Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of exempting developments that receive planning permission before 2025 from the Future Homes Standard requirements.

When the Government makes changes to the Building Regulations, transitional arrangements are put into place which set out the conditions under which a building can be built to the previous standards. These arrangements mean that developers have certainty and assurance about the standards which they have to build to, and that work which is already in progress can be completed without major disruption.

In December 2021, the Government implemented an uplift in energy efficiency standards as a stepping-stone to the Future Homes Standards. As part of that, a one-year transitional period was put in place.

A full technical consultation on the Future Homes Standard is planned and as part of this we will consider what transitional arrangements are appropriate. Monitoring the impact of the 2021 uplift and the associated transitional arrangements will be a consideration in that process.