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's review of ventilation and energy-efficiency in building regulations includes indoor air quality; and whether the future homes standard will include benchmarking on indoor air quality.

In the Government’s Clean Air Strategy 2019, we committed to consulting on changes to standards in Part F (ventilation) of the Building Regulations, as part of our 2019 consultation on the Building Regulations’ energy efficiency standards. The statutory guidance for Part F (Approved Document F) describes how buildings in urban areas should be designed to reduce the intake of pollutants. In this review we are using the latest evidence on indoor air quality to inform ventilation standards.

The Future Homes Standard will be implemented through an uplift to the Building Regulations, subject to consultation. We will expand on the technical detail of these proposals during the 2019 consultation.