The government’s Housing Standards Review, published this week for consultation, has drawn support for its plan to rationalise the confusion of codes and guidance in housebuilding by transferring technical guidance into the Building Regulations.
The DCLG said the new proposals would “help free up the industry, support growth and get high quality homes built”. But its proposal to phase out the Code for Sustainable Homes has drawn criticism, and the suggestion that developers should work to minimum space standards sparked a backlash from housebuilders.
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The Review, prompted by a report by the Housing Forum and seen by government as part of the Red Tape Challenge, proposes stripping away various non-statutory codes and local policies that can be applied to housing developments at the planning stage as a condition of planning permission.
Instead, the Review proposes that useful technical design guidance contained in the Code for Sustainable Homes, Secured by Design, Lifetime Homes and other local policies should be incorporated into Building Regulations in future.
Geoff Wilkinson ICIOB, an approved inspector, welcomed the move as a clarification of the planning and building control functions on projects.
“The concept is exactly what we’d expected: they need to strip technical guidance out from the planning system and drop it back where it belongs – in the Building Regulations.
“In this system, Building Regulations will be applied by people with a technical background, not planners. There have been cases of planners making demands for renewables or PV when it might not be the appropriate solution, so you miss opportunities and drive people down the line of eco-bling.”
However, the UK Green Building Council’s chief executive Paul King was concerned that “…with the demise of the Code for Sustainable Homes and big omissions around materials and ecology, we risk losing a momentum that has transformed the way homes have been built over the last seven years”.
"The concept is exactly what we’d expected: they need to strip technical guidance out from the planning system and drop it back where it belongs – in the Building Regulations."
Geoff Wilkinson MCIOB
He added: “Government claims its plans will take off the bureaucratic handbrake that holds back house building, but it is in danger of letting key sustainability considerations roll away completely.”
And David Bownass, sustainability director at WSP, questioned how the move sat with the government’s “localism” agenda. “Interestingly, the Code for Sustainable Homes is in large part driven by local planning policy, not Building Regulations and to date the government doesn’t control this aspect of development,” he commented.
But Wilkinson said that the Building Regulations could pick up the Code’s recommendations on issues such as waste and water management, and that it was possible to have a “tiered” approach with different rules applied according to the part of the country or the type of tenure.
“It’s entirely doable to have a tiered approach – we already have guidance in Approved Document M on how it should be applied to different building types. The Building Regs can accommodate a flexible approach.”
“The Code did a good job in trying to encourage people, but now we need to embed it in Building Regulations.”
He also suggested that minimum space standards could operate in this way. “You could have a range of standards set out in a table, that apply in different situations. We should set an absolute minimum, and then it should be more for anyone developing a greenfield site.”
Housebuilders such as Persimmon claim this would raise costs, undermining efforts by the government to increase supply. But the consultation was welcomed by the National Housing Federation and the RIBA, which believes that small room sizes in new homes deter homebuyers.
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I welcome any proposals that provide simplification in order to encourage appropriate development. The introduction if minimum space standards within the Building Regulations is also to be applauded. However there is an important concern that by moving the Code for Sustainable Homes into the Building Regulations (ie removing the pre assessment) that home builders and designers will not address some of the earliest fundamental aspects of sustainable design such as simple orientation and building form and will instead focus on costly bolt on renewables. A large part of reducing energy consumption can be tackled in a passive approach at the initial design stage. Perhaps a solution is to adapt the Code for Sustainable Homes (removing complex energy calculations which are already dealt with under the Building Regulations) and actually make a higher minimum code standard compulsory for all new build housing including single dwellings, as in the case in Wales. This would provide clarity at the planning stage giving applicants and planners a clear mechanism in which to assess a schemes sustainability. This new code would help to define sustainability as set out within the NPPF. http://www.jonathanbraddick.co.uk