Urban dwellers are the latest victims of the net zero crusade

Fifty years ago, our Pimlico street was, in architectural terms, a happening place. This was not because of the stucco-fronted terraces built, like the rest of Pimlico, in about 1850 by the great 19th-century developer Thomas Cubitt, but a pioneering alternative to the hated high-rise blocks of flats that local authorities had been inflicting on London since the Second World War.

In 1961, Westminster City Council decided to replace a swathe of poorly maintained, bomb-damaged slum housing on a deep site next to Vauxhall Bridge Road with a high-density scheme, not constructed from concrete and glass but red brick, the colour taken from the magnificent Victorian church of St James the Less.

The ideals of the scheme are conveyed in the name Lillington and Longmoore Gardens, rightly invoking a sense of rus in urbe since creepers cascade from the large balconies and the residential blocks surround areas of lawn, reminiscent of nearby squares.

Equally utopian, although less obvious to the casual visitor, was the system by which the flats were kept warm. Heat was provided centrally, making use of so-called “waste” heat from Battersea Power Station on the other side of the Thames. Pumped through a tunnel, hot water was distributed to 3,000 homes, in various Westminster council estates as well as 50 commercial premises, three schools and a post office.

Three years after Lillington and Longmoore Gardens were finished in 1980, the power station closed. But the system – with what was now its network of nearly 5km of underground pipes – was continued using gas boilers. Now, the whole apparatus needs to be radically overhauled. To do this in a way that meets government net zero targets will saddle individual residents with vast bills that are hugely more than the cost of fitting properties with conventional domestic boilers.

According to the Energy Institute, district heating, as centrally generated heating systems are called, is nothing new. Whether or not we can really trace its origins to the baths and greenhouses of Ancient Rome, the spa town of Chaudes-Aigues in the Auvergne saw its advantages in the 14th century: hot water from its volcanic springs was distributed through pipes to 30 houses, prefiguring the modern interest in geothermal energy.

In the 20th century, the central provision of heat appealed equally to the commissars of Soviet Russia and the landlords of luxury apartment buildings in New York. In post-war London, it was a means of combating the appalling pea souper smogs caused by the burning coal in several million domestic grates. A downside of district heating, wherever used, was the profligacy it encouraged: people without control over the cost of heating had no reason to use less – indeed, the only way of regulating the temperature of their rooms was, in some cases, to throw open the windows and let in some cold air.

It is no surprise that district heating should have powered Westminster’s Churchill Gardens Estate. Next to Chelsea Bridge, the 32 blocks, built between 1946-62, represent the only project completed under the wartime Abercrombie Plan, which advocated wholesale redevelopment across London. It is more surprising to find it in Lillington and Longmoore Gardens, which eschewed the collectivist ethos of the time in favour of a more humane approach.

The architects Darbourne and Darke, who were only 26 and 32 when they got the commission, believed in human scale, variety of form and open space. Brick-paved paths wind through the development, giving it the air of a Mediterranean hill town – all of which was radical for a decade still dominated by the construction of concrete-and-glass towers.

Admittedly, the intricate pattern of paths and walkways provides, according to local police officers, an abundance of nooks and corners that are ideal for drug dealing; but in general, the result provided a civilized environment for the council tenants – and now private home owners – lucky enough to be housed there.

It may seem, given the eye-watering costs of replacing the district heating system, that their luck has run out. Or is it that the sacrifice that they are being asked to make in the cause of net zero represents merely a foretaste of things to come across British cities?

Country dwellers can install ground heat pumps and solar panels to meet green targets. This is impossible for most urban flat dwellers. According to energy experts, district heat is a far more efficient means of carbon abatement than any stand-alone form of renewable technology.

In 2013 the Department for Energy and Climate Change suggested that the present 2 per cent share in domestic heating could be increased to 20 per cent by 2030. The pain of Lillington and Longmoore could soon be more widely shared.