The government is to begin commissioning new homes directly in a bid to deliver the one million promised by 2020 before new standards for energy efficiency come into force.
David Cameron has announced that smaller building firms will be tasked by central government with building new homes on publicly owned land. The first wave of up to 13,000 will be built this year on four sites outside of London as well as one in the capital, with up to 40% set to be ‘starter’ homes for first time buyers.
The Prime Minister said: “This government was elected to deliver security and opportunity – whatever stage of life you’re at. Nothing is more important to achieving that than ensuring hard-working people can buy affordable homes.
“Today’s package signals a huge shift in government policy. Nothing like this has been done on this scale in three decades – government rolling its sleeves up and directly getting homes built.”
The government has also unveiled a £1.2bn starter home fund to prepare brownfield sites for at least 30,000 new starter homes and up to 30,000 market homes on 500 new sites by 2020.
Following the scrapping of the zero carbon homes (ZCH) policy in July 2015 designed to ensure properties built from 2016 would have to mitigate all carbon emissions produced on-site, the government’s new homes will be built to current Building Regulations. Part L of the regulations, which governs conservation of fuel and power, was last updated in 2013 and called for a 6% improvement on 2010’s carbon emission targets for new build properties. This was widely regarded as disappointing compared to the 8% outlined in the government’s original consultation and is unlikely to receive further improvements after the next update was postponed.
Claiming that greater efficiency standards would prove to be “an obstacle” to higher levels of house-building, the government will now press on to deliver the one million new homes promised in November’s Spending Review. With the ZCH policy cancelled and no update of building regulations, the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) is free to build to existing standards before European rules come into force at the end of 2020.
The Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) will require all new buildings to be nearly Zero Energy Buildings (nZEB), meaning they will have to achieve very high energy performance, with the consequent low energy demand to be met predominately by renewable sources.
The residential sector accounted for 15% of all UK carbon dioxide emissions in 2014, and is estimated to use around a third of the nation’s energy for heating. The government is required to reduce carbon emissions by 80% on 1990 levels by 2050, with increment targets in 2020 and 2025, which could be missed due to failures in heat and transport specifically.
