Clause 242
Housing and Regeneration Bill
2:30 pm
Iain Wright (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Communities and Local Government; Hartlepool, Labour)
This is an important part of the Bill. We have spent a lot of time in Committee talking about more homes and better designed homes. This part of the Bill talks about greener homes, and is absolutely essential to achieve the world-beating ambition that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing has set the industry of making sure that all homes built after 2016 are zero carbon. It is an important point. As the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire said, we do need to address the fact that homes “leak energy” because—as I have pointed out to the Committee already—27 per cent of all of the UK’s carbon emissions come from domestic dwellings, and we need to address that.
We need to look at this in the round, and the measures that we are introducing to improve the sustainability of new homes will include a major progressive tightening of the energy-efficiency standards in building regulations. This will mean a 25 per cent. improvement against current standards in 2010, followed by a 4 per cent. improvement in 2013 and then, in 2016, the zero carbon target that I mentioned earlier will be introduced.
This will improve the energy efficiency of both the fabric of homes and of the type of energy supplied. In December last year, we published a new planning policy statement on climate change. It puts climate change at the very heart of the planning system by ensuring that new communities are located and designed in a way that reduces the need for travel and makes best use of low-carbon and renewable energy. In addition, since October 2007, a stamp duty land tax exemption for zero carbon homes has been in place, so that houses can act as an incentive for developers to build zero carbon homes. We will also shortly introduce new minimum standards in building regulations to make new homes more water-efficient.
Clause 242 allows the Government to make regulations to ensure that anybody building a new home has very clear information on the sustainability of that new home. This will be in the form of either a sustainability certificate showing that the home meets higher sustainable standards than a home that has been built to minimum regulatory standards in building regulations, or a written statement that the home does not have a sustainability certificate. These certificates or statements must be provided free of charge to the home buyer. It is important that we are making sustainability assessments, and I stress the word “assessments”, mandatory for all new homes. We are making the provision of clear, transparent information on sustainability mandatory and this can include statements of non-assessment, which are self declarations and do not involve employing an assessor.
In England, it is proposed that the sustainability rating system will be the code for sustainable homes. This code was introduced in April 2007 and is an assessment and rating system that provides a framework within which house builders can improve the overall sustainability of new-build homes. The Code provides a mechanism by which builders can be recognised for going beyond the building regulations for energy and other aspects of sustainability.
The lack of credible information on the sustainability of new homes is limiting our efforts to encourage the market to provide more sustainable homes. Home buyers currently have limited information on the environmental performance and wider sustainability of new homes. I strongly believe that this clause will ensure that information is available on all new homes to allow purchasers to make informed choices.