A new Part L of the building regulations will come into effect on June 15th 2022. This is billed as an interim uplift towards the Future Homes Standard scheduled for 2025.
The new uplift focuses on much better fabric standards and is intended to reduce CO2 emissions by ~30% compared to standards currently in place. Heating emitters will also have to be sized so that they can also be used for low temperature heating.
As well as the uplift, there are new measures intended to close the performance gap between design intent and built home. This is welcome news given the incidents of some really poor quality housebuilding [1].
Another new feature is the transitional arrangements. The new regulations will now apply to individual homes instead of site-wide, with a reasonable period of 12 months to commence work. This is due to some developments being built to the standards at the time they received planning permission. In some cases, this has led to homes completed in 2022 actually being built to building regulations that were in force in 2006!
The chart below shows the new notional building specification. Any new home will have to have CO2 emissions better than a home built to these standards:
Regulations have also been updated with the intention of reducing the risk of overheating and we covered these in a previous blog [2]. We’ve also shared some of the learning from those who have built EPC A rated homes recently [3].
If you would like to check the performance of any new homes you have built [4], please be in touch.
[1] See here for an example: https://shiftenvironment.co.uk/news/a-horror-story-poor-quality-in-new-builds/
[3] https://shiftenvironment.co.uk/news/building-to-epc-a-roundtable-review/
[4] https://shiftenvironment.co.uk/news/8-reasons-to-do-environmental-post-occupancy-evaluation/