Upgrade on the way for Part L Regulations

Part L of the English building regulations, covering the conservation of fuel and power, is to be upgraded so as to mandate zero carbon standards. As well as tightening insulation standards, this will effectively ensure that no more gas boilers are installed in new homes. But not before 2025, nine years after this requirement was originally scheduled to become law.

The government has now confirmed this timing, overturning the announcement by Prime Minister Boris Johnson last September that such standards would be mandatory from 2023.

Back in 2010, it was the present Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps, then the housing minister under the Coalition government, who confirmed that zero-carbon homes would “become the only home you can buy after 2016.” An interim step towards that standard was introduced in 2013.

But while in all devolved administrations the original timetable was retained, the agreed timetable was torn up after the Conservative Party obtained a majority at the 2015 general election.

Consequently, the interim 2013 standards are now set to remain largely in place (with only minor tweaking) for a 12-year period, during which the official UK aspirations regarding both energy savings and climate-related targets were tightened considerably. The UK’s current emission target for 2030 requires a 68 per cent cut against 1990 levels by the end of this decade.

Additionally, house builders constructing a substantial estate have long been permitted to build all homes to the standards in operation when the first new home was built. Surprisingly, no steps are to be taken to tighten this lax arrangement.

The Future Homes Standards document sets out plans to phase out any fossil fuel heating systems from new homes. According to the present housing Minister, Chris Pincher, “the radical new standards will ensure our new homes are fit for the future by reducing emissions from new homes by at least 75 per cent.”

Effectively, this high percentage claimed concedes that not only are some new homes still being built to the even lower standards permitted prior to 2013. But also that many new homes today simply do not comply with meeting minimum standards, an issue regularly raised by the chairman of the Committee on Climate Change, Lord Deben, who as a former Environment Secretary used to be in charge of monitoring such compliance levels. The new document proposes no specific steps to ensure better compliance.

The document sets out some higher energy efficiency standards relevant to existing homes. These include parts for windows, heat pumps, cooling systems, and fixed lighting. New requirements for additional ventilation and indoor air quality monitoring in high-risk commercial buildings like gyms are included.