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INDUSTRY VIEWFINDER
transpired, despite being supposedly due in summer 2025. The two options the industry was asked to look at were based on a ‘Notional Building’, i.e. a building designed in HEM software (still not launched, but which will replace SAP) to have certain performance which a building of the same shape is then assessed against in order to pass the FHS/FBS. As a stop gap, the Government recently launched SAP 10.3, while the industry awaits confi rmation of which of the following two options will be taken forward for the FHS.
Option 1 is the more expensive, but offers better carbon savings, and is recommended by Government. It requires tighter fabric but also solar PV, to the tune of 40% of the building’s foundation area for ‘side-lit’ spaces and 75% for top-lit spaces. It also includes decentralised mechanical ventilation (dMEV) – ie continuous air extract, and waste water heat recovery. Option 2 is the ‘minimal approach,’ not requiring PV, but meaning similar tighter fabric There are two key acronyms within the Future Homes Standard and Future Buildings Standard, namely DFEE and DER. The Dwelling Fabric Energy Effi ciency is how well the building fabric performs thermally, and the Dwelling Emission Rate is the essential measure of the building’s CO2
emissions. Survey fi ndings
There are a vast amount of potential impacts from the new standards, and in particular the Home Energy Model. However, both due to the still somewhat speculative nature of assessing the changes, and the fact that there needs to be a selection of key known impacts, we asked a few, but revealing questions. We repeated a number of key questions from our 2024 survey in order to track progress or otherwise, or how views have changed as the FHS and FBS have evolved or the ramifi cations have become clearer. These included the construction industry’s readiness to
deliver the changes needed, the fi tness for purpose of the Home Energy Model, the need for third party testing of products and resulting data, and the design changes to existing schemes that architects had already been forced to make. Unfortunately, the aspirations among our respondents for the likelihood of the sector being able to deliver the predicated 75-80% emissions reductions in new homes in 2025 were less aspirational in this year’s survey. This may refl ect wider awareness of the full impact of the standard on designs, but also wider issues such as cost of materials, skills, and affordability generally. This year, architects saying that the sector wasn’t ready to deliver these savings jumped from 2024’s fi gure of 37% to a fairly conclusive 56%, yet this also speaks to general views currently that the standard itself, and the Home Energy Model won’t in fact be fully introduced until 2026.
The Home Energy Model & materials SAP has never been hugely popular – but did our survey cohort think the Home Energy Model replacing it would be fi t for purpose (at least as far as its content is understood so far). A similar number of respondents (53% and 52% in 2024 and 2025 respectively), were ‘unsure’ on whether it was fi t for purpose, but those saying they thought it was had increased from 14% to 22%. With product data becoming more important with designers required to demonstrate performance in a more granular way for the new standards, our respondents consistently saw it as a key factor across the two studies. The numbers were slightly stronger in 2025, with 88% saying that it was very or moderately important, up from 77% in 2024.
Many of our respondents said they had been asked to redesign existing projects in order to meet both the FHS and the FBS requirements, and among those who had (a not insignifi cant minority of 24% in 2025) this was overwhelmingly due to the need
What product types have raised issues for you in terms of obtaining adequate performance in meeting the Future Homes Standard? Many issues Some Issues Minimal Issues No Issues
WWW.ARCHITECTSDATAFILE.CO.UK
ADF OCTOBER 2025
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