Queen’s speech confirms relaxation of zero carbon standards to boost new home sales

With roughly 70% of lead sheet used in the construction industry on domestic property – new build, extensions and refurbishment – the strength of the housing market is critical to product sales. 

There’s almost universal agreement that too few new homes are being built in the UK. Although the latest figures show that construction started on nearly 135,000 new homes in England in the year to March 2014, and this is the highest number since 2007-08, it still falls way below the estimates that we need to be building at least 200,000 each year. The reality is that, alongside the refurbishment of older properties, there should be around 50% more housing starts each year than is currently being achieved.

Recent weeks have seen much comment about the effectiveness, and possible adverse consequences for the wider economy, of the Government’s Help to Buy initiatives. In the small print of the Queen’s Speech on Wednesday was the announcement that the Government’s intention that all new homes built from 2016 should be zero carbon will be relaxed to encourage growth in the market. The Infrastructure Bill will include provision for developers of larger sites to make offset payments for homes built to less stringent levels, but still to the fairly exacting Code 4 standard, of energy efficiency. For developers on smaller sites (the Government will consult on the definition of ‘smaller’ but reports suggest that the threshold will be between 10 and 50 units) the requirement will be removed altogether.

The home building industry has argued that with additional costs averaging nearly £10,000 per home the zero carbon requirement will suppress the market at a time when the need for affordable new homes has never been greater. Higher standards inevitably come at a price but opponents of the proposal will say that relaxation also has costs with both higher overall carbon emissions and fuel bills for those who move into these homes. 

Given the scale of our housing crisis, and the very small impact on carbon emissions from new buildings relative to the existing stock, this seems to be a price worth paying for a few years at least.

Richard Diment,
LSA Executive Manager,

5th June 2014