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Consultation seeks end to housing ‘mishmash’


 Number of local standards to be slashed


A review of housebuilding standards plans to cut the number of separate locally enforced measures from more than 100 to just 10. It also aims to slash guidance from more than 1,500 pages to 80. Launching a public


consultation about the plans, Communities Minister Don Foster said local councils had created a ‘patchwork’ of different standards that hindered quality construction and added unnecessary cost. He promised to take off the ‘bureaucratic handbrake’. ‘I’m proposing to cut needless red tape to let housebuilders get on with the real job of building the high-quality new homes that people need.’ However, he said there would be no changes to planning rules. The consultation, which ends on October 22, follows a comprehensive review of housebuilding standards that looked into the rules applied to: accessibility; space; security; water effi ciency; energy; indoor environmental standards; materials; process and compliance.


It particularly wants to remove anomalies like requirements for rainwater harvesting in places that


ASHRAE funds occupant


behaviour probe


How much energy occupants use in offi ces and how that infl uences their personal comfort is to be the subject of a research programme backed by ASHRAE. The programme hopes to


develop better design tools for quantifying the links between comfort and behaviour of building occupants. It will be developed by Jared Langevin from Drexel University, through his project: ‘Human Behaviour and Low Energy Architecture: Linking Environmental Adaptation, Personal Comfort and Energy Use in the Built Environment’. Langevin is one of 21 students


don’t suffer from water shortages; demands for solar and wind energy sources that can’t physically fi t onto the roofs of apartment buildings; and requirements to build accessible fl ats on fl oors that can’t be reached by disabled people.


‘The current mishmash of housing standards means that from Allerdale in Cumbria to Zoar in Cornwall no same set of rules always applies – it’s confusing, bureaucratic and cannot be allowed to continue,’ added Foster.


No changes are being made to Building Regulations, although the consultation will consider if some standards should eventually go into the regulations.


Government Code for Sustainable Homes could be scrapped


One consequence of the Government’s review of housebuilding standards could be the scrapping of the Code for Sustainable Homes. Communities Minister Don


Foster said it was essential the number of measures that confront housebuilders was reduced from more than 100 to just 10 to speed up construction and reduce cost. One potential victim of this


‘bonfi re of the standards’ is the code, which has been used to drive changes to the Building Regulations and move the industry towards zero carbon standards for new homes by 2016.


The housing standards review www.cibsejournal.com


consultation, which was launched in August and concludes on October 22, includes the statement: ‘The government proposes to wind down the role of the Code. We will put in place transitional arrangements to ensure that contractual commitments under the code can be properly covered.’ However Paul King, chief executive of UK Green Building Council, said scrapping the code risked losing the ‘momentum that has transformed the way homes have been built over the last seven years’.


Homeowners, on the other hand, may struggle to see the value of the code, according to David


Frise, head of sustainability at the Building & Engineering Services Association (B&ES). He said the code, in its current format, was so fl awed it would not be missed. ‘From a customer’s perspective, it is worthless. I apparently live in a code level 3 building, but have been told by DCLG and BRE that I am not entitled to see evidence of how that level was achieved. Only the developer has access to the information, as he paid for the accreditation, and he is not prepared to release it to me. ‘You have to make these mechanisms useful and transparent if you want people to support them.’


who will receive a grant through the ASHRAE Graduate Student Grant-In-Aid Award programme, which is designed to encourage students to continue their education in fi elds related to building services engineering. The grants, totalling US$210,000, are awarded to full-time graduate students. ‘It has been suggested


that discrepancies between actual and expected energy use in offi ce buildings can be attributed to a single source of uncertainty – the building occupant, said Langevin. ‘While traditional design-stage engineering calculations for offi ce buildings have assumed occupants contribute no more than an added heat gain, in practice real offi ce employees interact with and adapt to their surrounding environments in much more deliberate and meaningful ways.’ He added that there are


currently no comprehensive tools that architects and engineers can use early in the design process to weigh various scenarios of occupant behaviour against key aspects of offi ce building design and expected comfort, productivity and energy use. ‘As a result, building designers


are typically left in the dark about how real people might use and perceive their spaces, so they must achieve energy effi cient strategies in spite of the uncertainties surrounding occupant behaviour,’ said Langevin.


September 2013 CIBSE Journal 9


GORDON BALL LRPS / SHUTTERSTOCK


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