Greening the Town Hall roof

Here's a good story I forgot to tell. This summer we put a green roof on Camden Town Hall. I believe it's the first to go on a listed town hall in this country - narrowly before the one that's due to go on Islington Town Hall! The green roof was suggested by Cllr Rebecca Hossack, a Conservative who I had great hopes for as a fellow eco warrior until she flew to the US to run the New York Marathon to raise money for...planting trees over here!

Still, the green roof on the Town Hall idea was a good idea so all credit to her for that. It's one of two things the Task Force has spent its tiny one-off £25k budget on. The other was a pilot with the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) aimed at getting our suppliers to disclose their carbon emissions and publish their strategy for reducing them. That's now become CDP Public Sector and apparently all UK and US government departments have signed up to the process which is awesome. And it all started with a tiny little pilot in Camden!

Anyway back to the green roof on Camden Town Hall. It's not the sort of installation we'd require on new buildings because the Town Hall roof is not strong enough for what's called an extensive green roof. That means a good depth of soil to soak up and retain rain water rather than allowing it to drain away and potentially contribute to flash floods. An extensive green roof also keeps the building's occupants warm in winter and cool in summer, and is good for biodiversity.
Our green roof is little more than a blanket as you can see from the photos but it's better than nothing. We'll be allowing public access in due course and I'm hoping to get bee hives put in up there as well so watch this space.