In the Review of Housing Standards for England, the government is proposing to reduce the number of housing standards that councils are free to apply locally from over 100 to fewer than 10.
The review will affect requirements such as the Lifetime Home Standards, Secured By Design and the Code for Sustainable Homes, aspects of which may or may not be incorporated into Building Regulations. No changes are being made to planning rules or essential safety and accessibility rules.
Following the consultation, the Government’s intention is to issue a National Described Standards document and to consider whether further changes may be needed to the Building Regulations, possibly to integrate elements of housing standards. If this is the case, then detailed cost benefit and further consultation will be undertaken to underpin the work.
The aim of the review is to simplify the standards, which it would be likely to achieve with the proposals (there are currently 12 different wheelchair accessibility standards in London alone), and to remove the barrier for landowners in building new homes, which is something of a moot point with recent statistics showing 82 per cent of planning applications for major residential applications over 10 units were approved by local authorities.
With security and sustainability standards among those under review, it is crucial for members to provide us with examples where the requirements of the standards have been a burden on or a benefit to their business, particularly with reference to Secured By Design and the Code for Sustainable Homes. While we very much support the thrust of this work to simplify, we are concerned that it will be a retrograde step if elements of sustainability, for example those relating to materials, are cut completely from future standards.
As we move towards zero carbon buildings, the use of more sustainable materials (such as timber) is becoming increasingly important relative to the impacts of building energy consumption. As such we are deeply concerned about government’s proposals to replace the material aspects of the Code as materials are not included within the Nationally Described Standards document. We believe that a specific materials working group should have been established and that the government should establish a working group to consider the establishment of a Nationally Described Standard for embodied impact.
The 10 week consultation on Housing Standards for England will conclude on 22nd October 2013, and we are keen to gather the views of BWF members can either submit comments to Kevin Underwood, Technical Director, for consideration in the Federation response, or they can submit a response directly.
The consultation can be found here: www.gov.uk/government/consultations/housing-standards-review-consultation. We would like you to focus on answering the following questions.
The government wants to develop a nationally described standards set as a stepping stone en route to integrating standards into Building Regulations at a future date. What are your views on this?
Do you think there is a need for security standards?
Do you believe that there would be additional benefits to industry of integrating the proposed security standards in to the Building Regulations as ‘regulated options’?
Do you support the view that domestic security for new homes should be covered by national standards/Building Regulations or should it be left to market forces/other?
The government considers that the right approach is that carbon and energy targets are only set in National Building Regulations and that no interim standard is needed. Do you agree?
The government does not therefore propose to include materials with the Nationally Described Standards document. Do you agree with this?
Do you think that moving to a nationally consistent set of housing standards will deliver supply chain efficiencies to home builders?
Do you think that moving to a nationally consistent set of housing standards could help reduce abortive or repeated costs during the construction stage of home building?
The Housing Standards review also links in to a separate consultation on the options for using allowable solutions (off-site projects or measures that reduce carbon emissions), which house builders may support to achieve the zero carbon homes standard. The BWF is currently of the opinion that Embodied Impact reduction should become an Allowable Solution. A Nationally Described Standard would logically become the means by which embodied impact is measured. The consultation closes on 15th October and we would again be delighted to hear the views of the membership.
