Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether his Department has plans to strengthen standards relating to sound insulation in residential properties.

The Government is continually assessing the efficacy of Building Regulations to ensure that our new homes and buildings are safe and provide healthy living environments for their occupants. This includes Part E of the Building Regulations 2010 (Resistance to the Passage of Sound), which requires protection against sound or from other parts of a building, adjoining buildings and within a dwelling-house, and prevention of unreasonable reverberation in common internal parts of buildings with residential flats or rooms. The Building Safety Act 2022 requires the Building Safety Regulator to keep the safety and standard of buildings under review; Building Regulations can then be updated as needed.