Plans to water down environmental requirements on small housebuilding sites split the industry’s response to this week’s Queen Speech hailed by David Cameron as a blueprint “To Get Britain Building Again”.
The changes will form part of a new Infrastructure Bill aimed at “bolstering investment” and reform planning law in the UK and will pave the way for so-called “allowable solutions”, which enable house builders to meet zero carbon standards by paying towards carbon reductions elsewhere. Some experts in the sector said the money collected should go towards making existing buildings more energy efficient and even bolstering the Green Deal.
The biggest controversy, however, was the exemption of meeting zero carbon standards from small house building sites.
The Zero Carbon Homes standard will be set at Level 5 of the Code for Sustainable Homes, but the legislation will allow developers to build to Level 4 if they offset through cost-effective carbon-reduction measures. However, small housing developments will be exempt from meeting zero carbon standards.
The definition of a small site has yet to be decided. But an analysis of residential planning applications submitted in the last year, undertaken by construction data company Barbour ABI for Building, shows that 12.4% of proposed new homes are on sites of less than 10 homes. However, if the bar is set at 50 homes, the analysis shows that over a third – 36.4% – of new homes would be exempt from hitting the full zero carbon standard.
"The coalition will laud their green credentials by claiming to have delivered on the promise for all new homes to be zero carbon from 2016, but unfortunately they are at risk of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory by letting small developments – a large chunk of the house building market – off the hook."
Paul King, UK Green Building Council
House building lobby groups welcomed the promise to set out the government’s allowable solutions regime, and the proposed exemption for small sites, with the Federation of Master Builders saying it would create “more local homes”.
However, environmental groups have reacted angrily to the news, with the UK Green Building Council describing it as “deeply worrying”.
Paul King, chief executive of the UK Green Building Council, said: “The coalition will laud their green credentials by claiming to have delivered on the promise for all new homes to be zero carbon from 2016, but unfortunately they are at risk of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory by letting small developments – a large chunk of the house building market – off the hook.”
But Brian Berry, chief executive of the FMB, said exemption that small housing developments will be exempt from some zero carbon homes requirements was welcome news. “The FMB has been warning for some time that the rapid implementation of the zero carbon homes policy is threatening to deluge smaller house builders in a tsunami of costs that hinder their ability to build.”
Berry continued: “SME house builders have been bearing the weight of extra costs and a steep learning curve immediately, without the resources which larger firms have at their disposal.”
Whilst generally the industry wasn’t against the allowable solutions idea as a way of meeting zero carbon standards, consultants said money collected could be used to help make existing homes more energy efficient.
Sustainability director at consultancy WSP, David Bownass, said: “This solution is great for the house builder, but less so for the end customer, the homeowner, who won’t benefit from the reduced energy bills if the carbon is offset off-site.
“Given that existing buildings are where there is the biggest potential to save carbon, if we restricted the allowable solutions to a simple buy-out mechanism we could use the money collected to make all Green Deal loans 0% interest, addressing a key limitation in the Green Deal offer as well as directly benefiting the general public.”
Mat Lown, partner and head of sustainability at property and construction consultancy Tuffin Ferraby Taylor, added: “Allowable solutions could help by funding fabric improvements at scale and to help bolster current efforts to tackle the challenge of reducing energy emissions in existing building (such as those under the Green Deal). Insulating our homes is also a critically important to help reduce the cost of heating and improve our fuel security by reducing our reliance on unpredictable imported gas.”
He added: “Exempting small housing developments from allowable solutions should only be seen as a short-term measure as ultimately provisions must be put in place to meet the requirements under the EU’s Energy Performance of Buildings Directive 2010 that all buildings be nearly zero energy by 2020. It is also essential that government provides a clear definition of what constitutes a small housing site.”
In other moves, the Infrastructure Bill will also include reform to turn the Highways Agency into a government-owned company, and will focus on National Significant Infrastructure Projects, simplifying the process for making changes to Development Consent Orders.
And further plans to boost house building included the creation of locally led garden cities – though little detail was given and the reiteration of finance support for SMEs through the £525m Builders’ Finance Fund, which closes on 25 June, and scaling back section 106 levies on small-scale developments.
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