical expertise is often not involved early enough. Earlier, if you had asked for my rating, I would probably have marked this as three out of 10. We as professional bodies tried to improve this, with government backing, through planning guidance in the 2010s, but I do not think that has been successful.

However, I am optimistic. The Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill is currently in Committee in the Lords, and it contains the proposal to move to environmental outcome reporting. That will be hardwired into the Town and Country Planning Act, and for the first time it will require every planning application to consider alternatives in environmental terms. It will require environmental reasons to be set out for why the scheme put forward for planning is what it is. That is very valuable, and this inquiry and this committee might perhaps add weight to the importance of those changes, along with your colleagues elsewhere in the House of Lords committee hearings [1].

The Chair: Given that the environmental improvement plan for 2023 does not include noise, can we be confident that government departments will rate noise as one of the environmental outcomes in this environmental outcome reporting?

Richard Greer: That is a massively important point. It is one of the points that I was going to come to as part of closing.

The Chair: That is fine. We will leave you to make your closing remarks at that point.

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I have a follow-up question for Richard before I turn to Poppy. We were talking about the expertise available. We know that in other areas too the difficulty is often the supply of trained experts. The question is not just whether developers are aware of what is needed, but whether we have sufficient people to call on to ensure that they are properly advised.

Richard Greer: In numbers, yes, I think we do. The number of organisations registered with the Association of Noise Consultants and the Institute of Acoustics has grown year on year, so I think that expertise is there. Making it attractive as a topic to a more diverse group of people in future is an area that we are putting a lot of effort into, but I think the number of experts is there for this topic.

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: Poppy, I wonder if I might turn to you. You were somewhat more sceptical.

Poppy Szkiler: We are in a very different place from Arup, in the sense that Quiet Mark is not about regulation but more about providing, equipping, empowering and educating consumer buyers, trade buyers, specifiers and the building sector, finding the most excellent and quietest products for noise reduction so that they are at the fingertips of the British public to be able to choose and source. In that sense, our simple mark was created so that it is a trusted technical mark for people to know that they can then source those products. In essence, and I too am bringing forward my final closing comment, we have created awareness. It is a further expression of the Noise Abatement Society in campaigning to raise awareness of these practical solutions to noise pollution and making them readily available.

In that sense, we have worked with literally an army of manufacturers and product makers, not just in the UK but all over the world, to bring these products to the forefront to create a movement of selecting products that will change the environment in so many different sectors, whether that is the building sector, the home environment, the domestic environment, HVAC—heating and air conditioning—or transport. The potential scope for creating, via the Quiet Mark standard, a selection of those products is actually infinite. I do not know whether that answers the question.

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: Perhaps you could say something about how satisfied you are with the way that is proceeding. In other words, how well developed are those standards in people’s awareness?

Poppy Szkiler: It is still early days. When I started this 12 years ago literally at the kitchen table, asking manufacturers if they had invested in acoustic design in their products, the phone was put down on me quite a lot. Today, every morning I go to my inbox and I have manufacturers, household names, all over the world—from Asia, Turkey and Japan, for example—all wanting to get the Quiet Mark.

Now, in industry, we have awareness and understanding of the value of quietness among manufacturers of all sorts of diverse products, from computer mouse clicks to massive industrial air conditioning units to road surfaces—you name it. The campaigning side of what we have been doing for 12 years has put that back into mass-market consciousness.

We work with the top titles of newspapers and magazines, talking about the importance of quietness in the home and in the workplace, instilling that headline understanding of why we need it. That has then driven demand. If one manufacturer gets the Quiet Mark for a certain product, all their competitors go, “We now need that too”, because they can see that the sales of that product then increase.

We have a very unusual model and vehicle for changing noise pollution in its embryonic form. Again, I will park my own comment. I am obviously coming from a business perspective. I am not used to academia. I am just speaking from the heart about how we have grown this unusual model for changing pollution.

Baroness Northover: I would like two clarifications. My first is in relation to the levelling-up Bill. Are the proposals coming from the Government, or are you looking at some amendments? Obviously the latter are a completely different matter when it comes to whether or not they will pass and be put in there. My second clarification is: how do you access the technical expertise in order to award people that Quiet Mark?

Richard Greer: The proposals that I am referring to are those being put forward by the Government. The proposed move to environmental outcome reporting would replace the very important but somewhat over bureaucratic environmental impact assessment process. Those proposals are currently being consulted on, but it is the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill that provides the legislative framework that enables those outcomes to occur.

The point that I was responding to was that made by the Chair, which was that the outcomes, which the Government have committed to consult on in due course, are being linked to the 2023 Defra environmental improvement plan, which is very strong but unfortunately is silent—excuse the pun—on noise and its effect on human health. I therefore think that this inquiry is timely and important. The opportunity here to ensure that those outcomes for noise are framed properly, if the committee were minded to do so, that would be hugely valuable to the community and industry.

Baroness Neville-Jones: Is this Defra thing being worked on at the moment?

Richard Greer: Defra has its 25-year environmental plan, and the Environmental Improvement Plan 2023 which published this year, is its first five-year check-up. What is being worked on at the moment is the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, which is currently in Committee in the Lords. We are trying to keep track of its progress. I do not think it has quite reached Part 6, which is the part of the Bill that deals with environmental outcomes.

Baroness Neville-Jones: The effect and impact of our report are what I was trying to get at.

Poppy Szkiler: To answer your question about how we assess and determine what gets a Quiet Mark, over the last 12 years we have founded, started and created unique databases of sound measurement—not only decibels but sound quality—of now over 100 categories of products and materials. We work with specialist acoustic teams in different areas, so if we are working with hand dryers we will work with a certain way of testing.

Quiet Mark has, independently, using all sorts of expertise, created different triangulations of standards, which make it very relevant to the consumer or the real-life experience of that machine. If we are doing headsets, for example, we will work with, say, HEAD acoustics in Germany. If we are working on the day-to-day testing in our labs of small domestic appliances, we will work with Intertek. We have all sorts of specialist teams that bring a 360 on the core function of that product, its material or its application. So it is highly detailed and highly technical. You cannot buy a Quiet Mark; you have to be technically 10% to 20% of the quietest in that sub-category, and the manufacturer can then use the Quiet Mark to promote that they have achieved that. So in effect it is a standard.

Baroness Neville-Jones: A regulation.

Poppy Szkiler: It could be a regulation. It is still early days. The potential is phenomenal, because it could be a standard for literally every product, building material and vehicle in the world to be assessed and then verified. I hope that helps on the technical side. Those are just some headlines there.

Q81 Lord Rees of Ludlow: I want to ask about the trade-off between building acoustic barriers and making the volume of the sources of the noise, such as cars, lower. I do not know who wants to start on this. Perhaps Richard wants to talk about barriers, which he mentioned in the context of HS1. To what extent are more barriers needed, and how does their cost compare with efforts to reduce the loudness of the sources of noise?

Richard Greer: Noise barriers are one proven way to control environmental noise from surface transport. As I think you have heard from witnesses before, they have their place in a noise-control hierarchy. That hierarchy starts at the source—quiet road surfaces, quiet track, quiet trains, quiet aircraft.

The second level in the hierarchy is control between noise and receiver, which is where noise barriers are very effective, and I will come on to some detail about that in a second. In aviation, it is about controlling where aircraft fly and using new navigation technology to provide alternation between aircraft tracks and predictable respite, flying aircraft higher and on continuous descents and departures to ensure that aircraft are higher over communities. The last level is control of the receiver, which is usually by way of noise insulation.

You asked about noise barriers. They are extensively used in the UK and around the world. Having designed them on High Speed 1, I know that about three-quarters of its length has noise barriers of one form or another. Noise barriers are any physical structure that effectively impedes the line of sight between the receptor and the noise source, so they can be the edges of cuttings but also the parapets on a viaduct or an intentionally designed noise barrier, which might be a fence, a landscaped earthwork or a combination of both.

Noise barriers are very effective for railways, because we can put them very close to the trains. A noise barrier can straightforwardly halve the wayside noise level, a 10-decibel or greater reduction. That is a better reduction that can usually be achieved by measures at source.

For highways, it is different. Because the noise source is so wide, with six lanes of highway, noise barriers might make a noticeable reduction at 3 decibels or more, but scarcely ever would we get to a halving. For highways, it is control at source, particularly through very low noise surfacing, which we achieved as an innovation on the A14 for the first time and which is more effective.

You asked about cost-effectiveness. We look at that as part of four criteria for cost-effectiveness. One is benefit compared to cost. The second is practicability. The third is environmental effect caused by the mitigation, because the noise barrier might actually have a visual impact or cause a shadow effect on people. Fourthly, and most importantly, is engagement with communities and their views on the best way to design the mitigation in their area.

I can help a little on how we go about doing benefit compared to cost if that would be of interest, but I should probably stop there to keep things brief.

Lord Rees of Ludlow: Poppy, what is the prospect for making cars and lorries on motorways quieter? This must be something that you consider, and I wonder how much has been done in that direction.

Poppy Szkiler: As Richard has outlined, there are all these incredible solutions. It is just the priority of funding them into place. That is my very short comment.

Lord Rees of Ludlow: In technical terms, is there any way of making the average car quieter? Probably not.

Poppy Szkiler: There are very quiet tyres, which are more expensive. You have to weigh all sorts of different aspects in triangulating the technical side of that. There are amazing road surfaces now. Again, it is about the impetus to get them rolled out. Between us, we could give you a whole list of extraordinary things that could be put into place if the budgets were there, such as noise barriers or extraordinarily quiet systems that we could create, but again that would be very expensive.

Lord Rees of Ludlow: This question is for either of you. How do we compare in the investment in noise abatement for infrastructure projects in this country with what is done elsewhere?

Richard Greer: The UK is broadly similar to other northern-hemisphere, Far East and Australasian countries. It varies a little between different types of transport and different noise sources, but we are broadly comparable. By way of specific comparisons, Europe has probably led the way on noise barriers and their design. Japan has long led the way in quiet train designs, and we have spent a lot of time importing that skill and understanding into the UK. As you have heard, Switzerland, through a mixture of its focus on quality of life and its financial wealth, has probably led the way overall as an individual country, as an exemplar.

The Chair: I would like to follow up on the noise barriers. There has certainly been an indication from our earlier evidence, and a perception among a number of us, that around motorways, particularly in France, Germany and mainland Europe, we see a lot more large, relatively close noise barriers than we do in the UK. In the UK, you can drive through some quite built-up areas on motorways with almost no barrier between the houses that are unfortunate enough to be beside the motorway and the motorway itself.

Baroness Neville-Jones: Also, there are quieter road surfaces, which are much more extensive and effective than here. We have some very noisy roads, such as the M20.

The Chair: Do we see a more advanced approach in Europe?

Richard Greer: There is an important distinction to be made between new projects and schemes and our existing network. For new projects, as I said, the UK is on a par and in many respects leads the way, particularly on innovations in very low noise surfacing. The perception that there are fewer barriers comes from the fact that the majority of the UK road and rail network predates current environmental impact assessment regulations and current noise policy. This is governed by or subject to the environmental noise regulations, which try to promote the retrofitting of mitigation to the existing networks.

Overall we are seeing far fewer noise barriers on existing networks, for a number of reasons. There are three points here. The first is that the environmental noise regulations deal only with the very highest types of effect at the very noisiest locations along our networks, so there is an opportunity to do more if there were a will to do so. The second is the question of practicability: building a noise barrier next to a new road or railway is one thing, but retrofitting it can be much more expensive and there can be engineering practicability issues.

Lastly, as observed by Baroness Neville-Jones, in a lot of our urban areas we have very high-rise development next door to roads and particularly railways. There, the ability to protect them by way of a noise barrier is quite limited because, quite simply, people stare over the top of it. That is where Network Rail and National Highways are spending their efforts more on control at source, through quiet track and quiet road surfaces, but also at the receiver end, with National Highways now on its second round of voluntary noise insulation for the most important areas on the networks as identified by Defra.

The Chair: You have said that it can be difficult to put in noise reduction after the event. Does that not mean that replacing impact assessments by environmental outcome reporting in the case of noise gives us the problem that, if the environmental outcome is worse than you expected it to be, it becomes very difficult to implement improvements afterwards?

Richard Greer: The power of defining outcomes is that it gives everyone a clear understanding of what the outcome would be from new development or existing network operations.

The Chair: But then you have to make sure that that outcome is actually delivered.

Richard Greer: Indeed. It will be delivered on a new scheme at the time of its design, and that will have been tested and scrutinised. It is then a matter of ambition for retrofitting to the existing network, and a matter of affordability. Very much more could be done if the environmental noise regulations were updated and they sought to protect people at lower levels of exposure, which are still impactful on overall health and well-being. But that is a matter of economy and of the timing of the rollout. Doing that in one big hit would be very difficult, but if it were to be spread over a period of time you could see how a road map—excuse the pun—could be set out to achieve those outcomes over time.

Q82 Baroness Northover: This question is for Richard and is about Arup’s SoundLab and how it is used to minimise the noise impacts of new developments. We may have an opportunity to visit you, and I see that we will be exposed to two minutes of quiet rural environment but 10 minutes of piledrivers at the end of our visit. I expect we will see a difference. Perhaps you could tell us something about SoundLab.

Richard Greer: Of course. I am conscious that some members of the committee have been but others have not, but perhaps I should introduce what it is, first off.

We have many SoundLabs around the world now. They are state-of-the-art digital facilities that Arup has invested in, being an employee-owned organisation. They enable us to generate verified three-dimensional sound. That sounds very technical, but it is what we all experience day to day: aircraft fly overhead and trains go past. Just like real life, we also provide verified visuals alongside the verified audio information. That enables visitors to experience the acoustic and visual elements of a project as they are designed before they are consented to or built. For example, we could listen to the effects with or without a noise barrier, or with or without a proposed road scheme in a location.

The purpose of SoundLab is very simple. Everyone experiences sound and noise. We all have differing views on it, but in my experience people do not understand the metrics and calculation methods or the regulations that we have put together to support robust planning, and they often do not trust them. For example, very few people actually understand a decibel or noise contour maps. SoundLab enables people to listen for themselves and, I hope, to be confident that what they are listening to is verified. They can therefore have confidence in coming to their own views, having heard it.

We have mobile versions of SoundLab that we can take out to public consultation, and online versions are available. We have used it for many projects—for example, HS2. At the moment we are looking at research into the noise effects of urban air mobility and drones as well as highway schemes, such as the A66, which is currently under examination.

We are conscious that people may not necessarily trust why we have done this—we are not going to give away the brand value of Arup by turning the volume down—but we are conscious that people will be suspicious, so not only do we publish our calibration but we have invited external independent expert reviews and have published those, including those from the Noise Abatement Society.

I do not think the technologies will ever actually replace the technical information required for planning, but we have found it very helpful in helping people to understand the information that they are provided with. When I say “people”, that can be the chief executive of a developer, the thousands of people in consultation on a project or decision-makers and other statutory bodies.

Following SoundLab visits, I have seen projects changed for the better. I have seen communities less worried. I have also from time to time found communities more worried but at least better informed. The target is to form a good basis for engagement between those who are promoting projects and those who feel that they are being done to them. We have also seen decisions informed by SoundLab—for example, on the Northern Line extension, one of the Manchester Metrolink schemes, and phase 1 and phase 2a of HS2. The HS2 Select Committees have come to SoundLab as part of their briefing and to hear supporting evidence.

SoundLab has won many awards, including a John Connell Award, which we are very proud of, and I would be delighted if the committee was interested in attending.

Q83 Baroness Neuberger: I think you have answered my question to some extent, but perhaps we could talk about this a bit further. We have talked about road surfaces—Baroness Neville-Jones asked about that—and about seeing more barriers when we are in continental Europe. Are standards generally higher abroad, and is there anything that we should learn from other countries?

Richard Greer: As I said, in general terms I think the UK is in broad alignment with other countries. There is the issue of dealing with noise exposure in human health on the existing networks—

Baroness Neuberger: That is the retrofit stuff.

Richard Greer: That is the retrofit stuff. But that is a matter of—I hesitate to use the word “ambition”, but what is cost-effective, which goes to affordability. An update of those regulations perhaps built around environmental outcomes might be welcome. Much could be done were there the will.

There is work to be done perhaps on research, not on the decibel reduction provided by noise insulation but on actually understanding how we can monetise the benefits to human health. This is very important. There is the Government’s transport assessment guidance. Through government research we can monetise the benefit to health of the noise reduction provided by a barrier and then use that to show cost-benefit; we can show the financial reduction of the burden on health and compare it to the cost of the noise barrier. We currently cannot do that for noise insulation.

Noise insulation, in my submission, should always be the last place we go. We should only protect people in the home if we have exhausted everything that we can do at source and between source and receiver. None the less, noise is an unavoidable consequence of a growing, thriving and vibrant economy, so there will necessarily be times when we need to resort to noise insulation in homes to protect people. Having better research on the its effects on health would be of great assistance.

Baroness Neuberger: Are they better at doing some of that work in other countries?

Richard Greer: You have heard from Professor Clark, who is an eminent expert in this area. She is involved in international research groups, as is the Noise Abatement Society. I think they are drawing in the best work and in many respects leading some of this work in Europe and around the world, but I am happy to take this back and respond further on that point, if that would assist.

Baroness Neuberger: That would be very useful. Thank you. Poppy.

Poppy Szkiler: It really depends on what sector we are talking about. We are talking about roads here, but there are so many other sectors, and different nations specialise in certain areas. In Japan, for example, if you go to a building construction site you will see the decibel levels on the outside and think, “Wow, it’s 40 decibels. They’re doing great”. Here, you cannot.

Different people do different things better. We are about making those solutions discoverable to the decision-makers. In order to create awareness of home-grown United Kingdom enterprise, Quiet Mark is working across all nations to make those solutions discoverable. So in that sense we have a real asset here, linked to the Noise Abatement Society charity, to lead into different nations and to provide a sourcing platform for global markets for all different sectors.

There is quite a big vision, but I am just trying to paint that picture, because it really is about making those specifiers know, “Wow, there’s this new track, or barriers, or assistance that I never thought we could use”. It is about creating one online hub of practical solutions all over the world that everyone can cherry-pick from that is a free asset for a designer, specifier or home owner. That is what Quiet Mark is.

Q84 Baroness Neville-Jones: I have a follow-up question on what Mr Greer was saying about the framework of regulation. This is a question of whether I have understood what you are saying. I thought I heard you say, or there was an implication, that although the UK may be broadly in the same band of level of achievement as other countries, we do not actually start to do anything about noise impact except at a higher level of generation of noise. Do we let through a lot more noise than other countries before we start getting worried about it and doing anything about it? That seems to me to be quite a big part of quality of life, quite apart from the impact on health, where you can continually still find yourself living in a noisier country.

Richard Greer: That is a helpful question. Let me try to clarify, if I may. The Government's noise policy statement for England helpfully draws on World Health Organization guidance and steps through noise exposure from having no effect on people, to having a lower effect, to having a significant effect, to having an unacceptable effect. As I will come on to, it is a valuable structure, not just for now but for future outcomes. All those levels of effect are taken fully into account in the design and scrutiny of new projects. Therefore, all those levels of effect are considered in the decision-making on HS2, a new road or a new airport.

The environmental noise regulations apply to the existing noise sources—the existing road network, the existing rail network, existing airports. All those different levels of effect are taken into account, but at the moment under the requirement to identify steps to improve in noise action plans, which happen every five years, they are applied only to what are called important areas, which at the moment are the ones that are identified at the highest levels of exposure and the highest levels of effect. I suspect the reason for that is affordability. I hope that helps to clarify.

Baroness Neville-Jones: That clears up my difficulty. Thank you.

Q85 Lord Borwick: You talked about monetising the positive effects on human health of reducing noise. What is the formula for achieving that? Where is the evidence that there is definitely a bad effect on human health of excess noise other than incipient deafness in people in a chronic position? At the lower levels of noise, is there a clearly established formula by which you would monetise those benefits?

Richard Greer: There is. That has been the subject of some of the research that I referred to which has been undertaken in clinical investigations and structured scrutinised research over the past couple of decades to provide that evidence base. It has shown that at the higher levels of exposure there are increases in hypertension leading to a risk of heart disease, effects on mental health—these sorts of things. There is now a clear and demonstrable evidence link between exposure and those effects. Intergovernmental department teams have come together to ensure the robustness of that, and then to oversee how, in a numerical sense, that is turned into monetisation through what are called disability adjusted life years. That is all logged in the Department for Transport assessment guidance—or WebTAG, as it is often called.

Lord Borwick: Do we have the references to those formulas?

The Chair: We are getting assurance that we have, yes. We move on to Lord Winston and our final question.

Q86 Lord Winston: I will start with you, Poppy. One of the most interesting aspects of things is the difficulty of public engagement. I wondered, therefore, given your description of your kitchen table, what you think we could persuade government to do with regard to public engagement and whether you feel that government is doing enough. We have to present a report that will somehow influence the Government to make legislation or take serious steps. It would be quite helpful to hear what you feel would be cogent things, as a final statement.

Poppy Szkiler: The Quiet Mark model started by focusing on the noise that every British citizen experiences in the home, and tackling that and coming up with practical solutions to it. From that, we created a very high-profile national campaign that has been ongoing from the first day, working with all the national newspapers and magazines, all the marketing tools. So in that sense we know that we have the model that educates, informs and empowers everyday people to decide to buy quiet and to specify quiet. You present them with choices and they understand the health benefits.

A quick aside: national surveys show that 80% to 90% of British homeowners want a quieter home and regard peace and quiet as vital in a purchasing decision, and so on, and it is the same in the building sector. In that sense, we know that the Quiet Mark model, which is a certification—I know I keep going on about it—enables people to choose a product and know that it is the quietest product or solution for whatever issue they have.

If that was empowered, if the Government were to get behind the model, it would be a win-win for the consumer, the architect, the specifier and the infrastructure group. The media are right behind what we are doing, because they know that we are not selling products; we are doing it purely for public health. In that sense, the vehicle is there, Quiet Mark is there, and it is something for us all to empower and to enlarge. That requires more funding and more teams to assess more products.

Essentially, we have seen that people seeing the mark and knowing that it stands for best practice for a particular product or solution drives sales, so the manufacturer and the industry then want to create more quieter machines or solutions for that particular area and the home and the workplace, and transport becomes quieter. That could be done by identifying and creating a much bigger platform that is empowered by government working potentially with this model in whatever way. The European Environment Agency stated a few years ago, after another big noise study, that the Quiet Mark was potentially the solution to noise pollution. That is a very bold statement, but it is because when anyone sees it and engages with it they are employing the best solution for that noise problem.

In essence, we would be hugely thrilled if this vision came to life, and not just for this nation: we would be doing it for others. There are already hubs all over the world. Products globally are taking certification that all started here in the UK.

Lord Winston: Thank you. Richard, would you be kind enough to give us some closing words on where you think we could direct the report to make a difference to what government might actually do? It is very difficult for Select Committees to influence government. It might sound easy, but it is not, so we would like some thoughts from you. You have said quite a lot about regulation and legislation, but it would be useful to sum up.

Richard Greer: Of course. I fear that I have somewhat already stolen my own thunder on this. The work of this I have to say excellent and very timely inquiry and its ability to influence the noise objectives that will be set out as part of the move to environmental outcome reporting will be most beneficial. As I said, the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill is currently in the House of Lords, so the timing is good. Government is yet to consult on those outcomes.

There is a real opportunity to draw on the success of the existing noise policy statement for England, which has withstood the test of time and is already outcome-focused. There are improvements that could be made to that, and I would be happy to share some thoughts here or in writing after the session.

The Chair: We have a few minutes left, but we would very much appreciate any evidence in writing.

Lord Winston: Are there any other areas where you think that government should stimulate more research, for example? The trouble with the health stuff is that there are so many weak issues there, multiple ones that are very difficult to disentangle from the environmental problems.

Richard Greer: On the question of research, I have touched on noise insulation and understanding its helpful effects and monetising those.

The second area is construction. This committee has heard a lot about what I call permanent noise but less regarding construction, which, particularly for major projects, can last years. Further research on the health effects would be of assistance. I will note some of the great work that HS2 has been doing in this area on electric plant, the use of artificial intelligence and much smarter ways of protecting communities and the workforce.

The third area is public open space and cultural heritage. I would include in that what is called relative tranquillity—back to the sense of having space that people feel is restorative, even in noisier urban and town areas—which is rightly in planning regulations. This links back to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill—forgive me, I keep coming back to it. One of the new outcomes that it introduces is to give more weight to the importance of the natural environment and the cultural environment. We have some good technical methods for calculating decibels and looking at what that means, but we need further research to really understand the health benefits of tranquil space. That would be very helpful.

Baroness Neville-Jones: To go back to what Poppy was advocating, if I may say so it sounded rather like a kitemark regime. Then we start getting into consumer protections. In order to have a kitemark system that works, it has to be set against standards that products have to meet. Then there is a consumer rights regime when they do not and when there is mis-selling going on. Unless I am missing something, it seems to me that a lot of that structure does not exist in the area that we are talking about.

If you ask the Government to do something too elaborate, nothing happens. Is there something very basic that could be done that would get us further down that road? You are right to emphasise that individual decisions contribute, and they empower people and make them much more conscious of the shortcomings of public administration when they cannot actually meet some of these desired objectives themselves. Is there something simple that could be done to lead down that road, do you reckon?

Poppy Szkiler: The simplicity of the business model—putting aside the earlier question of the triangulation of the products—is that we have forged partnerships with all the major retailers in this nation that we all shop at, so that, where someone is buying a product, the Quiet Mark is right there at the point of sale.

Behind that Quiet Mark is all the technical due diligence on, say, washing machines and the regulation of the ErP labels. Our team have trawled over the whole of the UK or global market and identified the 10% to 20% quietest in market, so that consumer buyer marks knows that that Quiet Mark represents a very trusted technical evaluation of lots of complicated measurements that they can then buy in and have assurance. We are then seeing that those washing machines or domestic products—or, on a specification site in the building sector, certain windows or heat pumps; you name it—are specified more, and that environment is then quieter, which is multiplied as those products become “heroes”.

In a simple sense, we are already demonstrating the model in the marketplace, and we have the figures to show that it works in that people then prefer those products in their purchasing decisions, whether consumer or trade. So we feel that the simplicity of the mark itself and the model of many partnerships, whether it is retailers or the campaign in general, is almost a vehicle. I do not know if that answers exactly what you were asking for.

The Chair: Are there British and European standards for the quietness of household products?

Poppy Szkiler: No. This is the only one in the world.

The Chair: Are there any last questions from the committee? In that case, thank you both for this interesting session. We would very much appreciate any further evidence you would like to submit to us. Richard, you have kindly offered to send us some follow-up evidence, which we would find very useful.