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

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the remarks by Lord Duncan of Springbank on 7 February (HL Deb, col 2001), what steps they are taking to ensure the Future Homes Standard will apply to (1) houses under construction in 2025, and (2) sites where planning permission has been granted but construction has not yet started.

The Government remains committed to meeting its target of net zero emissions by 2050 and recognises the important contribution that the energy efficiency of buildings has to make in meeting it. In October 2019, we launched the first stage of a two-part consultation on Part L and Part F of the Building Regulations. We proposed an ambitious uplift in the energy efficiency of new homes through the introduction of a Future Homes Standard from 2025. We expect that homes built to the Future Homes Standard will have carbon dioxide emissions 75-80 per cent lower than those built to current Building Regulations standards, which means they will be fit for the future, with low carbon heating and very high fabric standards.

Transitional arrangements apply when changes to the Building Regulations or approved standards take place. They provide developers with assurance about the standards to which they must build, and ensure that they should not have to make material amendments to work which is already underway when new Regulations came into force. However, the Government is aware of cases of housing developments being built out to energy efficiency requirements that have been superseded more than twice with changes to Part L of the Building Regulations. While we appreciate that many housebuilding sites are built out over a number of years, it cannot be right that new homes are being built to old standards introduced in 2010 or even 2006. That in turn means that occupiers do not benefit from the levels of energy efficiency and the bill savings they would expect from a brand-new home. It also means that new homes are contributing more carbon dioxide emissions than should be expected, which has an impact on climate change.

To mitigate this, the Future Homes Standard consultation proposed a more stringent set of transitional requirements in 2020 to ensure that developers do not continue to build to older energy efficiency standards for longer than is appropriate. The consultation also sought views on the possible transitional arrangements that may apply from 2025 when the Future Homes Standard is introduced.

The Future Homes Standard consultation closed on 7 February. The responses we have received will be considered carefully, and the Government response will be issued in due course.